ut every thing is
of value, every thing is important, if we contemplate the goal
where it ends, and the account of it which he must render. Let us,
therefore, meditate to-day, in presence of this altar and of this
tomb, the first and the last utterance of the Preacher; of which
the one shows the nothingness of man, the other establishes his
greatness. Let this tomb convince us of our nothingness, provided
that this altar, where is daily offered for us a Victim of price so
great, teach us at the same time our dignity. The princess whom we
weep shall be a faithful witness, both of the one and of the other.
Let us survey that which a sudden death has taken away from her;
let us survey that which a holy death has bestowed upon her. Thus
shall we learn to despise that which she quitted without regret, in
order to attach all our regard to that which she embraced with so
much ardor,--when her soul, purified from all earthly sentiments,
full of the heaven on whose border she touched, saw the light
completely revealed. Such are the truths which I have to treat, and
which I have deemed worthy to be proposed to so great a prince, and
to the most illustrious assembly in the world.

It will be felt how removed is the foregoing from any thing like an
effort, on the preacher's part, to startle his audience with the
far-fetched and unexpected. It must, however, be admitted that Bossuet
was not always--as, of our Webster, it has well been said that he always
was--superior to the temptation to exaggerate an occasion by pomps of
rhetoric. Bossuet was a great man, but he was not quite great enough to
be wholly free from pride of self-consciousness in matching himself as
orator against "the most illustrious assembly in the world."

The ordinary sermons of Bossuet are less read, and they less deserve
perhaps to be read, than those of Bourdaloue and Massillon.

* * *

BOURDALOUE was a voice. He was the voice of one crying, not in the
wilderness, but amid the homes and haunts of men, and, by eminence, in
the court of the most powerful and most splendid of earthly monarchs. He
was a Jesuit, one of the most devoted and most accomplished of an order
filled with devoted and accomplished men. It belonged to his Jesuit
character and Jesuit training, that Bourdaloue should hold the place
that he did as ever-successful courtier at Versailles, all the while
th