his philosophy suggested to him nothing to be compared to the beautiful reflection with which religion inspired Bossuet. A striking example of the influence of Christianity on the mind of a great man!

The most finished historical portrait in Tacitus is that of Tiberius; but it is eclipsed by the portrait of Cromwell, for in his Funeral Orations also Bossuet is an historian. What shall we say of the exclamation of joy that escapes from Tacitus when speaking of the Bructarii who slaughtered one another within view of a Roman camp? "By the favor of the gods," says he, 66 'we had the pleasure to behold this conflict without taking any part in it. Merely spectators, we witnessed (and an extraordinary sight it was) sixty thousand men cutting each other's throats for our amusement. May the nations not in amity with us continue to cherish in their hearts these mutual animosities !"'1

Now let us hear Bossuet:-"After the deluge first appeared those ravagers of provinces denominated conquerors, who, impelled by the thirst of dominion, have exterminated so many innocent people. . . . Since that period, ambition has known no bounds in sporting with human life; and to this point are men arrived that they slaughter without hating one another. This business of mutual destruction is even deemed the height of glory and the most excellent of all the arts."'s

It is difficult to forbear adoring a religion which causes so wide a difference between the morality of a Bossuet and that of a Tacitus.

The Roman historian, after relating that Thrasyllus had predicted the elevation of Tiberius to the empire, adds:-"From these circumstances, and some others, I cannot tell whether the affairs of life be subject to an immutable necessity, or whether they depend on chance alone." Then come the opinions of the philosophers, which Tacitus gravely repeats, at the same time giving the reader clearly to understand that he believes in the predictions of astrologers.

Reason, sound morality, and eloquence, are also, in our opinion, on the side of the Christian prelate. "This long chain of particular causes which create and dissolve empires is de

1 Tacitus On the Manners of the Germans.

2 Disc. on Univ. History.

pendent on the secret decrees of Divine Providenee. From the heaven of heavens God guides the reins of every kingdom; all hearts are in his hand. Sometimes he curbs the passions; at others he relaxes the bridle, and thereby agitates the whole human race. He knows the extent of human wisdom, which always falls short in some respect or other; he enlightens it, he extends its views, and then abandons it to its ignorance. He blinds, he urges it on, he confounds it; it is involved, it becomes embarrassed in its own subtleties, and its very precautions prove a snare in which it is entrapped. He it is who prepares these effects in the most remote causes, and who strikes these mighty blows, the rebound of which is felt so far. ... But let not men deceive themselves; God, when he pleases, can restore the bewildered mind; he who exults over the infatuation of others may himself be plunged into the thickest darkness, and it often requires no other instrument to derange his understanding than long prosperity."

How does the eloquence of antiquity shrink from a comparison with this Christian eloquence!1

1 It seems almost superfluous to add to this detailed recital of the beauties of Bossuet. But there is one passage in his Universal History so remarkable for simple and sublime energy that we wish to treat the reader with the perusal of it. Speaking of the extent of the Roman empire under Augustus, Bossuet says, "Their mountains cannot defend the Rhæti from his arms; Pannonia acknowledges and Germany dreads him; victorious by sea and by land, he shuts the temple of Janus. The whole earth lives in peace under his power, and Jesus Christ comes into the world."

BOOK IV.

ELOQUENCE.

CHAPTER I.

OF CHRISTIANITY AS IT RELATES TO ELOQUENCE.

CHRISTIANITY furnishes so many proofs of its excellence, that, when you think you have no further subject to treat of, another suddenly starts up under your pen. We have been speaking of philosophers, and, behold, the orators appear and inquire whether we have forgotten them; we have reasoned upon Christianity in the arts and sciences, and Christianity calls upon us to exhibit to the world the most powerful effects of eloquence ever known. To the Catholic religion the moderns owe that oratorical art which, had our literature been destitute of it, would have given the genius of antiquity a decided superiority over ours. Here is one of the proudest triumphs of our religion; and, notwithstanding all that may be said in praise of Demosthenes and Cicero, Massillon and Bossuet may, without fear, stand a comparison with them.

