We must briefly introduce one more personage to our readers before we can safely resume the current of the narrative. Jacques Bénigne Bossuet, who was for a while Fénelon’s friend and then became the bitterest of his foes, was born at Dijon, 1627. In his boyhood he was a brilliant scholar. At Paris he soon surpassed his teachers in acquirements. He took the Doctor’s bonnet in 1652, and in the same year was received into priest’s orders. He was first canon to the cathedral of Metz; in 1669, Bishop of Condom; in 1681, bishop of Meaux. In 1670 he was appointed preceptor to the dauphin, and gave most of his time for ten years to this office, resigning his bishopric for the purpose. In the pulpit his oratorical powers elicited universal applause. His celebrated Funeral Discourses, six in number, were, and still are, accounted masterpieces of rhetorical skill. Two words, strength and majesty, describe the dominant characteristics of his oratory. He had a mind well stored with noble sentiments. His sermons were almost entirely extempore, springing from a mind filled with his subject, guided by a few notes on paper. Attracted by the strength and sublimity of the Bible he moved largely within its circle of thought, rather than with saints, relics, and images, which were for the most part below the plane of his vision. Besides being one of the first preachers of the age, he was a celebrated polemic and a powerful writer, having also a Roman aptitude to rule. One of the strongest personalities which the French Church has produced, he exercised a commanding influence in various directions. The principles of Gallicanism as opposed to Ultramontanism found in him their stalwart champion. He was a famous apologist. His knowledge was completely at command, so that he did not shrink from oral disputation with the most learned adversaries. And he wielded a very strong pen. His “Exposition of the Catholic Faith” presents the doctrines of Rome in a liberal and plausible form. In his “History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches,” and also in other treatises, he made out what was considered at the time a very strong defense of the Roman Catholic faith, but he has since been convicted, not merely of inaccuracy, but of false and garbled quotations. He died in 1704.