XVI. 69. stretch was condemned as unwise, it was never stigmatized as unconstitutional by the Liberal party. When the undefined powers 1 Ante, C. vested in the Crown by the 14th article of the Charter had been thus explained and understood by the subsequent practice of all parties, and especially the Liberal, on so many occasions, it is impossible to say that the ordonnances which induced no greater change than the preceding ones had done were illegal. They might well be condemned by the Liberals as unwise and inexpedient; but their own previous conduct had shut them out from the plea that they were a violation of the constitution. Coups d'état, how violent soever, have in truth, ever since the Revolution, been part of all French constitutions. The 14th article of the Charter only recognized a dictatorial power in the sovereign, which previous as well as subsequent experience has proved to be indispensable. 136. Reasons d'état are in ed property collected round the throne, and It had become so, in consequence of the mag-gress of the convulsion, weak and ir- 137. resolute toward its close, the conduct Conduct of of Charles X. was dignified and mag- the King. nanimous when the crisis was over, and Providence, as it appeared to him, had cast him down from the throne as a punishment for his sins. In this respect he was as superior to Napoleon in adversity, as he had been inferior to him in prosperity and in the previous conduct of the struggle. There was no fretting against the stroke of fate, no repining against destiny when its decree was once irrevocably pronounced. No longing after past greatness, no womanish anxiety for the retention of title when the reality of power was gone, disgraced the last days of the fallen monarch. In silence and meekness he bowed to the stroke of fate; magnanimously, but yet simply, he descended from the throne of his fathers. The discrowned heir of a long line of kings stands forth at Holyrood in bright contrast to the dethroned soldier of fortune at St. Helena-a memorable proof of the eternal truth, that it is in the heart that the real issues of life are to be found, and that the highest intellectual gifts fail in inspiring that equanimity in adversity which religion confers upon the humblest of her vota 1. Great effect of the Revo lution on CHAPTER XVIII. LITERATURE OF FRANCE DURING AND AFTER THE RESTORATION. cause of disaster in event, came to discover the sources of present suffering in the errors of former opinion. The passion for innovation had worn itself out; it had led to its natural results in an immense augmentation of human suffering, and produced a reaction as violent, in consequence, as the former enthusiasm in its favor. The love of novelty in men of original thought was succeeded by its direct opposite, the reverence for antiquity; and in the highest class of minds the study of the olden time came to supersede the reveries of a dreamy futurity. The ancient faith and the ancient times resumed their sway over the leaders of thought; and while Chateaubriand portrayed to an admiring world the genius and beauties of Christianity, Guizot in a philosophic spirit traced its historical blessings; and the two Thierrys investigated, with antiquarian learning and critical acuteness, the most important epochs in the dark ages. If the literature of England after the war gave | in delusion in thought the remote but certain proof of the animating influence of the contest in drawing forth the national talent, and giving a more lofty and dignified tone to the national the literature thought, the same effect was conof France. spicuous in a still more remarkable degree in the sister kingdom. The literature of France during the Restoration presents one of the most brilliant epochs of which modern Europe can boast-certainly inferior to none which have adorned the annals of that celebrated country. If it was less measured than that of Louis XIV., it was more varied; if it exhibited less of the rules of art, it had more of the originality of nature. The dreadful tragedies with which the period commenced, the unparalleled glories by which they were followed, the mournful catastrophe in which they terminated, had roused every feeling of the human heart, and called forth every power of the human mind. The principles of composition, the maxims of taste, the rules of art, which had been | all-powerful in a former period, were at once broken through by the wail of nature. Her passions, roused to the very highest pitch, absolutely required vent; they burst through the conventional restraints of ancient days with the force of a deluge. Then was seen how strongly both the thought and composition of a country are impressed by the events which have agitated it, and how indelible were the traces which the debacle which had passed over the world had left in the human mind. 2. The great characteristic of the new school of French literature was mingled ReacIts distin- tion and Romance. The experience guishing they had had, the sufferings they had features. undergone, had taught them the former; the thirst for excitement, the besoin of strong emotions, had rendered necessary the latter. The days had gone past when the theatre was to resound only with the pompous eloquence of Corneille, the refined tenderness of Racine; they were equally over when history could find vent in the sonorous periods of M. Fontanes, or the