the earlier part of Louis's reign so splendid, and had caught the echoes of those resounding times while witnessing the disasters which clouded, in the king's last years, the glory and prosperity of France. Now, removed by age to a stand-point whence he could view the whole period as in a picture, the historian, while divested of the prejudices and illusions which beset a contemporary, still possessed, in complete maturity, his judicial faculty and his literary excellence. A finer subject could not offer itself to a Frenchman than the long reign in which France, seeming, at a bound, to emerge from a base condition of manners, of public morals, of government, and of policy, stood forth resplendent in letters, arts, arms, statecraft, and social refinement. The unerring literary judgment of Voltaire caused him to feel that in this field his fine wit and keen satire would be out of place; nor is there any irreverence in the work, for though it deals severely with the feuds of sects which hated each other, still, as he truly says, these are not religion, and he thought he was doing good service to the human intellect in rendering fanaticism hateful. And the picture he draws of Louis is especially notable. Though the historian had suffered so much from despotic power, he does full justice to the king; and while dwelling strongly and truly on such dark blots as the religious persecutions which he authorised, the impolitic wars into which his arrogance plunged him, and the miserable condition into which he allowed his people to lapse, yet the celebration of his great and kingly qualities is so generous as to form a splendid eulogy. Thus executed, the 'Age of Louis XIV.' excited less hostility, and evoked more unqualified
