care to know what was Sir Robert Peel's deliberate opinion on the course it behoved the House of Lords to pursue in a crisis infinitely more grave than any with which even Mr. Herbert Gladstone will now venture to threaten them. The letter is too long for insertion here; but its purport was to advise Lord Harrowby and his friends to reject the Bill, even at the cost of the threatened creation of Peers. For the firm maintenance, therefore, of their constitutional right to reject any measure which may be sent up to them in the coming Session, they have the concurrent judgment of Lord Lyndhurst and Sir Robert Peel. concern The predominant desire of the country is for a firm and consistent policy abroad, a policy which shall not itself with fantastic schemes for realizing the aspirations of interesting nationalities, but be content with the more important if more modest task of safe-guarding and welding, so far as may be, into one imperial whole, the outlying parts, east, west, and south, of the Queen's dominions, and for the abandonment at home of those ceaseless projects of organic change, with which the discordant organs of a disunited Cabinet are now vexing and confusing the public ear. It is simply intolerable, for instance, that when Ireland is bleeding at every pore from recent empirical legislation, and her only hope of recovery lies in the absence of agitation, and the restoration of peace, and quiet, a Law Officer of the Crown should be purchasing his way into Parliament by fanning the smouldering embers of political and agrarian disaffection, and conceding to the resuscitated Land-League all the means by which it is now endeavouring to further and accomplish its ultimate separatist ends. Yet such is the picture presented by the Irish Solicitor-General's candidature and election in the County of Londonderry, for which constituency he will take his seat on the Treasury Bench, an effective though unacknowledged and unenrolled member of Mr. Parnell's new Association. It is for the Minority in the House of Commons, and the Majority in the House of Lords, faithfully and courageously to represent that predominant feeling, and force, if needs be, as Lord Hartington has confessed they have the power to force, a discredited and failing Government to appeal for a fresh lease of power to the people whose hopes they have betrayed, whose confidence they have forfeited, and whose patience they have exhausted. The best wish we can form for the coming Session is that it may be the last of the Parliament of 1880. CONTENTS OF No. 314. ART. I.-I. Euvres complètes de Bossuet, publiées d'après les 2. Histoire de Bossuet et de ses œuvres. Par M. Réaume, 4. Lettres sur Bossuet à un Homme d'Etat. Par J. J. 5. Etudes sur la Vie de Bossuet. Par P. A. Floquet. 6. La Politique de Bossuet. Par J. F. Nourrisson. Paris, 7. Bossuet, Orateur. Par E. Gandar. Paris, 1867. 9. Etudes sur la condamnation des Maximes des Saints. 10. Madame Guyon, sa vie, sa II.-1. The Golden Chersonese. doctrine, et son influence. ......... By Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. 2, The Journal of a Lady's Travels round the World. III.-1. Life of the Hon Mountstuart Elphinstone. By Sir 2. The Official Writings of Mountstuart Elphinstone, ... Page. 289 324 358 ART. Page. IV.-I. Of the Five Wounds of the Holy Church. An Essay 2. C. M. Curci, Sacerdote. Il Vaticano Regio. Tarlo V.-The Lauderdale MSS. in the British Museum. 26 vols. 2. Emigration from Ireland: being the Second Report And other Works. VII.-Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, of Abbotsford. By Robert Ornsby, M.A. In 2 vols. London, 1884 2. Report of General Lyson's Committee on Brigade 3. Report of General Taylor's Committee on Recruiting, 4. Report of Lord Airey's Committee on Army Re- 5. Formation of Territorial Regiments. 1881......... 2. Alice, Gross-Herzogin von Hessen und bei Rhein, X.-I. Parliamentary Papers on Egyptian Affairs. 1883-4. 3. Articles in Provincial Papers on the State of Trade 387 407 440 473 505 532 550 THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. ART. I.-1. Œuvres complètes de Bossuet, publiées d'après les imprimés et les manuscrits originaux purgées des interpolations et rendues à leur intégrité. Par. F. Lachat. 