"All my ties are broken," mourned Fenelon; "there is no longer any thing to bind me to the earth." In truth, the teacher survived his pupil but two or three years. When he died, his sovereign, gloomy with well-grounded apprehension for the future of his realm, said, with tardy revival of recognition for the virtue that had perished in Fenelon: "Here was a man who could have served us well under the disasters by which my kingdom is about to be assailed." Fenelon's literary productions are various; but they all have the common character of being works written for the sake of life, rather than for the sake of literature. They were inspired each by a practical purpose, and adapted each to a particular occasion. His treatise on the "Education of Girls" was written for the use of a mother who desired instruction on the topic from Fenelon. His argument on the "Being of a God" was prepared as a duty of his preceptorship to the prince. But the one book of Fenelon, which was an historical event when it appeared, and which stands an indestructible classic in literature, is the "Telemachus." It remains for us briefly to give some idea of this book. The first thing to be said is, that those are mistaken who suppose themselves to have obtained a true idea of "Telemachus" from having partly read it at school, as an exercise in French. The essence of the work lies beyond those few opening pages to which the exploration of school-boys and school-girls is generally limited. This masterpiece of Fenelon is much more than a charming piece of romantic and sentimental poetry in prose. It is a kind of epic, indeed, like the "Odyssey," only written in rhythmical prose instead of rhythmical verse; but, unlike the "Odyssey," it is an idyllic epic written with an ulterior purpose of moral and political didactics. It was designed as a manual of instruction--instruction made delightful to a prince--to inculcate the duties incumbent on a sovereign.