Christian population; and then, some day the minister will tell the Sultan that he must become a Christian; and he will do so." This, indeed, may not happen; and yet religious liberty may be thoroughly established; and if so, the greatest obstacle will be removed from the complete civilization of the Empire, and its indefinite advancement in all that constitutes true greatness and prosperity. Of the results of the recent war and the treaty of Paris, we have no room to speak; nor, of course, have they as yet developed themselves. The brave resistance at Kalafat, Silistria, and Kars; the battles of Alma, Balaclava, Inkerman, and Traktic bridge; episodes in the tremendous siege of Sebastopol, will enliven the brilliant pages of emulous historians, or perhaps form the theme of an epic whose pictures shall surpass, in wonder and fear, those of the "tale of Troy divine;" but the permanent and substantial influence on the prosperity of the people whose future we have briefly sketched, is yet enfolded in the dark drapery of the future. Some things, however, unless all accounts deceive us, seem to be assured: First, a greater freedom from unfavorable foreign interference. The intrigues of Russia and Austria have offered, heretofore, some of the greatest obstacles to the Ottoman reforms. The prestige of Russia is broken, and all excuse for her interposition with the Christian population of Turkey taken away. Secondly, an increased domestic stability from the union of various races under the protection of the same law, with the same commercial and civil privileges, and an equal law of the same country. And thirdly, religious toleration, which if heartily guarantied, must not only give social elevation and importance to large bodies in the Empire, but attach them more strongly to the government, in whose support they have an increased interest, and tend to the wide and unobstructed diffusion of Christian principles and habits.

We cannot suppose that the bigotry of an ignorant race will yield at once, or that substantial changes can be carried out without opposition and disappointment. But let us hope that, with better guarantees of peace and independ

ence assured to Turkey, her reforms may be encouraged, and her experiments fairly tried; so that, if she must be blotted out from the catalogue of nations, her children can reproach none but themselves.

ARTICLE V.

THE LIFE AND WORKS OF JEAN RACINE.1

By Professor James B. Angell, Brown University.

On the banks of the Ourcq, about fifty miles from Paris stands a town of two thousand inhabitants, called La FertéMilon. It is pleasantly situated on an amphitheatre of hills, which rise gently from the river-side. The stream winds far away through the rich meadows, and disappears between the distant wood-crowned summits. The whole valley presents one of those quiet pictures of rural happiness and peace, which the imagination so naturally paints to itself as the birth-place and home of a poet. There is little in the general appearance of the town to distinguish it from other old French towns, except an ancient castle of the twelfth century, the scene of many a wondrous tale, which the gossiping market-women hand down from generation to generation. But on the chief square stands a marble statue of Jean Racine, with whose lasting fame the name of La Ferté-Milon is indissolubly connected; for that humble town was his native place.

He was born on the twenty-first of December, 1639. his mother died when he was three years of age, and his father only two years later, he was left to the care of his

1 Oeuvres Complètes de J. Racine, avec les Notes de tous les Commentateurs. Quatrième edition publiée par L. Aimé-Martin. 7 Tomes. A Paris, ches Lefèvre, Libraire. 1825.

maternal grand-parents. The grandfather died when young Racine was only eleven years old, and the grandmother retired to the convent of Port-Royal-des-Champs, where two of her daughters were already living. The boy was sent to a school in Beauvais, to learn the rudiments of Latin; but, at the age of sixteen, he repaired to Port Royal, then the home of classical learning, and the stronghold of opposition to the Jesuits. There, in the retirement of a cloister, some of the ripest scholars and profoundest thinkers of France were devoting their lives to earnest study and the service of God. Their influence upon their favorite pupil may be said to have shaped his character, and decided his mental habits. "A dim religious light" colors the whole pathway of his life. His excessive timidity, his extreme sensitiveness, his earnest, if not erroneous, ideas of devotion, were all created or fostered in that quiet retreat. This, as we shall see, was in some respects unfortunate. His was a nature which needed to be strengthened by battling with the rough elements of actual life, rather than to be mellowed and enervated by the unbroken peace of monastic seclusion. But it was at Port Royal that he received that rare and finished culture which makes his works now classic. There he lived in that sweet communion with the tragic poets of ancient Greece, which seemed at times to have transformed his very nature; there he learned to transport himself back to the days when Hector loved and Ajax fought, and, catching the very spirit of the departed Greek, to body it forth in forms divine, like the Phèdre and the Iphigénie.

