CHARACTERS. 



577 



adopted, and what delicacy of ob- 

 servation must have concurred to 

 produce such an extraordinary al- 

 teration in the character of a 

 child, of a prince, and of an heir 

 1 a throne ! Nay, had not his tu- 

 tors been the most virtuous of 

 men ; if their pupil, possessed as 

 he was of such intellectual perspi- 

 cacity, had discovered in them 

 the smallest appearance of weak- 

 ness or tergiversation, all their 

 skill, all their care, and all their 

 assiduity, would havebeenineffec- 

 tual. They were, in fact, less in- 

 debted for their success to their 

 genius and their talents, than to 

 their virtues and their dispositions. 



Fenelon soon perceived, that 

 that part of education which ge- 

 nerally excited the greatest zeal in 

 teachers, and the most self-love 

 in parents, was what would give 

 him the least trouble. He fore- 

 saw that his pupil, possessing 

 from nature such rare gifts of 

 mind, would make a rapid pro- 

 gress in every branch of know- 

 ledge : but the most difficult task 

 •would be to subdue that fiery soul 

 which he possessed ; to preserve 

 allitsnobleand generous qualities, 

 and to extirpate all its undue pas- 

 sions; to form, in fact, a new 

 moral being; to form a prince, 

 Buch as the genius of Fenelon had 

 conceived, for the welfare of hu- 

 man nature. He wished, indeed, 

 to realize upon the throne an ideal 

 beauty of virtue, as the artists of 

 antiquity endeavoured to impress 

 upon their works that ideal beauty, 

 which gave to the human form 

 a celestial appearance. 



The child that was confided to 

 the care of Fenelon was destined 

 to reign ; and Fenelon saw in 

 that child the whole of France 



Vol. LII, 



awaiting its happiness or misery, 

 from the success or failure of his 

 endeavours. To obtain this suc- 

 cess, he prescribed to himself no 

 precise rule of action ; he watched 

 each moment the dispositions of 

 the young prince, and followed, 

 with a calm and patient attention, 

 all the variations of his intempe- 

 rate nature, and always extracted 

 the lesson from the fault itself. 



Such an education consisted ra- 

 ther in action than in instruction. 

 The pupil never could anticipate 

 what was to be his lesson, because 

 he could not anticipate what faults 

 he might commit ; and thus ad- 

 vice and censure became the ne- 

 cessary result of his own ex- 

 cesses. 



They who wish to know the 

 method which Fenelon adopted in 

 educating his pupil, may read his 

 Fables and Dialogues which he 

 wrote for him. Each of these 

 fables, each of these dialogues, 

 was composed at the very moment 

 when the preceptor judged it ne- 

 cessary to remind hispupil of some 

 fault which he had committed, 

 and to inculcate at the same time 

 the necessity and the means of 

 amendment. 



These fables and dialogues have 

 been printed, but without any at- 

 tention to a consecutive series. 

 Such an attention, indeed, was 

 not necessary. Fenelon composed 

 them without order; and yet it 

 would be easy to ascertain their 

 chronology (so to speak) by com- 

 paring them with the gradual pro- 

 gress which age and instruction 

 must have produced in the educa- 

 tion of the duke of Burgundy. 

 It is immediately discernible that 

 these fables and dialogues relate 

 only to a prince, and to a prince 



2 P 



