CHARACTERS. 



575 



«vho consoled themselves for not 

 having obtained the one, by re- 

 flecting that they had acquired 

 the other." 



Fenelon was fully impressed 

 with the magnitude and import- 

 ance of his office. The idea of 

 educating a king, the king too of 

 a monarchy, which had obtained 

 its highest point of splendor, and 

 the almost absolute master of 

 twenty millions of men, whose 

 welfare or misery was connected 

 with the virtues or the vices, the 

 energy or the weakness, the ta- 

 lents or the incapacity, of the so- 

 vereign, must, while it exalted his 

 imagination, communicate an in- 

 voluntary terror to his mind. His 

 own age, that of the king, and 

 that of the young prince, must 

 also have impressed him with the 

 idea that he was, perhaps, des- 

 tined to receive the gratitude or 

 the reproaches of many genera- 

 tions. 



Whatever confidence he might 

 possess in the purity of his own 

 intentions, in his talents, in his 

 character, and in the fortunate 

 concurrence of all those means, 

 and that assistance which he saw 

 united with him, yet he could not 

 be without some alarm, lest he 

 might have to contend with an 

 untoward nature, which would 

 countervail all his efforts. Per- 

 haps he might have to infuse a 

 soul, a mind, a character, into a 

 lifeless statue ; to extirpate the 

 germs of those vices which had 

 been fostered by the interests and 

 passions of individuals ; and to re- 

 strain the imagination of a child, 

 whom every thing combined to 

 impress with an idea of his pre- 

 sent greatness, and of the power 

 which awaited him in the future. 



Fenelon had also before his eyes 

 the father of his pupil. He was 

 a mild and good prince ; but his 

 character, equally remote from 

 virtue and from vice, partaking 

 neither of good nor bad, insensi- 

 ble to glory, to the sciences, and 

 to the arts, promised to France 

 little else than an obscure and 

 doubtful reign ; yet this prince 

 was the son of Louis XIV. and 

 the pupil of Bossuet and Montau- 

 sier. But neither of these precep- 

 tors had to struggle with alarming 

 dispositions of nature ; with an 

 untameable character, a disgusting 

 pride, irritable desires, and all 

 those violent passions which native 

 vigour of mind, and an extreme 

 aptitude to acquire every thing 

 that can be acquired, might render 

 fatal to the happiness of mankind. 

 For such is the picture of the 

 duke of Burgundy, as unanimous- 

 ly transmitted to us by all histo- 

 rians ; and such was the prince 

 that Fenelon had to educate. It 

 cannot be supposed, indeed, that 

 a child of seven years old was ca- 

 pable of exhibiting such decided 

 marks of character as are above 

 pourtrayed ; yet, from his earliest 

 infancy, and during the first five 

 years of his education, he gave 

 indications of every thing that was 

 to be feared from him ; for, they 

 who have boasted, with admira- 

 tion, of what he afterwards be- 

 came, yet could not but remem- 

 ber, with a sort of terror, what he 

 once had been. 



" The duke of Burgundy," says 

 M. de St. Simon, " was by nature 

 formidable, and in his earliest 

 youth gave cause for terror. He 

 was unfeeling, and irritable to the 

 last excess, even against inani- 

 mate objects. He was furiously 



