PREFACE.

The writings of Fénelon have been a quarry for many generations. Many volumes of ethical instruction, spiritual guidance, and Christian counsel, have been selected from the works of the author, who has also a world-wide fame as the narrator of Les Adventures de Télémaque, Fils d'Ulysse. Francois de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon was born August 6, 1651, at the Chateau de Fénelon, near Sarlat, in Perigord. In his Education at home he laid the foundation of solid classical acquirements, which was enlarged at the College of Cahors and at the College of Plessis. So precocious was his genius and his gift of eloquence that at the age of fifteen he was put forward to preach to an admiring audience. He became an abbé and an archbishop, attained an exalted position, and commanded universal love, but he never was moved from his early simplicity and sincerity. He has been sometimes criticized for his "desire to please "in this world, but no one could ever say that he swerved from his duty or compromised his spirituality or his integrity. Fénelon's

life was without stain, and his nature was singularly pure, kindly, and elevated. His theory seems to have been that good is more potent than evil, and that men are to be won to the right way rather by setting before them goodness as an attraction than by holding up the bad as a terror. The only controversy of his life was with his friend, Bossuet, in defending Madame Guyon in her doctrine of disinterested love, or that God is to be loved for his own perfections, without any view to future rewards or punishments.

The

The present volume of selections, made and translated by B. C. R., is taken from Fénelon's first work, Traité de l'Education des Filles, and one of his most famous. time is opportune for such clear and wholesome counsel on the education of young girls. The problems that we have now in education are more intensified than they were in Fénelon's time, but the reader will be struck with the modern tone of this volume, and its applicability to our own situation.

The translation has been made with fidelity, and the selections joined into an essay in excellent taste. C. D. W.

THE

"HE world is not a phantom, it is a collection of families.

Who is able to give such especial care in civilizing and refining it as women, who, beside their natural authority in the house, have the advantage of being born careful, mindful of detail, industrious, insinuating and persuasive?

Can men hope to find any happiness in life if their most intimate relation, that of marriage, is turned into bitterness? What will become of the children if their mothers spoil them from their earliest years?

The occupations of women are not less important to the public than those of men, when they have a house to regulate, a husband to make happy and children to bring up in the right way. Right living is no less for women than for men,-to say nothing of the good or evil they can do in the world, they are one-half