parison between paganism and true faith; the inquiry resolves itself into a consideration of Homer and Virgil on the one side, of Tasso and Camoens on the other. Thus the question, instead of being social and religious, becomes merely literary—a question of art and taste-nothing more. But, when we look to the beauty of his style, the gorgeous magnificence of his descriptions, the pomp and luxuriance of his phraseology, we are lost in admiration. M. de Chateaubriand must be acknowledged by all to be a most admirable painter, although sometimes guilty of exaggeration; but it may well be doubted whether he should be ranked among men of sound reasoning and profound thought. The true Christian thinker must be shocked to see the worship of our Saviour defended by flowers of rhetoric; to see paganism, with all its sensual idolatry, its voluptuous absurdities, favorably contrasted with the austere, pure, Christian religion, the eternal symbols of which are self-denial, suffering, and prayer. It is, indeed, matter of notoriety, that the ecclesiastics of Roman Catholic Europe universally expressed dissatisfaction with the very books that seemed to be written in the interest of the clergy.

If the works of M. de Chateaubriand had ever been free from this prevailing taint, the illustrious author's friends might contend that he adopted the only mode of making any religious impression on the country; that it was in fact necessary to appeal, in the first place, to the imagination of France. But during the whole of his life, and in all his works, he has been misled by poetry, imagination, and love of effect. Thus, in his Essay on English Literature, there are many sparkling paradoxical pages, written to prove that Luther had no genius, and that Roman Catholicism is more favorable to liberty than Protestantism. In his political life, he has generally been in opposition to the reigning power-a friend to the past state of things, and to visionary plans for the future. His works are a dazzling arsenal, where you find weapons for and against every system-in favor of and against liberty-for and against monarchy, constitutional freedom, and Bonapartism. His partiality for the wayward and eccentric leads him into the grossest errors. In his Etudes Historiques, for instance, he admits facts merely because they have a startling and original aspect: thus, he places among the Christian martyrs Apollonius Tyanæus, the most noted of charlatans, and allows the truth of the popular tradition which classes the Saviour of the world with the vile mob of pagan deities in the Pantheon of Tiberius.

While thus animadverting, justly, as we conceive, on the foi

MADAME DE STAEL-INFLUENCE OF HER WORKS.

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bles of Chateaubriand, we must not forget that he possesses many great and shining merits. The mere fact of his admirers forming an almost countless host, sufficiently demonstrates his superiority in certain essential qualities of the writer; but if we were called upon to state where, in our opinion, he shines with undiminished lustre, we should point to his political pamphlets, especially to those written since the revolution of 1830. These are masterpieces of stirring eloquence and searching logic-here he really shows himself the creator of a new language.

Madame de Staël may be ranked among those great poets who are poetical only in prose, and who have had the misfortune to be imitated by a multitude of inferior intellects. Superiority is indispensable for the style in which she wrote; it is insufferable when attempted by ordinary minds, but is invested with an almost bewildering charm when wielded by the gifted amongst men -by Fénélon or Rousseau, by Jeremy Taylor or Burke.

She

Madame de Staël was endowed with a force and vigor of understanding, a power of psychological analysis, which gleam brightly even in her novel of Corinne, amidst a mass of unnatural, affected scenes, almost inconsistent with common sense. stretched her faculties to seize and depict the secret and intimate emotions of the soul, pondering deeply on the religious impulse conveyed by Chateaubriand's devout and oriental imagery, and gave to the movement which he had already imparted to thought and feeling a powerful and happy stimulus. In short, she exercised an extraordinary influence over the literary revolution of the nineteenth century; nay, she, so eminently French in the chief characteristics of her mind and imagination, became the instrument whereby the sway of German genius has been partially rivetted in France. De l'Allemagne is the work by which Madame de Staël attained a literary supremacy in her own country; it, beyond all others, overpowered the baneful influence of that mocking spirit and depreciating illiberality, which in France hadlong tended to check and fetter genius, rather than to invigorate morals or good taste. In this result we perceive one of the most signal benefits accruing from those literary innovations, from which many others have doubtless sprung, various in nature and degree. Because many foul and noxious weeds may have followed endeavors to fertilize the literary soil of France, none assuredly would banish the fertilizing system; it is but the same condition of physical nature, where we behold the fairest flowers and most nutritious plants defiled and choked by the rank luxuriance of noisome or poisonous products. Would we, because

such may be among the consequences of fertility, reduce the soil again to barrenness? The latter state excludes all hopes of amelioration; the former, while it gives ground for apprehension, supplies also abundant reason for gratulation and hope.

Madame de Staël, then, had the merit of having a great share in accelerating the change from the stiffness and pedantry of the classical style, to, if we may make use of the usual denomination, the romantic school; although we are of those who, being friends to the literary innovations of France, and despising any frivolous distinctions, feel that the literature of France must be, not classical or romantic, but national, in order to reach its highest development; and already this stimulus to originality has been imparted from many sources.