The only species of eloquence known to the ancients were judicial and political eloquence. Moral eloquence-that is to say, the eloquence of every age, of every government, of every country-appeared not upon earth until the gospel dispensation. Cicero defends a client; Demosthenes combats an adversary, or endeavors to rekindle the love of country in a degenerate people; both only know how to rouse the passions, and they found all their hopes of success on the agitation which they excite in the heart. The eloquence of the pulpit has sought its hopes in a higher region. By opposing the movements of the soul, she hopes to persuade it; by appeasing all the passions, she makes them listen to her voice. God and charity, such is her text, ever the same, ever inexhaustible. She needs neither the cabals of a 37* 437

party, nor popular commotions, nor important events, in order to shine; in the most profound peace, over the bier of the obscurest citizen, she exerts her most sublime influences; she knows how to excite interest in behalf of a virtue that is unknown; she draws tears from your eyes for a person whose name you never heard. Incapable of fear and of injustice, she gives lessons to kings, but without insulting them; she comforts the indigent, but without flattering their vices. She is no stranger to politics or to any other terrestrial things; but these, though the primary springs of ancient eloquence, are with her but secondary reasons; she beholds them from the elevated region where she reigns, as an eagle from the summit of the mountain perceives the lowly objects in the plain.

What particularly distinguishes Christian eloquence from the eloquence of the Greeks and Romans is, in the words of La Bruyère, that evangelical sadness which is the soul of it, that majestic melancholy on which it feeds. You read once, perhaps twice, the orations of Cicero against Verres and Catiline; the oration for the crown and the philippics of Demosthenes; but you meditate all your life on the Funeral Orations of Bossuet, and turn over night and day the sermons of Bourdaloue and Massillon. The discourses of the Christian orators are so many books, while those of antiquity are but orations. What wonderful taste is displayed by the sacred teachers in their reflections on the vanities of the world! "Your whole life," say they, "is but the intoxication of a day, and you spend that day in the pursuit of the most empty illusions. Granting that you attain the summit of all your wishes, that you become a king, an emperor, the master of the world,—it is but for a moment, and then death will sweep away all these vanities together with your nothingness."

This kind of meditation, so grave, so solemn, and tending so naturally to the sublime, was wholly unknown to the orators of antiquity. The heathens exhausted themselves in the pursuit of the shadows of life; they knew not that real existence begins not until death. The Christian religion has alone founded that great school of the grave where the apostle of the gospel imbibes instruction; she no longer allows him, like the demi-sages of

1 Job.

Greece, to squander the immortal intellect of man on things of a

moment.

In short, religion in all ages and in all countries has been the source of eloquence. If Demosthenes and Cicero were great orators, the reason is because they were above all religious.1 The members of the Convention, on the contrary, displayed only mutilated talents, and scraps, as it were, of eloquence, because they attacked the faith of their forefathers, and thus cut themselves off from all the inspirations of the heart."

CHAPTER II.

CHRISTIAN ORATORS-FATHERS OF THE CHURCH.

THE eloquence of the Fathers of the Church has in it something that overawes, something energetic, something royal, as it were, and whose authority at once confounds and subdues. You are convinced that their mission comes from on high, and that they teach by the express command of the Almighty. In the midst of these inspirations, however, their genius retains its majesty and serenity.

I The names of the gods are incessantly in their mouths. See the apostrophe of the former to the gods plundered by Verres, and the invocation of the latter to the manes of the heroes of Marathon.

2 Let it not be said that the French had not time to acquire practice in the new career upon which they had entered. Eloquence is a fruit of revolutions, in which it grows spontaneously and without culture; the savage and the negro have sometimes spoken like Demosthenes. There was, besides, no want of models, since they possessed the master-pieces of the ancient forum and those also of that sacred forum in which the Christian orator explains the eternal law. When Montlosier, descending from the mountains of Auvergne, where he had, doubtless, paid but little attention to the study of rhetoric, exclaimed, when speaking of the clergy in the Constituent Assembly, "Drive them from their palaces, and they will seek refuge in the hut of the indigent whom they have fed; rob them of their golden crosses, and they will take up wooden ones in their stead; it was a cross of wood that saved the world!" this beautiful apostrophe was not inspired by anarchy, but by religion. If, finally, Vergniaud attained the heights of eloquence, in his speech for Louis XVI., it was because his subject raised him into the region of religious ideas-the pyramids, death, silence, and the tomb.