arrayed in modern garb; the truths of reason decked with the charms of imagination. Instead of resting only on the precepts of the schools, the traditions of the Church, the modern writers borrowed the aid in supporting them of all that could attract the fancy or warm the heart. Abundance of materials were at hand to awaken these emotions in the romantic incidents and picturesque manners of the olden time, and the chivalrous feelings which, despite all attempts to extirpate them, still lingered in every noble heart in modern Europe. So skilful was the use made of these auxiliaries, so vast the aid which the ancient doctrines received from modern genius, that it may safely be affirmed they never have been so powerfully supported; and whoever wishes to have his conservative principles aided by all the charms of imagination, will do well to devote his days and his nights to the great authors who have risen out of the French Revolution.

So

senses or excite the passions. general has this pernicious and too seductive style become, that it may be considered as the grand characteristic of the modern school of French romance; which, if it contains more knowledge, and embraces a far wider field, and is written with much greater ability than that which preceded, and in part occasioned, the Revolution, is only on that account the more dangerous, and the more calculated to corrupt and degrade the people to whom it is addressed.

6. But if this is true of nearly the entire school of modern French novels, what shall be said of its drama, or the numerous pieces which have appeared on the boards of the French opera and theatres? Here revolutionary confusion has appeared in its very worst aspect; and if the pieces which for the last thirty years have been popular on the Parisian stage are to be taken as an index of the general mind, it will not appear surprising that all moral influences have been extinguished amongst the people, and that, after trying in vain every form of freedom, no government should have been found practicable except the rude one of force. It is little to say that the unities, so long the subject of debate, have been perpetually violated; the far more important principles of morality, faith, and honour, have been systematically set at nought. To interest the feel

5. But in works addressed to the imagination merely, and intended to amuse or excite the great body of readers, the pernicious influence of the overturning of all principle by the Re. volution, and the incessant craving for excitement which its catastrophes had produced, was painfully conspicuous. There no reaction was to be seen against evil; on the contrary, the most unreserved obedience to its dic-ings and excite the passions has been tates was evident. The writers who strove to amuse or interest the public, whether in novels, the romance, or the drama, soon gave token of the confusion of ideas in the vast majority of readers which the Revolution had produced, and the necessity under which every author who aspired to be popular, or desired to make his labours profitable, lay, of bending to the pre-fiction. vailing tastes, and pandering to the too general depravity. Not merely were the ideas and the incidents romantic, but they were too often flagitious: if one chapter interested the imagination, and another moved the heart, it too often happened that a third was calculated to inflame the

the universal object, not merely without any regard to the tendency of such productions, but with a decided preference for the more depraved. Murders and rapes, seductions and adulteries, incest and poisonings, succeed each other with a rapidity not only never exhibited in real life, but never before thought of in works of

If the German drama is the glory, the French is the disgrace of our contemporary European literature; and whoever considers both with attention, and regards them, as they undoubtedly are, as indexes to the national mind in the two countries, will cease to wonder that the Fatherland was in the end victorious in the strife

