KING BO MBA'S PHILOSOPHICAL CATECHISM. 619 



stories, skillfully woven together into a consecutive narration, 

 which has remained for centuries the unsurpassable model of all 

 productions of a like character. In Greek literature we have 

 Xenophon's Cyropsedia, which gives an imaginary picture of the 

 education of the elder Cyrus, in order to present the ideal of a 

 prince whose moral and intellectual faculties have been devel- 

 oped according to the principles of the Socratic philosophy. Less 

 worthy of note, and yet not devoid of significance, is the De de- 

 mentia ad Neronem Csesarem of Seneca, whose imperial pupil 

 Nero does not redound to his credit as a tutor, and whose own 

 conduct did not always exemplify his fine ethical maxims. In 

 the sixteenth century Duke Julius, of Brunswick, began with his 

 Deutscher Fiirstenspiegel the fabrication of those moral mirrors 

 in which princes are enabled to see themselves as others see them. 



The Prince of Machiavelli is a different kind of production, 

 being less a pedagogical than a political treatise — not so much an 

 exposition of ethical principles as an enforcement of practical 

 policy. It is the final, energetic effort of a sincere patriot to 

 rescue his country from the demoralizing and disintegrating in- 

 fluences, aristocratic, democratic, and hierarchical, which made it 

 the prey of factions from within and foreigners from without. If 

 the remedy prescribed is drastic, the disease was also desperate. 



Of all modern works belonging to the class under consideration, 

 The Adventures of Telemachus, written by Fenelon for the in- 

 struction and guidance of the grandsons of Louis XIY, holds per- 

 haps the highest place in literature. But the ideal of conduct, 

 which the Archbishop of Cambrai here offers for imitation, is so 

 pure and exalted, that the king regarded the book as a satire on 

 his reign and forbade its publication. It was also the common 

 opinion of his courtiers that Calypso was the Marquise de Monte- 

 span, Antiope the Duchesse de Bourgogne, and Sesostris no less a 

 personage than the Grand Monarch himself. "No one, nowadays, 

 in reading Fenelon's masterpiece of fiction, thinks of the didactic 

 purpose for which it was written ; we are attracted solely by the 

 charm of style and the perfection of artistic form which have 

 made it classic. 



Very different in this respect is the notorious Philosophical 

 Catechism collaborated by King Ferdinand II and Monsignore 

 Apuzzo, Archbishop of Sorrento, for the use of the Hereditary 

 Prince and of the Most Faithful People of the Two Sicilies. This 

 book, which appeared in 1850, was written to justify the perfidies 

 and perjuries of King Bomba, and also, ad usum DelpMni, to in- 

 culcate and perpetuate the principles of monarchical absolutism. 



After the suppression of the Revolution of 1848, and the ab- 

 rogation of the reforms which this movement had temporarily 

 effected, the sovereign of the Two Sicilies began to manifest an 



