1 OCTOBER 1927, Page 3

* * * * Bossuet's astonishing statesmanship was never better

displayed than in his management of the dispute with Rome when he was practically under orders from Louis to bring about a break with the Papacy, but contrived to break neither with the Pope nor with his secular master. His treatise Histoire des Variations is a powerful and lofty argument which fits all the vicissitudes of human history into the divine scheme. Our point of view to-day is changed ; we should now want a Bossuet in equivalent terms to reconcile scientific discovery with divine design. But for what it is the Histoire is wonderful and impressive. Bossuet was great as a scholar, orator, and ruler, and he was a good man too, who surprisingly found time to comfort the most stupid and tiresome people when they were in trouble.