which so long existed between them; I was not so fortunate, and in truth had and that to the tragedies of the for- not the means, which have since given mer has been awarded the immortality such celebrity to other names; but liof virtue-to the melodrama of the terature has no cause to regret his faillatter the ephemeral success of vice. ure as a geographical discoverer, for his 7. CHATEAUBRIAND is universally, travels in Canada have given birth to and by all parties, recognised as the many of the most brilliant images, and first writer in France during the Re- not the least interesting of his works storation, and second to none that ever-his Travels in America, and beautiful appeared even in that intellectual land. tale of Atala and Réné. After the acThe style of his compositions is very cession of Napoleon to the consular remarkable, and singularly descriptive throne had opened to him the theatre of the influences which were at work of his own country, he returned to in its formation. It breathes at once Paris, and published his immortal Géthe spirit of the olden time and the nie de Christianisme. The fame which aspirations of the Revolution: it is red- this great work immediately acquired, olent of the piety of the Crusader not attracted the notice of Napoleon, who less than the ardour of the Republican. was always on the look-out for genius He has all the gallantry of chivalry in in any department; and he had just achis heart, all the devotion of loyalty in cepted from him the situation of Minhis bosom, but not a few of the dreams ister in the Republic of the Valais, when of republicanism in his head. He him- the execution of the Duke d'Enghien self said, that he was "aristocrat du took place; and Chateaubriand had cœur, mais democrat par pensée;" and the courage to hazard his own life, by the spirit of his writings, not less than resigning his appointment. Owing to the tenor of his actions, prove that the intercession, however, of Napothe combination, how unusual soever, leon's sister, the Princess Eliza, he esreally existed in his case. The de- caped that peril, and was permitted to scendant of an ancient family in Brit- leave France. He spent the time of tany, having had his earliest impres- his exile in a pilgrimage to Greece and sions formed by his mother, a woman the Holy Land, the fruit of which is of uncommon abilities, in the solitude to be seen in his charming Itinéraire, of the family château, which was wash- and brilliant romance of Les Martyrs, ed by the waves of the Atlantic Ocean, in both of which the glowing skies and he was rising into manhood when he deathless associations of the East are beheld his nearest relations cut down portrayed with_graphic_power and a by the scythe of the Revolution, and poetic spirit. The wrath of Napoleon was himself driven, bereft of every- having passed away, as it generally did, thing, in the extremity of poverty, to after the first burst was over, he was seek refuge in London, where he main-enabled to return to Paris, where he tained himself for several years with great difficulty by his pen, and where his earliest composition, the Essai Historique, was first ushered forth to the world.

8. His ardent spirit, however, longed for action, and, debarred by the Revolution from service in his own country, he sought a vent for it in the excitements and dangers of foreign travel. His imagination had been strongly excited by the hopes of discovering a north-west passage; and he set out from England, supported by borrowed money, to engage in the perilous adventure of exploring it by land. He

lived in retirement, occupied with literary pursuits, till the restoration of the Bourbons, to which he powerfully contributed by his celebrated pamphlet, Buonaparte et les Bourbons, opened to him, after a life of toil and poverty, the reward and the promotion of political power.

9. The previous events of Chateaubriand's life may be read in almost all his writings, as clearly as in the very interesting Memoirs which he has bequeathed to the world as the record of his eventful career. His great characteristic is the impassioned and enthusiastic turn of his mind; and this, as

in all other persons of a similar tem- | he discovers at once the grand or the perament, has not only impressed his charming alike in every action he reimagination with all the varied images counts or object he describes, and never which have at different times been re- fails to throw over the whole the glow flected on his mind's retina, but deeply of his own rich and impassioned mind affected his thoughts, by all the reflec- Nihil quod tetigit non ornavit.' tions which genius could gather or com- But while every page of his writings bine from the varied events or objects reveals in thought or expression the which have been presented to it during genius by which he was inspired, it an eventful career. All that he has betrays also the peculiar predilections seen, or read, or heard, seems present to which he was inclined. He was a to his mind, whatever he does, and man of the olden time, stranded by wherever he is. Master of immense fate on the storm-beaten shores of the information, thoroughly imbued at once Revolution. His sympathies were all with the learning of classical and the with the feudal and Catholic, but his traditions of Catholic times, gifted with intercourse was with the modern and a retentive memory, a poetic fancy, freethinking world. This tendency and a painter's eye, he brings to bear appears not less clearly in the characupon every subject the stores of eru-ter of his writings than the tenor of dition, the images of imagination, the charms of varied scenery, and the eloquence of impassioned feeling. Hence his writings display a reach and variety of imagery, a depth of light and shadow, a vigour of thought, and an extent of illustration, to which there is, perhaps, nothing comparable in any other author, ancient or modern. He illustrates the genius of Christianity by the beauties of classical conception; inhales the spirit of ancient prophecy on the shores of the Jordan; dreams on the banks of the Eurotas of the solitude of the American forests; contrasts the burning sands of the Nile with the cool waters of the Mississippi; visits the Holy Sepulchre with a mind alternately excited by the devotion of a pilgrim, the curiosity of an antiquary, and the enthusiasm of a Crusader. He combines in his romances, with the ardour of chivalrous love, the heroism of Roman virtue and the sublimity of Christian martyrdom. His writings are less a portrait of any particular age or country, than an assemblage of all that is grand or generous or elevated in human nature.

