as their spiritual concerns; and sometimes he would visit them in their humble sheds, and partake of such refreshment as they offered him.

In the beginning of the 18th century we find him engaged at once in controversy and politics. The revival of the old dispute with the Jansenists, to whom he was strongly opposed, obliged him to take up his pen; but in using it he never forgot his own maxim, that "rigour and severity are not of the spirit of the Gospel." For a knowledge of his political labours we are indebted to his biographer, the Cardinal de Bausset, who first published his letters to the Duke de Beauvilliers on the subject of the war which followed the grand alliance in the year 1701. In them he not only considers the general questions of the succession to the Spanish monarchy, the objects of the confederated powers, and the measures best calculated to avert or soften their hostility, but even enters into details of military operations, discusses the merits of the various generals, stations the different armies, and sketches a plan of the campaign. Towards the close of the war he communicated to the Duke de Chevreuse heads of a very extensive reform in all the departments of government. This reform did not suppose any fundamental change of the old despotism. It was intended, doubtless, for the consideration of the Duke of Burgundy, to whose succession all France was looking forward with sanguine hopes, founded on the acknowledged excellence of his character, which Fenelon himself had so happily contributed to form. But amongst the other trials which visited his latter days, he was destined to mourn the death of his pupil.

Fenelon did not long survive the general pacification. After a short illness and intense bodily suffering, which he seems to have supported by calling to mind the sufferings of his Saviour, he died February

7th, 1715, the sixty-fourth year of his age. No Aracy was found in his coffers. The produce of the sal of his furniture, together with the arrears of rent due to larm, were appropriated, by his direction, to bows and charitable purposes.

The calumnies with which he was assailed during the tail of Quietism were remembered only to the disadvantage of their authors. The public seem eventually to have regarded him as a man who was persecuted because he refused to be a persecutor; who had maintained, at all hazards, what he believed to be the cause of truth and justice; and had resigned his Opinion only at that moment when conscience required the sacrifice.

Universa homage was paid by his contemporaries to his talents and genius. In the grasp and power of his intellect, and in the extent and completeness of his knowledge, none probably would have ventured to compare him with Bossuet; but in fertility and Brillaney of imagination, in a ready and dexterous use of materials, and in that quality which his frymeronconfrymmer call esprit, he was supposed to have no AZPONT Bossuet himself said of him "Il brille granti, est tout esprit, il en a bien plus que moi."

is dous that his great work, the Adventures of of his art piemals, was, in the first instance, indebted for Trymore no-portion of its popularity to circumstances which connexion with its merits; but we cannot

the same cause the continued hold which maintained on the public favour. Those who E: ignorant of the interest which attended its first appearance still feel the charm of that beautiful langwhich is made the vehicle of the purest morality

e most ennobling sentiments. In the many Cams hrough which it passed, between its first 0 aslication and the death of the author, Fenelon took m. Publicly he neither avowed nor dis

avowed the work, though he prepared corrections and additions for future editors. All obstacles to its open circulation were removed by the death of Louis; and in the year 1717, the Marquis de Fenelon, his greatnephew, presented to Louis XV. a new and correct edition, superintended by himself, from which the text of all subsequent editions has been taken.

The best authority for the life of Fenelon accessible to the public is the laborious work of his biographer, the Cardinal de Bausset, which is rendered particularly valuable by the great number of original documents which appear at the end of each volume. Its value would be increased if much of the theological discussion were omitted, and the four volumes compressed into three.

At the age of twenty he applied to the University of Leipzic for the degree of doctor of laws. This was refused, on the plea that he was too young; and he then went to Altdorf, where he maintained a public disputation, and was admitted to the degree which he desired, with unusual distinction. From Altdorf he repaired to Nuremberg, where he heard of a secret society of chemists, or, which was then the same thing, of searchers after the philosopher's stone. Desiring to obtain some insight into their pursuits, he procured some books on chemistry, a subject which he had never studied, and picking out the phrases which seemed hardest, he wrote a letter altogether unintelligible to himself, which he addressed to them as his certificate of qualification. He was admitted with great honour, and was even offered the post of secretary, with a salary; and though he continued his intercourse with them for some time, he kept up his character as an adept to the last.

His first work, which appeared when he was twenty-two years old, was a treatise written under the name of George Vlicorius, recommending the choice of the Elector Palatine to be King of Poland. In 1670 he published his first philosophical work, an edition of Marius Nizolius contra Pseudophilosophos; and in the following year two treatises on abstract and concrete motion, severally dedicated to the French Academy and the Royal Society.

During his abode at Nuremberg, the Baron de Boinebourg, minister of the Elector of Mayence, procured a legal appointment for him in that state. While he held this post he travelled into France and England. After the death of the Elector, he accepted a similar appointment in the dominions of the Duke of Brunswick-Lunenberg. At the peace of Nimeguen in 1678 he wrote upon some disputed ceremonials, under the title of Cesarinus Furstnerius, and dis