31 vols. Paris, 1862-6. 2. Histoire de Bossuet et de ses œuvres. Par M. Réaume, Chanoine de l'église de Meaux. 3 vols. Paris, 1869. 3. Mémoires et Journal sur la vie et les ouvrages de Bossuet de l'Abbé Le Dieu, publiés pour la première fois d'après les manuscrits autographes, et accompagnés d'une introduction et de notes. Par l'Abbé Guettée. 4 vols. Paris, 1856. 4. Lettres sur Bossuet à un Homme d'Etat. Poujoulat. Paris, 1854. Par J. J. F. 5. Etudes sur la Vie de Bossuet. Par P. A. Floquet. 4 vols. Paris, 1855-1864. 6. La Politique de Bossuet. Par J. F. Nourrisson. Paris, 1867. 7. Bossuet, Orateur. Par E. Gandar. Paris, 1867. 8. Controverse entre Bossuet et Fenelon au sujet du Quietisme de Madame Guyon. Par l'Abbé Libouroux. Paris, 1876. 9. Etudes sur la condamnation des Maximes des Saints. Par A. Griveau. 2 vols. Paris, 1878. 10. Madame Guyon, sa vie, sa doctrine, et son influence. Par L. Guerrier. Orleans, 1881. OF F the recent French literature upon Bossuet, the famous Bishop of Meaux, a portion of which is named above, but little we believe is known to English readers. It originated in the impulse given about forty years ago, by M. Victor Cousin, to a critical examination of the texts in which were current the works of the best French writers of the seventeenth century, by whom chiefly the language had been developed and fixed; and it was stimulated by the discovery shortly afterwards of the long lost biographical work of the Abbé Le Dieu, Vol. 157.-No. 314. U who had been Bossuet's secretary during the last twenty years of that great prelate's life. Unlike, however, the literature upon Pascal, which had the same origin, the modern critical works upon Bossuet are exclusively French, and appear to have attracted little notice outside the country of their birth; a fact, we conceive, highly significant of the interval which separated his genius from that of the author of the 'Provincial Letters' and the Thoughts.' Under these circumstances, now that no further discoveries are to be expected, and Time has at last irrevocably stamped out the whole policy, both in Church and State, to the support of which Bossuet devoted his splendid abilities, a fitting occasion seems to have arrived to introduce to our readers the results of recent investigation and analysis, and to do for the Eagle of Meaux' what a few years ago we endeavoured to do for the Recluse of Port Royal.* To criticize in detail the works named at the head of this article would be beside our purpose; enough to say that they are for the most part highly eulogistic, and show that it has been a labour of love with their authors to throw light on the nature of Bossuet's genius, and to display the force of his character and the achievements of his intellect. Indeed, in some the admiration is so indiscriminate and excessive as to confound the functions of the advocate and of the judge, notably in the case of M. Poujoulat, who professes to inaugurate a cult of Bossuet, and devotes his book to the purpose of unveiling the unknown god' before the gaze of the worshippers, who have hitherto adored in faith rather than with knowledge. So serious a specimen as this, however, of what Macaulay styled 'the lues Boswelliana, or disease of admiration,' peculiarly incident to biographers and editors, is strictly exceptional, so far as our acquaintance with this voluminous literature has extended: the warmth of M. Poujoulat's fellow eulogists, even in its excesses, does not make them overstep the bounds of decency; and their admiration, though occasionally irritating in the loudness of its tones, may plead a great deal in its excuse. For Bossuet is unquestionably one of the glories of France, and to a patriotic Frenchman it would naturally seem as sacrilegious to lay a hostile hand on the pedestal of his fame, as it would to a patriotic Englishman to impugn the right of our nearly contemporary Milton to his seat in the Pantheon of our country's worthies. There are many much less pardonable literary errors than the exaggerations into which the biographical student is betrayed when, in lovingly tracing * See the Quarterly Review' for October, 1879. |