The Duke of Burgundy, now seven years old, was, in the most emphatic sense, an _enfant terrible_. He was very different from his heavy, stupid father, inheriting some of his qualities, it is said, from his mother, Mary Anne of Bavaria, a delicate, melancholy, unattractive princess, passionate, proud, and caustic. Burgundy was a frail, unhealthy creature, whose body lacked symmetry as well as his mind. One shoulder very early outgrew the other, defying the most cruel efforts of the surgeons to set it right, and doing serious mischief to his general health. His nervous system was much deranged, so that he was subject to hurricanes of passion. The least contradiction made him furious. He would fall into ungovernable fits of rage even against inanimate objects. He had an insatiable appetite for all sorts of pleasure. His pride and arrogance were indescribable. Mankind he looked upon as atoms with whom he had nothing in common; his brothers were only intermediate beings between him and the human race. He had a quick, penetrating mind, and a marvelous memory. He was stiff against threats, on his guard against flattery, amenable only to reason; but by no means always to that. Often when it reasserted itself, after one of his tornadoes, he was so much ashamed of himself that he fell into a new fit of rage. He was, however, frank and truthful in the extreme. Such was the prince who—with his brothers, the Duke of Anjou, afterwards Philip V of Spain, and the Duke of Berri—was committed entirely to the care of Fénelon. When he accepted his new appointment he abandoned all other offices and occupations, permitting himself no distractions even of friendship, that he might concentrate all his powers of insight and reflection upon his charges. Now, indeed, his studies of education would be fully tested, and on the most conspicuous conceivable field his theories must be reduced to practice. It is said that “he pursued only one system, which was to have none.” In other words, he devoted his fertile mind to meeting the necessities of the hour as they arose in his volatile, chameleon-like pupil, instead of subjecting him to a Procrustean system which could only have had the worst outcome. His facile pen was employed without stint in the service of his pupil. Many fables, some in French, some in Latin, full of poetry and grace, were written to convey special lessons to the little duke. “Dialogues of the Dead” also were composed for the same purpose, bringing in the principal personages of antiquity to converse on such themes as would instruct in regard to history and morals. And all this was but a preparation for “Telemaque,” or Telemachus, composed for the instruction of the heir to the throne, and endowed with such unfailing charm by the beauty of its style and the admirable nature of its sentences, that it has been read ever since in many nations and by many classes. The same mythology is employed in it that was used by Homer and Virgil, but refined by the