He

The notes which he made on the Greek authors show that he devoted himself to study with wonderful zeal. His chief pleasure was to roam away into the beautiful groves which surrounded the abbey, and to read over and over again the tragedies of Sophocles and of Euripides. knew them almost by heart. A taste, rather than a decided talent for poetry, distinguished this period of his life. His Latin versification is said to have been more felicitous than his French. Several of his Latin odes are preserved, but they give no promise of the Andromaque and the Bérénice.

His teachers and friends, by whom he was so beloved during his residence of three years at the abbey, could scarcely have foreseen that he would soon confer a higher honor on his scholastic home than even their affection and admiration could bestow upon him.

In 1660, the marriage of Louis XIV. furnished a theme to aspiring poets throughout the realm. Racine composed an ode, called The Nymphs of the Seine. His uncle, M. Vitart, showed it to Chapelain, one of the chief littérateurs of that age, who at once perceived in it the marks of genius. He recommended the young man to the favor of Colbert, the minister of finance. The result was, that the poet received from the king a present of a hundred louis d'or, and a pension of six hundred livres.

The poem has some merit, but it is too long, and several of the complimentary expressions are adulatory, bombastic, and foolish. It represents the river Seine as congratulating herself on the arrival of the queen, paints the joys of the nymphs that dwell in the waters of France, and the despair of the deserted nymphs of the Tagus. All the verses which he wrote at this period are filled with the exaggerated metaphors, and the artificial mythological allusions, which were then in fashion.

After reluctantly spending some time at Chevreuse in superintending the repairs of a castle, which he called his "Babylon," he was induced to go to Uzès, in Provence, to visit an uncle, a canon of St. Geneviève at Paris, who had an ecclesiastical charge. His friends hoped thus to turn his attention from poetry to theology, or to law. In his new home he found himself surrounded by an uncongenial community of coarse peasants, bare-footed villagers, and stupid priests. His uncle was a man of moral worth, and of some

1 See his Letters from Uzès. He says that one of the best preachers affirmed, in a sermon, that God would change a boy into a girl, before the child was born, rather than not humiliate the father who is too proud of his family.

It is amusing to read the Letters from Uzès in connection with Louis Racine's statement, that his father there carefully shunned all society, preferring the study of the Greek poets to the company of the ladies. It will be found that no great stoicism was required to withstand the social temptations to which he was exposed.

pretensions to scholarship. He easily won the esteem of his nephew, and persuaded him to dress in a sober suit of black, and to study the Christian Fathers. But Virgil and Ariosto seem to have occupied the mind of the young man almost as much as St. Thomas. His course was, however, satisfactory to the uncle, who wished to resign his place in his favor; but insurmountable obstacles prevented the young man from submitting himself to the tonsure.

monk, and the world gained a poet.

Uzès lost a

At last, weary of the town, and of the annoyances which he met on his road to ecclesiastical preferment, he returned to Paris, bringing with him an insignificant production of his pen, called The Bath of Venus, an unfinished drama on his favorite theme of Theagines and Charielea, and another on the Thébaide. This last play he completed during the following year, 1663. It was represented by the company of Molière, and was warmly received by the public.1

It will aid us in measuring the progress which Racine subsequently made in the dramatic art, if we observe with some minuteness the striking features of this piece, before we pass to the examination of some of his greater works. It is founded on the story of the hatred of Eteocles and Polynices, members of that wonderful family whose history furnished themes for the finest tragedies of antiquity.

1 Grimarest, in his Life of Molière, and Mrs. Shelley, in her Sketch of Racine, have given another account of the origin of the Thébaide, which has been generally believed, but which the statements of Louis Racine, and a letter of his father, alike show to be erroneous. The biographer of Molière says that the comedian was greatly annoyed, because a rival theatre secured all the new tragedies. Having learned that a new one was to appear there in two months, he resolved to have one ready for the same night. He remembered that, a few months previous, he had received a visit from a young man named Racine, who brought him a poem on Theagines and Charielea. He assembled his players, and told them to scour Paris, and find the poet. Their search was successful. Molière then submitted to him a plan of the Thébaide, and begged him to write an act a week. He accomplished the task. and so he began his dramatic career. Now Louis Racine says distinctly, in his Memoir of his father, when speaking of the visit to Uzès: "Il retourna à Euripide, et y prit le sujet de la Thébaïde, qu'il avança beaucoup, en même temps qu'il s'appliquait à la théologie;” and the father writes from Paris to M. l'Abbé Le Vasseur, in December, 1663: “On promet depuis hier la Thébaïde à l'hotel" (de Bourgogne). As that theatre was the rival of Molière's, Racine could not possibly think of giving it there at that time, if Molière had furnished the plan.