Our Portrait Gallery 



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works is in 38 volumes. Andrew Ramsay, a Scotchman, 

 visited Fenelon at Cambray, became a convert to Catho- 

 licism, and wrote an interesting life of Fenelon. 



His biographer, Saint-Simon, says of him : " In everything 

 he was a true bishop, in everything a grand seigneur, in 

 everything the author of " ' Telemaque.' " 



When composing books for his pupil, the young Duke of 

 Burgundy, he continually reminded himself, " What I am 

 going to say to this child will be the occasion of happiness 

 or misery to twenty millions of people." 



The works of Fenelon are very numerous, consisting, 

 besides the romance of " Telemaque," of a variety of religious 

 and moral treatises. " Telemaque " has been translated into 

 every European language, and was until recently read in 

 every European school. So much use does he make of the 

 imaginative faculties that he exhorts teachers to impress on 

 the minds of children that the Deity is " sitting on a throne 

 with very bright eyes looking through everything, and 

 supporting the universe with His hands." Hence his natural 

 theology is chiefly the ejaculation of a pious man admiring 

 the works of Nature. In politics Fenelon's opinions are far 

 in advance of his age and country. 



It may assist the memory to note that he died only a few 

 months before Louis XIV. The King was, however, thirteen 

 years senior to the Archbishop. With this difference their 

 lives ran contemporaneously. Fenelon, in common with the 

 majority of his French contemporaries, had never taken part 

 in the festivities of a Coronation, his whole life having been 

 passed under the sovereign in whose reign he was born. 



The following word-portrait by Saint-Simon in his memoirs 



pictures Fenelon as 



"A tall, lean, well-made man, with a large nose, eyes full of fire 

 and intelligence ; a physiognomy resembling none which I have 

 elsewhere seen, and which could not be forgotten after it had been 

 once beheld. There was such a sublime simplicity in his appear- 

 ance that it required an effort to cease to look at him. His manners 

 corresponded to his face and person. They were marked with that 



