language. These two powers
were the mistresses of man, as they were hereafter of mankind. The
intellectual world was born of a material invention, and it had grown
rapidly. The reformed religion was one of its early offspring.

The empire of catholic Christianity had undergone extensive
dismemberments. Switzerland, a part of Germany, Holland, England, whole
provinces of France, had been drawn away from the centre of religious
authority, and passed over to the doctrine of free examination. Divine
authority attacked and contested in catholicism, the authority of the
throne remained at the mercy of the people. Philosophy, more potent than
sedition, approached it more and more near, with less respect, less
fear. History had actually written of the weaknesses and crimes of
kings. Public writers had dared to comment upon it, and the people to
draw conclusions. Social institutions had been weighed by their real
value for humanity. Minds the most devoted to power had spoken to
sovereigns of duties, and to people of rights. The holy boldness of
Christianity had been heard even in the consecrated pulpit, in the
presence of Louis XIV. Bossuet, that sacerdotal genius of the ancient
synagogue, had mingled his proud adulations to Louis XIV. with some of
those austere warnings which console persons for their abasement.
Fenelon, that evangelical and tender genius, of the new law, had written
his instructions to princes, and his Telemachus, in the palace of the
king, and in the cabinet of an heir to the throne. The political
philosophy of Christianity, that insurrection of justice in favour of
the weak, had glided from the lips of Louis XIV. into the ear of his
grandson. Fenelon educated another revolution in the Duke of Burgundy.
This the king perceived when too late, and expelled the divine seduction
from his palace. But the revolutionary policy was born there; there the
people read the pages of the holy archbishop: Versailles was destined to
be, thanks to Louis XIV. and Fenelon, at once the palace of despotism
and the cradle of the Revolution. Montesquieu had sounded the
institutions, and analysed the laws of all people. By classing
governments, he had compared them, by comparing he passed judgment on
them; and this judgment brought out, in its bold relief, and contrast,
on every page, right and force, privilege and equality, tyranny and
liberty.

Jean Jacques Rousseau, less ingenious, but more eloquent, had studied
politics, not i