Bossuet, in his funeral oration upon Queen Henrietta, unhappily for his own cause, has challenged a comparison between the histories of France and England, which, if he were living in our days, he would hardly renew with pleasure. The Anglican Reformation was rashly charged by him with all the responsibility of the Great Rebellion; but facts have proved that revolutions are by no means confined to anti-papal countries, while history may be safely appealed to by Englishmen, in deciding as to the kind of religion which has best encountered the excesses of rebellion, and most effectually cured the disease. The Anglican Church survived the Great Rebellion, with fidelity to itself: the Gallic Church perished in the Revolution. Before the vainglorious taunt of Bossuet had passed from the memory of living men, all those causes were at work in France, which bred the whirlwind of infidelity, and which insured a revolution, not of fanaticism, but of atheism. The real power of the two churches, in moulding the character of a people, and retaining the loyalty of its noblest intellect, became, then, singularly apparent. In France, it was superstition to believe in GOD. In France, philosophers were afraid to own a great First Cause. In France, noblemen were ashamed to confess a conscience. In France, bishops and cardinals were foremost in apostasy, and claimed their sacerdotal rank only to become the high-priests of atheistic orgies. It is needless to cite, in comparison, the conduct of parallel classes during the Great Rebellion in England; while, at the very moment in which these things were transacting, the brightest genius in her Imperial Parliament could proclaim himself not only a believer, but a crusader for Christianity. It was a noble answer to the ghost of poor Bossuet, when such a man as Burke, addressing a gentleman of France, declared the adhesion of England to her Reformed religion to be not the result of indifference but of zeal; when he proudly contrasted the intelligent faith of his countrymen with the fanatical impiety of the French; and when, with a dignity to which sarcasm has seldom attained, he reminded a nation of atheists, that there was a people, every whit its peer, which still exulted in the Christian name, and among whom religion, so far from being relegated to provinces, and the firesides of peasants, still sat in the first rank of the legislature, and "reared its mitred front" in the very face of the throne. The withering rebuke of such a boast must be measured by the standard of the time when it was given. In Paris, the mitre had just been made the ornament of an ass, which bore in mockery, upon its back, the vessels of the holy sacrament, and dragged a Bible at its tail.