imprisoned by order of Cardinal Mazarin,—­“And,” he goes on, “since I have to speak of these things over which I would fain keep eternally silent, until this fatal imprisonment he had not even dreamed that anything could be attempted against the State....  This is what made him say (I certainly can repeat here, before these altars, the words I received from his lips, since they so clearly show the bottom of his heart)—­he said then, speaking of this unfortunate prison, that he had entered it the most innocent, and had left it the guiltiest of men.”  Nearly the whole of this oration is devoted to history; it teems with brilliant passages, the most famous of which is the narrative of the Prince’s first victory, the battle of Rocroi, in 1643.

Thoughtful readers seldom pass by the funeral oration on Anne of Gonzaga.  It forms a curious incident in Bossuet’s life.  The great preacher’s most striking fault was a lack of energy in his dealings with royal characters.  “He lacks bones,” some one said of him:  and thus when his enemies so intrigued as to have him required to eulogize from the pulpit the erratic princess, who had been a political intriguer and the heroine of many scandals before repentance took hold of her, he lacked the courage to decline the doubtful honor.  But in the pulpit, or whenever the priest had to appear, and not simply the man, his better manhood, pure and commanding, at once took the upper hand; and so, facing his critics,—­“My discourse,” he said, “which perhaps you think you are to judge, will judge you when the last day comes; and if you do not depart hence better Christians, you will depart hence guiltier men!”

With the funeral orations one might mention another series of religious discourses not strikingly different from them,—­the panegyrics of saints, of which twenty have been preserved, that of Saint Paul being indisputably the best.

The ‘Discourse upon Universal History,’ which was originally written for the Dauphin, is a masterly attempt to give a philosophical explanation of the facts of history, beginning with the Biblical account of the Creation, and ending with the assumption by Charlemagne of the imperial crown in 800 A.D.  It is divided into three parts:  The Epochs; Religion; the Empires.  The first part contains the significance of twelve events considered by Bossuet as epoch-making:  the Creation, the Flood, the calling of Abraham, Moses and the giving of the Law, the taking of Troy, the building of the Temple of Solomon, the foundation of Rome, Cyrus and the re-establishment of Hebrew nationality, the defeat of Carthage, the birth of Christ, the triumph of the Church under Constantine, the re-establishment of the Empire with Charlemagne.

The second part, which contains thirty-one chapters, has a twofold object:  to demonstrate that the coming of Christ is clearly foretold in the Old Testament, and that the Roman Catholic Church is the only faithful representative of true Christianity.  The third part is less theological.  It is an attempt to explain the facts of history, at least partially, by a study of the various influences to which the different nations have been subjected.  The general purpose of the whole work is best explained by the last chapter of this third part, the title of which is:  Conclusion of the whole Discourse, in which is shown that all events must be ascribed to a Divine Providence.