by these floods of light, could not be long without being shaken, first
in the human mind and afterwards in things, to the very foundations.
_Guttemberg_; without knowing it, was the mechanist of the New World. In
creating the communication of ideas, he had assured the independence of
reason. Every letter of this alphabet which left his fingers, contained
in it, more power than the armies of kings, and the thunders of
pontiffs. It was mind which he furnished with language. These two powers
were the mistresses of man, as they were hereafter of mankind. The
intellectual world was born of a material invention, and it had grown
rapidly. The reformed religion was one of its early offspring.

The empire of catholic Christianity had undergone extensive
dismemberments. Switzerland, a part of Germany, Holland, England, whole
provinces of France, had been drawn away from the centre of religious
authority, and passed over to the doctrine of free examination. Divine
authority attacked and contested in catholicism, the authority of the
throne remained at the mercy of the people. Philosophy, more potent than
sedition, approached it more and more near, with less respect, less
fear. History had actually written of the weaknesses and crimes of
kings. Public writers had dared to comment upon it, and the people to
draw conclusions. Social institutions had been weighed by their real
value for humanity. Minds the most devoted to power had spoken to
sovereigns of duties, and to people of rights. The holy boldness of
Christianity had been heard even in the consecrated pulpit, in the
presence of Louis XIV. Bossuet, that sacerdotal genius of the ancient
synagogue, had mingled his proud adulations to Louis XIV. with some of
those austere warnings which console persons for their abasement.
Fénélon, that evangelical and tender genius, of the new law, had written
his instructions to princes, and his Telemachus, in the palace of the
king, and in the cabinet of an heir to the throne. The political