y abatement needful from the praise to be bestowed
upon his behavior in this pastoral relation is, that he suffered himself
sometimes to think of his position as one of "disgrace." His reputation
meantime for holy character and conduct was European. His palace at
Cambray, hospitably open ever to the resort of suffering need, indeed
almost his whole diocese, lying on the frontier of France, was, by
mutual consent of contending armies, treated in war as a kind of mutual
inviolable ground, invested with privilege of sanctuary. It was an
instructive example of the serene and beautiful ascendency sometimes
divinely accorded to illustrious personal goodness.

There had been a moment, even subsequently to the affair of the
"Telemachus" publication, when it looked as if, after long delay, a
complete worldly triumph for Fenelon was assured, and was near. The
father of the Duke of Burgundy died, and nothing then seemed to stand
between Fenelon's late pupil and the throne,--nothing but the precarious
life of an aged monarch, visibly approaching the end. The Duke of
Burgundy, through all changes, had remained unchangingly fast in his
affectionate loyalty to Fenelon. Sternly forbidden, by the jealous and
watchful king, his grandfather, to communicate with his old teacher, he
yet had found means to send to Fenelon, from time to time, reassuring
signals of his trust and his love. Fenelon was now, in all eyes, the
predestined prime minister of a new reign about to commence. Through
devoted friends of his own, near to the person of the prince at court,
Fenelon sent minutes of advice to his pupil, which outlined a whole
beneficent policy of liberal monarchical rule. A new day seemed dawning
for France. The horrible reaction of the Regency and of Louis XV. might,
perhaps, have been averted, and, with that spared to France, the
Revolution itself might have been accomplished without the Revolution.
But it was not to be. The Duke of Burgundy first buried his wife, and
then, within a few days, followed her himself to the grave. He died
sincerely rejoicing that God had taken him away from the dread
responsibility of reigning.

"All my ties are broken," mourned Fenelon; "there is no longer any thing
to bind me to the earth." In truth, the teacher survived his pupil but
two or three years. When he died, his sovereign, gloomy with
well-grounded apprehension for the future of his realm, said, with tardy
revival of recognition for the virtue that