10. He drinks deep of inspiration at all the fountains where it has ever been poured forth to mankind, and delights us equally by the accuracy of each individual picture, and the traits of interest which he has combined from every quarter where its footsteps have trode. With the instinct of genius,

his thoughts. His style seems formed on the lofty strains of Isaiah, or the beautiful images of the Book of Job, more than on all the classical or modern literature with which his mind is so amply stored. He is admitted by all Frenchmen, of whatever party, to be the most perfect master of their language in the period in which he lived, and to have imported into it beauties unknown to the age of Bossuet and Fénélon. Less polished in his periods, less sonorous in his diction, less melodious in his rhyme, than these illustrious writers, he is incomparably more varied, rapid, and energetic; the past, the present, and the future rise up under the touch of his magic hand before us, and we see how strongly the stream of genius, instead of gliding down the smooth current of ordinary life, has been broken and agitated by the cataract of Revolution.

11. To this writer must be ascribed

the principal share in the great moral revolution which characterised France in the half-century which succeeded the Revolution-the reaction in favour of Christianity. It was in the disastrous days which succeeded the triumph of infidelity and democracy in France that he arose, and, like all great men destined by nature to be the leaders of thought, he immediately broke off from the herd of ignoble writers, * "Nought has he touched and not adorned."

who followed the stream of public opin- | had in view in his writings, and the ion. Amidst a deluge of infidelity, new style of language and species of he bent the force of his lofty mind to imagery which he introduced into rerestore the fallen but imperishable ligious composition. The days were faith of his fathers. In early youth, gone past, and he knew it, when Rome indeed, he was at first carried away by could speak, at least to the highlythe fashionable scepticism of the times, educated portion of mankind, in the and in his Essai Historique, which he voice of authority, or in which a subpublished in London in 1792, in which missive world would receive on its the principles of virtue and natural knees whatever pontifical pride or religion are unceasingly maintained, priestly_cupidity might prescribe for he seems to have doubted whether belief. It was the assumption of these the Christian faith was not crumbling powers, the spreading and drawing with the institutions of society, and close of these chains, he well knew, speculated what system of belief was which had occasioned the general to arise on its ruins. But misfortune, revolt against the Romish Church. the great corrector of the errors and Equally in vain would it be to address vices of the world, soon changed these a world heated by the passions and faulty views. In the days of exile and roused by the sufferings of the Revoadversity, when by the waters of Baby-lution, in the calm and argumentative lon he sat down and wept, he resorted to the faith of his fathers, and inhaled in the school of adversity those noble maxims of devotion and duty which have ever since regulated his conduct in life. Undaunted, though alone, he placed himself on the ruins of the Christian faith, renewed with herculean strength a contest which the talents and vices of half a century had to all appearance rendered hopeless, and, speaking to the hearts of men, now, in some degree, purified by suffering and cleansed by the agonising ordeal of revolution, scattered far and wide the seeds of consolation in the resources of religion. Other writers have followed in the same noble career; Guizot, Barante, and Amadée Thierry, have traced with historic truth the

beneficial effects of Christianity on amodern society, and deduced from revolutionary disaster the last conclusions as to the adaptation of its doctrines to the wants of humanity; but it is the glory of Chateaubriand to have come forth alone, the foremost in the fight, to have planted himself on the breach, when it was strewed only with the dead and the dying, and, strong in the consciousness of gigantic power, stood undismayed against a nation in arms.

