oroughly estimated, in his own
thoughts, the full importance of this situation of affairs, and the
dangers to which he exposed religion and the Restoration. His was not a
mind either accustomed or disposed to ponder long over general facts and
moral questions, or to sound them deeply. But he thoroughly
comprehended, and felt acutely, the embarrassment which might accrue
from these causes to his own power; and he tried to diminish them by
yielding to clerical influence in the government, imposing though
limited sacrifices, flattering himself that by these means he should
acquire allies in the Church itself, who would aid him to restrain the
overweening and imprudent pretensions of their own friends. Already, and
shortly after his accession to the ministry, he had appointed an
ecclesiastic in good estimation, and whom the Pope had named Bishop of
Hermopolis, the Abbe Frayssinous, to the head-mastership of the
University. Two months after the fall of M. de Chateaubriand, the Abbe
Frayssinous entered the Cabinet as Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs
and Public Instruction--a new department created expressly for him. He
was a man of sense and moderation, who had acquired, by Christian
preaching without violence, and conduct in which prudence was blended
with dignity, a reputation and importance somewhat superior to his
actual merits, and which he had no desire to compromise. In 1816 he had
been a member of the Royal Commission of Public Education, over which
M. Royer-Collard at that time presided; but soon retired from it, not
wishing either to share the responsibility of his superior or to act in
opposition to him. He generally approved of the policy of M. de Villele;
but although binding himself to support it, and while lamenting the
blind demands of a portion of the clergy, he endeavoured, when
opportunity offered, to excuse and conceal rather than reject them
altogether. Without betraying M. de Villele, he afforded him little aid,
and committed him repeatedly by his language in public, which invariably
tended more to maintain his own position in the Church than to serve the
Cabinet.

Three months only had elapsed since M. de Villele, separated from his
most brilliant colleagues and an important portion of his old friends,
had sustained the entire weight of government, when the King Louis
XVIII. died. The event had long been foreseen, and M. de Villele had
skilfully prepared for it: he was as well established in the estee