pronounce her fate with firmness: and recollecting the manner, in which Bossuet had attended her mother, the Queen Dowager of Eng land, she desired that not an instant should be lost in sending for him. -Three couriers were successively dispatched to him; and he arrived between eleven and twelve at night, at St. Cloud.

the whole

"In the interval, she suffered the most dreadful pains, and, her immediate dissolution being appre. hended, she made a general confession of her sins to the Abbé Feuillet, a person generally esteemed, but of a harsh character. When her confession was finished, her at tendants were called in scene was afflicting and horrible. "The account which her confessor gives of his own conduct, makes us, perhaps unreasonably, blame his merciless austerity. Her lamentable shrieks he treated as acts of rebellion against the divine will, and told her, that her sins were not punished as they deserved. In the midst of her, convulsions, she received his reproofs with mildness, but often inquired of Madame de la Fayette, who was at her bedside, if Bossuet were not yet come. Before he came, she received extreme unction from the Abbé Feuillet. Having exclaimed in an agony of pain, Will these torments never end!'- Don't forget yourself in this manner,' said the merciless Abbé, you ought to be better disposed for suffering; but I must tell you, that your torments will soon end:'

"At length, Bossuet arrived :As soon as the princess saw him, she made him promise not to quit her, before she breathed her last. -He knelt down, dissolved in tears, leaning on her bed, and holding a crucifix in his hand. With a tre

mulous voice, often interrupted by his own feelings, he invited her to join him, as far as her sufferings allowed, in the reflections, prayers, and acts of contrition, faith, hope, and charity, which he should address to God for her, and in her name. He was exceedingly moved, and every person present sympathized in the scene. Nothing could exceed the tender and affecting sentiments of devotion and piety which Bossuet suggested to her; he finally subdued by them, in a great measure, her sense of the cruel suf, ferings which she endured. The princess heard him with mild and composed constancy; if he stopt for a moment, she gently entreated him to continue, assuring him, that his words were of inestimable value to her. He then read over to her the recommendation of the soul in the liturgy; explained it to her; made her gently repeat with him its soothing prayers; softly instilled in to her the sentiments which they are intended to convey; filled her soul with faith, with compunction, with calm, with resignation, and above all, with divine love for him into whose hands she was so soon to yield her soul.—She herself, at last, felt a consciousness of her serene triumph over pain,-'O my God! she exclaimed, why did I not al ways adhere to thee!"-She recollected that the crucifix, which Bos. suet had in his hands, was the same which he had given to her mother, the queen dowager of England, to hold in her agony. She took it from him, and kept it in her hands till she breathed her last.

"An hour before she died, she turned to Madame de la Fayette, and, in the English language, which Bossuet did not understand, desired her to observe, that, full of grati tude for the spiritual assistance,

which she had received from Bossuet, she requested that, after her decease, a particular emerald ring, set in diamonds of great price, might be presented to him.'-Her torments continued to the last, but her patience remained; she persisted to listen to the exhortations, to repeat the prayers, and make the humble and fervent offering of herself to the divine will, which Bossuet suggested to her. Those who heard them never forgot them; the Abbé Feuillet declared he never heard any thing so completely fine.

"At three, in the morning, the princess died. The particulars of her death were immediately related by Madame de la Fayette, to Lewis the Fourteenth. He sent for Bossuet, heard them again from him, and then, with his own hand, put the emerald ring, mentioned by the princess, on the prelate's finger, and desired him to wear it for the rest of his life, in remembrance of her. He added, that he himself could not better show his regard for the memory of his sister-in-law, than by desiring Bossuet to pronounce her funeral oration.

"Every thing we know of Bossuet, leads us to think that he had very feeling heart'; it certainly is discernible in every line of his funeral oration on the princess. He chose for his text the verse of Ecclesiastes (1.2.) so suitable to the occasion, Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!' -Having pronounced these words, he remained for some time in silence, evidently overpowered by his feeling. It was to be my lot 'he then exclaimed, to perform this melancholy duty to the memory of this illustrious princess! >he, whom I had observed so attentive while I performed the same duty to her royal mother, was herself so soon to be come the theme of a similar dis

course! And my voice was so soon to be exerted in discharging the like melancholy duty to her. O vanity! O nothing O mortals! ever ignorant of what awaits you!

But a month ago, would she have thought it! You, who then beheld her drowned in tears for her mother's loss, would you have thought it! would you have thought that you were so soon to meet again to bewail her own fate! Oh! vanity of vanities! all is vani ty! These are the only words! the only reflection which, in such an event, my sorrow leaves me!'

us.

"After this eloquent exordium. Bossuet pursues his dismal theme. He describes, in strains, always eloquent, but always mournful, the short, but brilliant career of the princess; so highly placed, so greatly gifted, so widely admired, and so generally loved! The idol of the world! The pride of her august family! The delight of all who approached her!- Yet, what,' he exclaimed, is all this, which we, so much below it, so greatly admire! While we tremble in the view of the great, God smites them, that they may serve as warnings to Yes! so little does he consider these great ones, that he makes them often serve as mere materials for our instruction!-We have always sufficient reason to be convinced of our nothingness; but if, to win our hearts from the fascination of the world, the wonderful and astonishing is necessary, what we now behold is sufficiently terrible.-O night of woe! O night of horror! When, like a peal of thunder, the dreadful cry bursts on us, on all sides;-The Princess is dying!-The Princess is dead! Nothing could be heard but cries, nothing was discernible but grief, de spair, and the image of death!"The writers of the time mention,