graceful flatteries of the Empire. The visions of Rousseau had expired, at least in all thoughtful minds, with the blood of Robespierre; the dreams of Sièyes with the despotism of Napoleon. The universal suffering which had been undergone had produced a universal reaction against the political measures, a general distrust in thoughtful minds of the principles of the Revolution. A quarter of a century in time had given centuries of experience; and the great moral lesson was not lost upon the gifted spirits of that eminently intellectual people. The multitude in towns, indeed, still blindly adhered to the doctrines of the Revolution, and execrated its sufferings without abjuring its principles; but the thinking few, who went beyond the surface of things, and sought 3. Violent an schools. But it was not unmixed good which resulted from this reaction; the usual proportion of good and evil, of truth and falsehood, appeared in the min- tagonism gled streams of visionary ideas and between experienced knowledge which flow- the opposite ed forth on the unlocking of the fountains of thought. The dreams of the Revolutionary school, the prospects of social amelioration which they had presented, were too flattering to the great body of the people, too charming to all inexperienced minds, to be relinquished without a struggle as violent in the realms of thought as had taken place in the tented field. Hence there arose opposite schools at this period in France, each of which was headed by leaders of the highest abilities, and whose works have taken a lasting place in the literature of their country and of Europe. The one supported the ancient faith and the ancient institutions, the other the modern ideas and the modern speculations. The former at this period, indeed, numbered all the greatest men in its ranks; and its doctrines were too strongly sup ported by recent experience to admit of their be ing rejected by many who had minds capable of discrimination or reflection. But no one need be told that the great majority in all ages and countries have neither the one nor the other; nor is it less certain that the bulk of those who read in every period are regulated in their opinions, not by the great of their own, but the great of the preceding age. It takes a generation or two for the light of new ideas to flow down from the clevated summits where it first strikes, to the plains and valleys below. Hence the wide gulf between the principles of the two great schools into which France was divided on the termination of the Revolution, and a degree of antagonism between the opinions of the urban masses and the ideas of the highest class of writers, fraught with melancholy presages for future times. But while there was this wide difference be4. tween opinions on political or phiCharacter of losophic subjects in France in the the romantic lighter branches of literature, no school. such struggle was visible. The classical school was at once and universally superseded by the romantic. On the theatre, in poetry and romance, the same change was conspicuous. The stately verses of Corneille, indeed, were still the subject of general admiration; the exquisite pathos of Racine was felt as charming as in the days of the Grand Monarque. But no more Corneilles or Racines appeared. The necessity of event, the thirst for excitement, the passion for tragic incident, swept over the world with the force of a deluge. It invaded and speedily overwhelmed every department of literature, every branch of thought, every class of society. Not only no one withstood, but no one attempted to withstand it. The strongest supporters, the most devoted adherents of the ancient ideas, adopted the new system in composition even more readily, and with more effect, than their opponents: it was their boast that they would combat their enemies with their own weapons -wound them by a shaft out of their own wing. Hence the communication of a new and as yet unknown charm to compositions intended to stem the progress of innovation. The old thoughts were clothed in new language; the old doctrines 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 skillful 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. 5. of imagination. But in works addressed to the imagination merely, and intended to amuse or Pernicious excite the great body of readers, the character of pernicious influence of the overturntheir works ing of all principle by the Revolution, and the incessant craving for excitement which its catastrophe had produced, was painfully conspicuous. There no reaction was to be seen against evil; on the contrary, the most unreserved obedience to its dictates 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 labors profitable, lay, of bending to the prevailing tastes, and pandering to the drama. 6. 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 senses or excite the passions. So 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. But if this is true of nearly the entire school of modern French novels, what shall be said of its drama, or the Corrupt charnumerous pieces which have ap- acter of their peared 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 among 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 honor, have been systematically set at naught. To interest the feelings and excite the passions has been 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 fiction. 