With the Génie du Christianisme of M. de Chateaubriand, the De l'Allemagne of Madame de Staël, and the happy invasion of English literature that began in 1815, France entered the path to religious tendencies, to philosophy, and to grave and profound studies. But, when the literature of a country is a heap of ruins, reconstruction is slow and laborious, and in the interval necessarily elapsing until the new edifice be raised, there is too ample occasion for a multitude of misfortunes and follies. Accordingly, we find that the light literature of France has teemed for these twenty years with monstrosities indicative of a most diseased and convulsive state of feeling. That part of literature is unfortunately the best known abroad, and it presents a mass of wild and fantastic creations not unlike the Inferno of Dante. Europe at large has protested against the immoral tendencies of the French dramas and romances of the nineteenth century, which Goethe called with great justice the "literature of despair.” Light literature and the daily press in France have been of late years in such a state of degradation as could not be of long duration : the horizon is now clearing, and sanguine expectations may be indulged of amendment. "Of late years," says M. Sainte-Beuve,* "the public has been so often deceived; so many old things have been reprinted and given as new, so many flat and wretched productions, so many absurdities, have been highly praised in every way, that the public is positively become as inanimate as a lifeless body. A book is often composed of scraps from newspapers, with numerous blank intervals. There are many writers who adopt the form of dialogue to spare their brains, and many of the most fortunate ask two francs a-line in newspapers, and yet they

* Revue des Mondes, 1st September 1839.

REVOLUTION IN THE LITERATURE OF FRANCE.

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complain, contending that lord Byron was formerly more amply remunerated."

The literary profession has been made the prey of a youthful generation, which has undertaken to depict human life before having made the least acquaintance with it; to pronounce critical judgments, without possessing any qualification for forming an opinion; to lead and direct the public mind in detestable journals, reviews, and novels, when scarcely broken from the control of tutelage. What has been the consequence? There has arisen a turbulent race of youths, from eighteen to twenty-five years of age, ambitious, vain, frivolous, and indolent, swarming in all the walks of ephemeral literature, who, living in the heated atmosphere of forced and unnatural excitement, become worn out, the victims of premature decay and disappointment, in the flower of manhood, and thenceforth have no resource or solace but to bewail and denounce the ingratitude and ignorance of a country which has failed to remember and appreciate them. But, whilst drawing this stern and dismal picture, it behoves us to confine it within just limits, and to contrast it with a more cheerful sketch. It is with heartfelt satisfaction, then, we state that in the more lofty departments of literature, history, and philosophy, subjects which are least within the reach of the community at large, and, therefore, less generally pursued and studied, France can at the present time boast of a numerous body of profound thinkers. We must add, also, that in the province of the drama, but more especially of romance, there are many brilliant exceptions, full of promising hopes for the future. The rage for atrocious emotions, the degradation of these branches of literature, has not prevented the Christian and religious impulse given by M. de Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël from being continued and extended by many illustrious names: in the poetical world it has been promoted by MM. de Lamartine and Victor Hugo; in prose, by the Piedmontese Silvio Pellico, and by MM. Saintine, de Beaumont, and similar writers.

We have said that the progress of literary reformation is slow though inevitable. Let us, for example, cast our eyes on Germany, whose literature has so long taken an original character, but in the heart of which there still lurks a spirit of anarchy.

That literary regeneration now progressive in France began in Germany with Klopstock, during the latter half of the eighteenth century, and with the rise of Shakspeare's paramount influence. The German and Christian bard shook off the old French authority, and placed the poetry of his country on the solid basis of

religious feelings and national traditions. Science and faith were the wings that Klopstock gave to the poetry of his country. Next came Herder, with his comprehensive genius, who embraced all ages as if at a glance, thoroughly comprehended all civilizations, and threw a flood of light on the various phases in the existence of nations, a subject comparatively buried in the darkness of oblivion. These two great men were the first to enter the path which has since been made so wide by a glorious succession yet German literature is still defective in unity and harmony. The labors of the great Goethe were too varied. Germany has cause to regret that he failed to establish the foundations of a national school. "Our literature," says F. Schlegel, "may be compared to a dissonance which has not yet been resolved." At the same time, tracing the course and origin of influences, it is curious to find that Klopstock owed much of his inspiration to Milton, and that even Herder, in his views on history, is not so uniformly original as has often been maintained. A man forgotten during a century, because he had come too soon -Vico, has of late years claimed his share of glory; when the world had reached the necessary degree of maturity to appreciate his ideas, mankind awoke him from his tomb. Vico, in his Scienza Nuova, may be esteemed the originator of that general and eternal history of the human race, wherein is comprised not only all that relates to physical, moral, and social development, but also all that belongs to philosophy in its vastest compass.

In England, Cowper, that melodious and pensive bard, was the herald of the most complete literary revolution that has ever honored a country. His glowing and lofty muse gradually obscured the cold and didactic school of Pope and Johnson. In this instance, also, the work of literary reformation was slow; for it is always so in proportion as that of destruction is rapid. In Germany it has not yet reached its finite point; in France, too, it is aiming to attain that height of originality and grandeur which will, in the lapse of time, be assuredly compassed. There the causes of literary aberration were derived from the state of society itself, which, after a great political convulsion, almost necessarily received an evil impulse and direction; but many pure and gifted intellects escaped the contagion, who are doubtless to be ranked as belonging to the nineteenth century. It has been very erroneously asserted that the new school of romanticism emerged from the barricades of the revolution of 1830; nothing can be more preposterous. That revolution operated as a mere shifting of scenery on a stage; it may have given an electric