that,

these words, the whole audience arose from their seats; that terror was visible in every countenance, and that, for some moments, Bossuet himself was unable to proceed. "Some of the other funeral ora

tions of Bossuet contain passages equally fine. What an English reader will principally admire in them, are the portraits which they contain of several distinguished personages of that time. In his funeral oration on Henrietta-Maria, the widow of our Charles the First, and the mother of the princess, who was the subject of the discourse which we have just mentioned, Bossuet gives the following description of Cromwell: In those days, a man arose of unfathomable depth of thought; as subtle a hypocrite, as he was a consummate politician. In peace and war, equally enterprizing and impenetrable, he left nothing to Fortune, which he could keep from her power, by wisdom and foresight; at the same time that he was so well prepared as never to let slip any opportunity, of which he could avail himself to his advantage. In a word,-one of those active and audacious spirits, who seem born for the disturbance of the world. What do not such men achieve, when it pleases the Almighty to make them the instruments of his wrath.!"

"In his funeral oration on the chancellor Le Tellier, Bossuet gives the following admirable portrait of the celebrated Cardinal de Retz:

A man so faithful to individuals, so terrible to the state of so lofty a character, that it was impossible to esteem, to fear, to love, or to bate him, in moderation. Firm in himself, he shook the universe, and obtained a dignity, which he afterwards wished to resign, as unworthy

ject beneath bis mighty mind. In the end, he was sensible of his errors, and of the vanity of human greatness. But, while he was in search for what he was thus afterwards to despise, he shook every thing by his secret and powerful means :-even in the universal overthrow of all around him, he still seemed to suffice for his own support; and his disappointed and intrepid aspect still breathed defiance on his successful adversary."

"In this funeral oration on the prince of Condé, Bssuet thus contrasts the prince and the Marechal de Turenne: "It was a sublime spectacle to behold, at the same time, and, on the same fields of war, two men, whom the universal voice of Europe equaled to the greatest generals of past ages, sometimes united, sometimes commanding different bodies, and, sometimes opposed to each other; possessed of virtues, at once so equal, and of so different a character. One seemed to act from deep reflection, the other from a sudden illumination of mind; the latter was most fiery, but had nothing of rashness; the former seemed cold, but was never slow; and, while he appeared at a loss, was quietly determined on the boldest and most successful enterprizes. As soon as he began to act, something extraordinary was expected from him, and be advanced, in a kind of regular succession, from prodigy to prodigy, till the very hour which terminated his conquests and his life. The first battle of the other placed him on a level with the greatest generals. One, by vigorous and incessant efforts, fixed the admiration of the world, and silenced envy; the other, on his first appearance, threw out a lustre which filled the universe with his ascending

ascending glory, and envy dared not attack him. In fine,-one, by the depth of his genius and the infinite resources of his mighty en rgies, was raised above danger, and even turned to his advantage the fickleness of fortune; the other, by his illustrious birth, the lofty conceptions of his mind, and a kind of divine instinct, the secret of which was kept from man, seemed born to bend fortune to his will, and enchain the fates."

"The whole discourse abounds with the sublime, the beautiful, and the pathetic it is generally considered to be the master-piece of Bossuet, in this branch of eloquence: but, by his own ingenuous confession, it was surpassed by the discourse which Bourdaloue pronounced on the same occasion.

"Through life, the prince of Condé showed great external reverence for religion; but his youth was dissolute; during many years he was untrue to his king and country, and, for some time, commanded against them the armies of Spain, whom France then considered her natural and inveterate enemy. But the twenty last years of his life were religious and exemplary, and his death was edifying. On the criminal part of his life, Bossuet employed only three lines, Bourdaloue nobly plunged into it. The prince's long profligacy, his neglect of religion, and his rebellion against his king, Bourdaloue held up to his audience, in their true colours, and dilated on them, through all the second part of his discourse. At the same time he showed, that in the midst of his errors and his crimes, the prince preserved much of what was really great and good and thus, while he descanted, in the very strongest

:

terms, on the follies, the vanities, and the crimes of his hero, he made the audience lose sight of them, in the blaze of glory, with which, in the midst of all his crimination of the prince, he took care to radiate him. When, after he had amply descanted on this part of the subject, Bourdaloue described the price, on the approach of age, sitting down to the study of religion,making bis peace with his God and his king, and atoning by the retirement and regularity of the twenty last years of his life, for the errors and wanderings of his youth, and showed how honourable it was to the prince to be so converted to religious duty, and how honourable it was to religion, to have such a convert, he filled the audience with veneration for the illustrious subject of his discourse, and impressed on them the most salutary truths. Bossuet was so struck with the noble candour and simplicity with which Bourda loue opened this part of his discourse, that he turned to the prelates near him, and cried out loudly enough to be generally heard, 'Voila, notre maître a touts"-" Behold the master of us all!'

Yet, it may be questioned, whether this celebrated oration of Bourdaloue contains quite so fine a passage as that with which Bossuet concludes the oration pronounced by him on the same occasion. A few minutes before the rince of Condé expired, his confessor exhorted him to repeat with him the prayer of David, O God! create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within my bowels.'The prince seemed lost in thought; his whole attention appeared to be fixed by some great object. Then, raising himself on his bed, apd turning to the persons present, he