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poetical reputation. M. de Lamartine thinks it his duty and destiny to abandon poetry for politics; and M. Victor Hugo likewise sadly neglects his lyrical genius, to follow his favorite idea of creating a Shakspearian drama. They both strangely mistake their mission.

The fact is, that, to all appearance, we are witnessing the decline of poetry. Prose is gaining ground every day, and is in preference adopted by poetical men; in their hands the prose of the heart enlightens, touches, nay, arouses and teaches, perhaps more than poetry. But is it to be assumed as a consequence that poetry will cease to flourish? No: experience belies the conclusion; reactions always follow; and though England and Germany, with their rich stores, may perhaps look on with indifference, it cannot be so with France. France possesses at present no epic poem; but it is almost certain that one must eventually emerge from her vast and confused literary world. After her heroic history—her epic spirit for these last forty years-the generations that follow will inherit all that bygone efforts and innovations have produced; and the great, everrevered models of other nations being daily more known and studied, and grafted on the eternal bard of Greece, there will surely result a national poetic monument, worthy of the nation and of its history.

The literature of France, in its present state, is altogether incoherent and imperfect. Some of its branches are in a splendid state of progress, others fearfully wan and defective. The drama and romance, for instance, are a perfect chaos. Modern French literature is a strange, fantastic, wild medley of light and gloom; the consequence of the state of society itself, which is yet unsettled, tumultuous and febrile, as we have already observed, after a great political but ill-directed movement. Nevertheless, from out this vortex many powerful, noble, and gifted intellects will undoubtedly arise. The labors of divers contemporaries are in harmony with the epoch, it is true; but taste will be purified by experience; others will be hailed at a future period who are known to be devoted to the highest subjects of human interest; and as art is multiform, and as none of its expressions are to be suppressed when they emanate from nature, others again will rise, but isolated in their thoughts, and devoted to calm and measured beauty, to the perfection of thought, and the excellency of language.

Finally, we believe that France is advancing towards her ultimate destiny, which promises to be as great as her past suf

ferings, commotions, and hopes. She is advancing towards it through an era of trials-a period of expiation, perhaps, during which human ideas and general intellect are wavering in uncertainty. Her literature is the perfect image of the national anxiety and anarchy. We see in it individual thought reaching its utmost limits, accompanied by various excesses, owing to the absence of a recognized barrier, of a social bar and spirit of unity, that would keep it in its proper and befitting confines; but times of unity, of prosperous fertility and perfection, will follow.

France, social, literary, and political, in her present statewith her efforts to attain new forms-a complete regeneration adapted to her wants and genius-reminds me of the Satan of Milton, marching through the dark abyss to discover a new world. He is assailed by feelings of discouragement; fantastic apparitions rise before him; he rolls in the abyss, to rise and roll again; but at last he sets his foot on the gigantic bridge that leads from the realm of darkness to that of light; and then in those dark regions a distant ray shines:

"At last the sacred influence

Of light appears, and from the walls of heaven
Shoots far into the bosom of deep night
A glimmering dawn."

He then sees the pendent new world hanging in a golden chain, fast by the empyreal heaven, "with opal towers and battlements adorned of living sapphire;" after wandering again, he reaches the new creation, and

"Then from pole to pole

He views in breadth, and without longer pause
Down right into the world's first region throws
His flight precipitant, and winds with ease
Through the pure marble air his oblique way
Amongst innumerable stars."

CHAPTER SECOND.

INTELLECTUAL PHILOSOPHY.

Intellectual Philosophy at the close of the Eighteenth century.-Physiological or Sensualist School. - Cabanis-De Tracy-Broussais.-Theologic or Catholic School.-M. De Maistre-his Works.-De Lamennais-De Bonald-their Works. -M. De Ballanche-Character of his Works.-Le Baron d'Eckstein.—Formation of the Eclectic School.-M. Laromiguiere.-M. Royer-Collard.-The Scottish School.-M. Cousin-his Development of Eclecticism.-Philosophic Elements of Human Nature.-Outlines of M. Cousin's Doctrine-his Analysis of the Mind, Reason, Ideas, etc.-Observations on the Subject.-Destiny of the Eclectic Philosophy.-Merits and Genius of M. Cousin.-M. Jouffroy and his Works.-M. Damiron, etc.-Refutations of the Eclectic Philosophy.-M. Pierre Leroux-his Philosophy.-The Book entitled Refutation de l'Eclectisme-its Arguments and Defects.-Admirable Advantages of Intellectual Philosophy, and of the Eclectic School.

IN France, during the eighteenth century, the most noxious philosophical errors held sway-a perfect contrast being offered in that respect to the following and present era, which is, as will be seen, and as can be easily demonstrated, wise, salutary, and religious, in its general philosophical tendencies. The revival of physiological principles in metaphysics some years ago, fostered with great zeal and eloquence by the learned Broussais, was but transient. It is not our intention to expatiate on the physiological school; the outlines we have given of that doctrine will suffice, the more so, as it may be said, we repeat, to have expired with Broussais two years ago. We will merely say a word on the group of eminent men whose works rendered it popular during the first part of the nineteenth century.

