times and country all intervention in the affairs of the
commonwealth, summoned them to the conquest of all the other
realms of thought in which they might acquire renown, either
for him, for France, or themselves. The theatres, the
academies, the pulpits, and the monasteries of his kingdom
rivalled each other in their zealous obedience to that royal
command, and obeyed it with a success from which no competent
and equitable judge can withhold his highest admiration. At
this day, when all the illusions of the name of Louis are
exhausted, and in this country, where his Augustan age has
seldom been regarded with much enthusiasm, who can seriously
address himself to the perusal of his great tragedians,
Corneille and Racine--or of his great comedians, Moliere and
Regnard--or if his great poets, Boileau and La Fontaine--or of
his great wits, La Rochfaucauld and La Bruyere--or of his great
philosophers, Des Cartes and Pascal--or of his great divines,
Bossuet and Arnauld--or of his great scholars, Mabillon and
Montfaucon--or if his great preachers, Bourdaloue and
Masillon--and not confess that no other monarch was ever
surrounded by an assemblage of men of genius so admirable for
the extent, the variety and the perfection of their powers.

"And yet the fact that such an assemblage were clustered into a
group, of which so great a king was the centre, implies that
there must have been some characteristic quality uniting them
all to each other and to him, and distinguishing them all from
the nobles of every other literary commonwealth which has
existed among men. What, then, was that quality, and what its
influence upon them?

"Louis lived with his courtiers, not as a despot among his
slaves, but as the most accomplished of gentlemen among his
associates. The social equality was, however, always guarded
from abuse by the most punctilious observance, on their side,
of the reverence due to his pre-eminent rank. In that enchanted
circle men appeared at least to obey, not from a hard
necessity, but from a willing heart. The bondage in which they
really lived was ennobled by that conventional code of honor
which dictated and enforced it. They prostrated themselves
before their fellow-man with no sense of self-abasement, and
the chivalrous