volution. There is distinct advance in Massillon, and advance more
than is accounted for by his somewhat later time, toward the easier
modern spirit in church and in state, from the high, unbending austerity
of that antique pontiff and minister, Bossuet.

XIII.

FENELON.

1651-1715.

If Bossuet is to Frenchmen a synonym for sublimity, no less to them is
Fenelon a synonym for saintliness. From the French point of view, one
might say, "the sublime Bossuet," "the saintly Fenelon," somewhat as one
says, "the learned Selden," "the judicious Hooker." It is as much a
French delight to idealize Fenelon an archangel Raphael, affable and
mild, as it is to glorify Bossuet a Michael in majesty and power.

But saintliness of character was in Fenelon commended to the world by
equal charm of person and of genius. The words of Milton describing Eve
might be applied, with no change but that of gender, to Fenelon, both
the exterior and the interior man:--

Grace was in all his steps, heaven in his eye,
In every gesture dignity and love.

The consent is general among those who saw Fenelon, and have left behind
them their testimony, that alike in person, in character, and in genius,
he was such as we thus describe him.

Twice, in his youth, he was smitten to the heart with a feeling of
vocation to be a missionary. Both times he was thwarted by the
intervention of friends. The second time, he wrote disclosing his
half-romantic aspiration in a glowing letter of confidence and
friendship to Bossuet, his senior by many years, but not yet become
famous. Young Fenelon's friend Bossuet was destined later to prove a
bitter antagonist, almost a personal foe.

Until he was forty-two years old, Francois Fenelon lived in comparative
retirement, nourishing his genius with study, with contemplation, with
choice society. He experimented in writing verse. Not succeeding to his
mind, he turned to prose composition, and leading the way, in a new
species of literature, for Rousseau, for Chateaubriand, for Lamartine,
and for many others, to follow, went on writing what, in ceasing to be
verse, did not cease to be poetry.

The great world will presently involve Fenelon in the currents of
history. Louis XIV., grown old, and become as selfishly greedy now of
personal salvation as all his life he has been selfishly greedy of
personal glory, seeks that object of his soul by serving the church in
the wholesale conversion of Protestants. He