o be a king when he ceases to have subjects, and who is
great only in virtue of his people, is himself insensibly losing
his character and his power, as the number of his people, from
whom alone both are derived, insensibly diminishes. His dominions
are at length exhausted of money and of men: the loss of men is the
greatest and the most irreparable he can sustain. Absolute power
degrades every subject to a slave. The tyrant is flattered, even to
an appearance of adoration, and every one trembles at the glance of
his eye; but, at the least revolt, this enormous power perishes by
its own excess. It derived no strength from the love of the people;
it wearied and provoked all that it could reach, and rendered every
individual of the state impatient of its continuance. At the first
stroke of opposition, the idol is overturned, broken to pieces, and
trodden under foot. Contempt, hatred, fear, resentment, distrust,
and every other passion of the soul, unite against so hateful a
despotism. The king who, in his vain prosperity, found no man bold
enough to tell him the truth, in his adversity finds no man kind
enough to excuse his faults, or to defend him against his enemies.

So much is perhaps enough to indicate the political drift of the
"Telemachus." That drift is, indeed, observable everywhere throughout
the book.

We conclude our exhibition of this fine classic, by letting Fenelon
appear more purely now in his character as dreamer and poet. Young
Prince Telemachus has, Ulysses-like, and AEneas-like, his descent into
Hades. This incident affords Fenelon opportunity to exercise his best
powers of awful and of lovely imagining and describing. Christian ideas
are, in this episode of the "Telemachus," superinduced upon pagan, after
a manner hard, perhaps, to reconcile with the verisimilitude required by
art, but at least productive of very noble and very beautiful results.
First, one glimpse of Tartarus as conceived by Fenelon. It is the
spectacle of kings who on earth abused their power, that Telemachus is
beholding:--

Telemachus observed the countenance of these criminals to be pale
and ghastly, strongly expressive of the torment they suffered at
the heart. They looked inward with a self-abhorrence, now
inseparable from their existence. Their crimes themselves had
become their punishment, and it was not necessary t