Cabanis, an eminent physician, had been the friend of Condillac, whose system he embraced, and considerably enlarged. His celebrated work, Rapport du Physique et du Moral, published in 1802, is one of the ablest productions of this school, and is written with remarkable elegance; at the time of its appearance, it was greeted with almost universal acclamation. It propounds a complete physiological explanation of the moral faculties of man. Cabanis died in 1808. About eight years after his death, his celebrated friend Destutt de Tracy completed his illustrations of the connection between the physical and moral faculties of

man, and further extended the domain of the system, by the publication of Elements d'Idéologie. De Tracy became the metaphysician of the school of which Cabanis had been the physiologist. His Elements commanded at the time a general and rapturous admiration, although, now that Condillacism has fallen into disrepute and oblivion, they are almost forgotten. We should, nevertheless, vainly seek elsewhere for greater compass of language, or more admirable skill in reasoning, albeit on false principles; and the temporary popularity of this school is easily accounted for, when we find its doctrines expounded and illustrated by such eminent teachers, at a time too when brilliant discoveries in natural and mathematical science attracted, in a more than ordinary degree, public attention. It is, at the same time, undeniable, that physiological principles, professed and upheld by men of such powerful intellects as Cabanis and De Tracy, have been advantageous to the cause of philosophical inquiry; for thereby psychologists have become accustomed to the minutest analysis and investigation of details: as, for instance, in our own time, M. Jouffroy teaches us to know that the functions or operations of the soul may be examined and analyzed with as much nicety as anatomical facts. This merit of the physiological school was owing principally to M. de Tracy; and the illustrious Schelling was undoubtedly alluding to it, when he spoke of the gratitude with which the learned world must ever honor the memory of M. de Tracy. All the works of M. de Tracy, from the one above named, and including those on political economy, down to his last, Commentaires sur “L'Esprit des Lois” de Montesquieu, published in 1828, bear the same stamp of superiority and profound research.

A system that reckoned Volney among its leaders could not long remain popular, for the religious tendency of the age was arrayed in opposition to it. Volney was endowed with brilliant faculties, undoubtedly; his whole life was devoted to study, and he evinced both his thirst of knowledge and his courage by braving the privations and fatigues of a desolate journey in the remote east; for many months, with a view of mastering the key to oriental dialects, he remained immured in a convent on Mount Lebanon, partaking the coarse and scanty diet of its ascetic inmates; and, after all this, he returned to Europe and told his countrymen, in his book Les Ruines, that all religions were a mere human invention; and in his Catéchisme, that the duties of man have no other basis than self-preservation—that is to say, egotism! Such principles, carried to an extreme repugnant to

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the innate convictions of the human mind, provoked an outburst of indignation and hostility, and eventually proved fatal to the physiological school.

The physiological school had also been successfully vindicated, during its prosperity, in the brilliant and eloquent lectures of Garat in the Ecoles Normales, and strengthened by the works and system of Dr. Gall; but after a while it began gradually to decline, and ultimately disappeared with the formation of the catholic and eclectic schools. For many years it had existed only in the remembrance of men, merely shooting forth an occasional flash, instantly to vanish-excepting perhaps in the case of M. Azais, whose works and lectures acquired a partial and temporary influence-when it was suddenly revived with startling clamor. In the height of the triumph of eclecticism, a physician of genius, who had followed the French armies from Madrid to Moscow, Dr. Broussais, broke into the philosophical arena with the fury of a man too late for the combat: at first he amazed all by the eloquent violence, the unexampled impetuosity, and fierce earnestness of his principal work, published towards the end of 1828, and entitled De l'Irritation et de la Folie, wherein the physical and moral faculties are established on the basis of physiological induction. It involved even more than a renewal of the system of Cabanis, infusing into it new life, decking it in more vivid colors, and expressing the loftiest disdain for all reigning doctrines.

Broussais, when presenting himself as the restorer of the school of Locke, Condillac, Cabanis, and De Tracy, went beyond his celebrated predecessors. In his eyes the physical structure of man constitutes the whole of man; he does not distinguish a spiritual element as distinct from the material substance in his idea, not only all instincts, all passions, all thoughts emanate from the viscera, the nerves, and the brain, but in them also reside all causes; thus, with Broussais, sensibility is an effect of the nerves, passion is the action of the viscera, intellect a cerebral secretion, and self-consciousness a general faculty of living matter. The work was ably reviewed and severely criticised, but with exemplary temper and calm reason, by the Duke de Broglie in the Revue Française, and also by M. Damiron in his essay on French Philosophy during the Nineteenth Century. Broussais's explosion startled for a moment the thinking world of France, but it failed to leave any lasting impression; things quickly reverted to their former state, and the great physician's renown shrank within the limits of the Ecole de Médicine.