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 victorious in the strife which so long existed between them; and that to the tragedies of the former has been awarded the immortality of virtue-to the melodrama of the latter the ephemeral success of vice. 7. briand. CHATEAUBRIAND is universally, and by all parties, recognized as the first writer in France during the Restoration, and Chateausecond to none that ever appeared even in that intellectual land. The style of his compositions is very remarkable, and singularly descriptive of the influences which were at work in its formation. It breathes at once the spirit of the olden time and the aspirations of the Revolution: it is redolent of the piety of the Crusader not less than the ardor of the Republican. He has all the gallantry of chivalry in his heart, all the devotion of loyalty in his bosom, but not a few of the dreams of republicanism in his head. He himself said, that he was "Aristocrat du cœur, mais democrat par pensée;" and the spirit of his writings, 1 Chateaub., Mémoires d'Outre 160. 8. not less than the tenor of his actions, prove that |ed and enthusiastic turn of his mind; and this, the combination, how unusual soever, really as in all other persons of a similar temperaexisted in his case. The descendant of an an- ment, has not only impressed his imagination cient family in Brittany, having had his earliest with all the varied images which have at differimpressions formed by his mother, a woman of ent times been reflected on his mind's retina, uncommon abilities, in the solitude of the fam- but deeply affected his thoughts, by all the reily château, which was washed by the waves flections which genius could gather or combine of the Atlantic Ocean, he was rising into man- from the varied events or objects which have hood when he beheld his nearest relations cut been presented to it during an eventful career. down by the scythe of the Revolution, and was All that he has seen, or read, or heard, seems himself driven, bereft of every thing, in the ex- present to his mind, whatever he does, and tremity of poverty, to seek refuge in London, wherever he is. Master of immense informawhere he maintained himself for tion, thoroughly imbued at once with the learnseveral years with great difficulty ing of classical and the traditions of Catholic by his pen, and where his earliest times, gifted with a retentive memory, a poetic Tombe, i. 5, composition, the Essai Historique, fancy, and a painter's eye, he brings to bear was first ushered forth to the world.' upon every subject the stores of erudition, the His ardent spirit, however, longed for action, images of imagination, the charms of varied and, debarred by the Revolution from scenery, and the eloquence of impassioned feelSketch of service in his own country, he sought ing. Hence his writings display a reach and his life. a vent for it in the excitements and variety of imagery, a depth of light and shaddangers of foreign travel. His imagination had ow, a vigor of thought, and an extent of illusbeen strongly excited by the hopes of discover-tration, to which there is, perhaps, nothing coming a northwest passage; and he set out from parable in any other author, ancient or modEngland, supported by borrowed money, to ern. He illustrates the genius of Christianity engage in the perilous adventure of exploring by the beauties of classical conception; inhales it by land. He was not so fortunate, and in the spirit of ancient prophecy on the shores of truth had not the means, which have since the Jordan; dreams on the banks of the Eurogiven such celebrity to other names; but lit-tas of the solitude of the American forests; conerature has no cause to regret his failure as a geographical discoverer, for his travels in Canada have given birth to many of the most brilliant images, and not the least interesting of his works-his Travels in America, and beautiful tale of Atala and Réné. After the accession of Napoleon to the consular throne had opened to him the theatre of his own country, he returned to Paris, and published his immortal Génie du Christianisme. The fame which this great work immediately acquired, attracted the notice of Napoleon, who was always on the look-out for genius in any department; and he had just accepted from him the situation of Minister in the Republic of the Valais, when the execution of the Duke d'Enghien took place; and Chateaubriand had the courage to hazard his own life, by resigning his appointment. Owing to the intercession, however, of Napoleon's sister, the Princess Eliza, he escaped that peril, and was permitted to leave France. He spent the time of his exile in a pilgrimage to Greece and the Holy Land, the fruit of which is to be seen in his charming Itinéraire, and brilliant romance of Les Martyrs, in both of which the glowing skies and deathless associations of the East are portrayed with graphic power and a poetic spirit. The wrath of Napoleon having passed away, as it generally did, after the first burst was over, he was enabled to return to Paris, where 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 2 Chateaub., Bourbons, opened to him, after a life Mémoires, of toil and poverty, the reward and trasts 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 ardor 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 fount ains where it has ever been poured forth to mankind, and delights us His beauequally by the accuracy of each indi- ties. vidual picture, and the traits of interest which he has combined from every quarter where its footsteps have trode. With the instinct of genius, he discovers at once the grand or the charming alike in every action he recounts or object he describes, and never fails to throw over the whole the glow of his own rich and impassioned mind Nihil quod tetigit non ornavit."