p more powerful than now. Whilst ambitious ecclesiastics may
honor more the name of Bossuet, the heart of France has embalmed in its
affections the name of his victim, and our common humanity has
incorporated him into its body. When Fenelon's remains were discovered in
1804, the French people shouted with joy that Jacobinism had not scattered
his ashes, and a monument to his memory was forthwith decreed by Napoleon.
In 1826, his statue was erected in Cambray, and three years after, a
memorial more eloquent than any statue, a selection from his works,
exhibiting the leading features of his mind, bore witness of his power
and goodness to this western world. The graceful monument which the wife
of Follen thus reared to his memory was crowned by the hand of Channing
with a garland that as yet has shown no trace of decay.

To any conversant with that little work, or with the larger productions of
Fenelon's mind, need I say a single word of tribute to his character or
gifts? Yet something must be said to show the compass of his character,
for common eulogium is too indiscriminate in praise, exaggerating certain
amiable graces at the expense of more commanding virtues.

He was remarkable for the harmony of his various qualities. In his
intellect, reason, understanding, fancy, imagination, were balanced in an
almost unexampled degree. The equilibrium of his character showed itself
alike in the exquisite propriety of his writings and the careful and
generous economy of his substance. He died without property and without
debt. Some critics have denied him the praise of philosophical depth. They
should rather say, that his love of prying analytically into the secret
principles of things was counterbalanced by the desire to exhibit
principles in practical combination, and by his preference of truth and
virtue in its living portraiture to moral anatomizing or metaphysical
dissection. He could grapple wisely with the fatalism of Malebranche and
the pantheism of Spinosa, as his controversial works show; he could hold
an even argument with the terrible Bossuet on the essence of Christianity.
He preferred, however, to exhibit under forms far more winning than
controversy, his views of human agency, divine power, and Christian love.
The beautiful structure of his narratives, dialogues, and letters, is not
the graceful cloak that hides a poverty of philosophical ideas. It is like
the covering which the Creator has thrown around the human f