The authority which Bossuet acquired was such, that he may be said not only to have guided the Gallican Church during his life, but in some measure to have left upon it the permanent impression of his own character. Of this authority no adequate notion can be formed from the preceding sketch. Few even of his works, which fill twenty volumes quarto, have been noticed. It should, however, be mentioned that he was employed by Louis XIV. in an attempt to overcome the religious scruples of James II., whose conscience revolted from that exercise of the prerogative in favour of the Protestant Church, which his restoration to the throne would have required. The laboured and somewhat extraordinary letter which Bossuet wrote on this occasion is dated May 22, 1693. His countrymen claim for Bossuet an exalted place among historians, orators, and theologians. The honours bestowed by them on his ‘Introduction to Universal History’ have been continued by more impartial judges; and, even when unsupported by reference to the age in which it was written, it stands forth on its own merits as a noble effort of a comprehensive and penetrating mind. His Funeral Orations come to us recommended by the judgment of Voltaire, who ascribes to Bossuet alone, of all his contemporaries, the praise of real eloquence. The English reader will often be rewarded by passages, which in oratorical power have seldom been surpassed, and which may induce him to forgive much that is cold, inflated, and unnatural. But the Orations must be considered also as Christian discourses delivered by a minister of the Gospel from a Christian pulpit. They were composed, for the most part, to grace the obsequies of royal persons, and are, in fact, dedicated to the honour and glory of kings and princes. A text from Scripture is the peg on which is hung every thing which can minister to human pride, and dignify the vanities of a court; and the effect is but slightly impaired by well-turned phrases, proper to the occasion, on the nothingness of earthly things. But the orator is not content with general declamation, with prostrating himself before his magnificent visions of ancient pedigrees;—he descends to the meanest personal flattery of the living and the dead. When the Duchess of Orleans was laid in her coffin, her friends might hope that her frailties would be buried with her; but they could hardly expect that a Christian monitor should hold her forth as an exquisite specimen of female excellence, the glory of France, whom Heaven itself had rescued from her enemies to present as a precious and inestimable gift to the French nation. But on this occasion Bossuet was not yet perfect in his art, or the subject was not sufficiently disgraceful to draw forth all his powers. When afterwards called to speak over the dead body of the Queen, whose heart had withered under the wrongs which a licentious husband, amidst external respect, had heaped upon her, he finds it a fitting opportunity