* But while every page of his writings reveals in thought or expression the genius by which he was inspired, it betrays also the peculiar predilections to which he was inclined. Ile was a man of the olden time, stranded by fate on the storm-beaten shores of the Revolu tion. His sympathies were all with the feudal and Catholic, but his intercourse was with the modern and freethinking world. This tendency appears not less clearly in the character of his writings than the tenor of his thoughts. His style seems formed on the lofty strains of Isaiah, the promotion of political power.2 or the beautiful images of the Book of Job, The previous events of Chateaubriand's life more than on all the classical or modern literamay be read in almost all his writings, ture with which his mind is so amply stored. His char- as clearly as in the very interesting Me- He is admitted by all Frenchmen, of whatever acter as a moirs which he has bequeathed to the party, to be the most perfect master of their world as the record of his eventful ca-language in the period in which he lived, and His great characteristic is the impassion- "Naught has he touched and not adorned." i. vi. 9. writer. reer. 11. His influ viving the spirit of 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. To this writer must be ascribed the principal share in the great moral revolution which characterized France in the ence in re- half-century which succeeded the Revolution-the reaction in favor of Christian Christianity. It was in the disastrous ity. 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, who followed the stream of public opinion. Amidst a deluge of infidelity, he bent the force of his lofty mind to restore the fallen but imperishable faith of his fathers. In early youth, indeed, he was at first carried away by the fashionable scepticism of the times, and in his Essai Historique, which he published in London in 1792, in which the principles of virtue and natural religion are unceasingly maintained, he seems to have doubted whether the Christian faith was not crumbling with the institutions of society, and speculated what system of belief was to arise on its ruins. But misfortune, the great corrector of the errors and vices of the world, soon changed these faulty views. In the days of exile and adversity, when by the waters of Babylon 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 purified by suffering and cleansed by the azonizing 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 modern 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. The peculiarity of the contest in which this 12. great man was thus involved, both exPeculiarity plains the object he had in view in of his style his writings, and the new style of lansubjects, guage and species of imagery which and its he introduced into religious composiapology. tion. The days were gone past, and he knew it, when Rome could speak, at least to on religious the highly-educated portion of mankind, in the voice of authority, or in which a submissive world would receive on its knees whatever pontifical pride or priestly cupidity might prescribe for belief. It was the assumption of these powers, the spreading and drawing close of these chains, he well knew, which had occasioned the general revolt against the Romish Church. Equally in vain would it be to address a world heated by the passions and roused by the sufferings of the Revolution, in the calm and argumentative 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 traveling, 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 traveler, 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. 13. But If with these many brilliant and noble qualities Chateaubriand had united an equal amount of strength of mind His defects. and solidity of judgment, he would have been one of the most remarkable men that modern Europe ever produced, and equally eminent in the cabinet as a statesman, as in the fields of literature as an author. this was very far from being the case: indeed, till the fleetness of the racer is found combined with the strength of the charger, such a combination may be regarded as hopeless. The very circumstance which constitutes the greatness of the leaders of thought-clearness and originality of conception-disqualifies them, in the general case, from being successful as practical statesman, or even renders them dangerous if they attempt it. They strive to carry their ideas into execution too early, and when the people are not prepared to adopt them; they forget how slowly original thought descends from the higher to the inferior strata of society; that the bulk of mankind are governed by the illustrious few among their grandfathers, not themselves. In addition to this, they are in general distinguished by an unbending disposition, and not unfrequently irritability of temper, the accompaniments or the failings of strong mental powers and profound internal conviction, but the qualities of all others least |