12. The peculiarity of the contest in which this great man was thus involved, both explains the object he

strain in which the Protestant divines taught their contented and prosperous flocks the doctrines of the Reformation. For the new times a new style was required. To effect his purpose, therefore, of reopening in the hearts of his readers the all but extinguished fountains of religious feeling, he summoned to his aid all that learning, or travelling, or poetry, or fancy could supply; he called in the charm of imagination to aid the force of reason, and scrupled not to make use of his powers as a novelist, a historian, a descriptive traveller, and a poet, to forward the great work of Christian renovation. Nor was he mistaken in his estimate of the effect which these new weapons in the contest would produce. It is by persuasion, not constraint, that all great revolutions in opinion in ages of intelligence are effected. It is the indifference, not the scepticism, of men that is chiefly to be dreaded: the danger to be apprehended is, not that they will say there is no God, but that they will live altogether without God in the world. It is therefore of incalculable importance that some writings should exist which lead men imperceptibly into the ways of truth, which should insinuate themselves into the tastes and blend with the refinements of ordinary life, and perpetually recur to the cultivated mind, with all that it

admires, or loves, or venerates in the world.

changes which he foresaw would prove ruinous, even to those who introduced them, than to exert his great powers in a manly spirit in the endeavour to counteract them.

13. If with these many brilliant and noble qualities Chateaubriand had united an equal amount of strength of mind and solidity of judgment, he 14. Contemporary with Chateauwould have been one of the most re-briand, and, like him, moulded both markable men that modern Europe in sentiment and opinion by the ever produced, and equally eminent events of the Revolution, was another in the cabinet as a statesman, as in writer, of the other sex, but at the the fields of literature as an author. very head of all that female genius But this was very far from being the has ever effected in the works of imacase: indeed, till the fleetness of the gination-MADAME DE STAËL. The racer is found combined with the daughter of M. Necker, and bred up strength of the charger, such a com- in an amiable but exaggerated idea of bination may be regarded as hopeless. his greatness as a statesman, she was, The very circumstance which consti- as a matter of necessity, early imbued tutes the greatness of the leaders of with all those ideas of human perfecthought-clearness and originality of tibility, and the unbounded virtue and conception-disqualifies them, in the intelligence of the middle and working general case, from being successful as classes of society, which, when practipractical statesmen, or even renders cally applied, as a matter of necesthem dangerous if they attempt it. sity brought on the Revolution. The They strive to carry their ideas into strength of this original bent was such execution too early, and when the that it survived all the experience of people are not prepared to adopt them; that convulsion, and consequently renthey forget how slowly original thought dered her political writings estimable, descends from the higher to the infe- rather from the genius they display, rior strata of society; that the bulk and the enthusiasm by which they of mankind are governed by the illus- are animated, than the judgment they trious few among their grandfathers, evince, or the facts on which they are not themselves. In addition to this, rested. Yet in cases where the influthey are in general distinguished by ence of this disturbing element.was an unbending disposition, and not un- less strongly felt, the native strength frequently irritability of temper, the of her understanding made her take a accompaniments or the failings of just view of human institutions; and strong mental powers and profound nowhere-not even in the writings of internal conviction, but the qualities our own political philosophers-are of all others least calculated to com- more profound views to be found on mand esteem or conciliate affection the working of the English Constituamong the majority of their country- tion than in the eloquent treatise on men. In addition to these defects, the French Revolution. which Chateaubriand had in no small degree, he was consumed by a thirst for applause, and an inordinate vanity, wholly unworthy of his genius, and which in a manner disqualified him for the lead in the practical concerns of men. His Mémoires d'outre Tombe, amidst many brilliant ideas and much eloquent writing, contain pitiable proofs of weakness in this respect. The same propensity led him on many occasions to sacrifice his usefulness to his love of approbation, and rather to sink down in gloomy apathy at the progress of

15. But the real greatness of Madame de Staël is to be found in her romances and critical writings: Corinne and De l'Allemagne have rendered her name immortal. Notwithstanding the strength of her understanding, her imagination was still stronger: she was a perfect woman in all her emotions; and she both felt and has portrayed the affections with a truth and beauty which, if it ever has been equalled, has assuredly never been surpassed. The tender feelings in her were heightened by all that ima