LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FENELON, after the portrait by Philippe de Champagne in Hert

ford House

ME. de MAINTENON, from an engraving

THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY, from an engraving by Edelinck

MME. GUYON, from an engraving .

BOSSUET, from an engraving after the portrait by Rigaud in the

Louvre

VIEW OF CAMBRAI, from an engraving

CHAPTER I

FENELON'S YOUTH

Ce qui surnageoit dans toute sa personne, c'était surtout la noblesse. -ST SIMON.

THI

HE age of Fénelon coincides exactly with the second, disastrous, half of Louis the Fourteenth's reign. During the earlier part of that vast episode France had reached the zenith of her glories; her history was become the history of Europe, her king, as his subjects justly boasted, arbiter of all this portion of our hemisphere. Each decade brought a fresh successful war and more successful peace, with fresh enlargement of her frontiers; from the last triumph of Mazarin at the Pyrenees (A.D. 1659) the tide flowed on to Aix-la-Chapelle (A.D. 1668), and thence till the great Peace of Nymwegen (A.D. 1678) realized the ambition of two hundred years, and confirmed the conquest of Franche Comté. At home, with nobles and lawyers. ruined by the Fronde, towns exhausted by the Religious Wars, and provinces destitute of even a language in common, Louis could bend the whole nation to his will, his monarchy, as Mme. de Sévigné will tell us, exalted above all imagination could conceive. It seemed as though a Golden Age were dawning; Justice was assured, the army reformed, finance and commerce organized by Colbert, and a strong navy set on foot, while Molière, La Fontaine, Racine and a host of lesser writers were ready with their pen to prove—

Qu'on peut comparer sans être injuste

Le siècle de Louis avec celui d'Auguste.

"All is new!" cries Mme. de Sévigné again, “All is

1 See the letter of 22nd August, 1675, and those of September, 1676.