Malo; I had just left my mother there in tears; I could see the belfries and domes of the churches where I had prayed with Lucile, the walls, the ramparts, the forts, the towers, and the strand, where I had passed my childhood with Gesril and my other play-fellows. I was deserting my country, torn with revolution, and at a time when she had lost a man whose place no one could fill; I was going far away, in equal uncertainty as regarded my_country's destiny and my own. Who would meanwhile be lost to France or to me? Should I ever again see my country or my family? At nightfall a calm obliged us to lie by at the mouth of the roads; the lights in the town and in the watch-towers shone forth on the night; these lights, trembling beneath my paternal roof, seemed at once to smile on me, and to bid me adieu, illuminating the darkness around me, and the deep shadow of the water among the rocks. I carried with me nought but my youth and my illusions ; I quitted a world whose soil I had trodden, and whose stars I had counted, for a world where earth and sky were strangers to me. What was destined to befal me if I attained the aim of my voyage? Wandering by the hyperborean shores, the years of discord which have crushed so many generations in their thundering course, would have passed silently over my head; the face of society would have been renewed, and I absent. Probably I should never have had the misfortune to write; my name would have remained unknown, or would only have been linked with a peaceful celebrity, below the standard of fame, disdained by envy, and left to happiness. Who knows whether I should ever have re-crossed the Atlantic, whether I might not have fixed my dwelling, like a conqueror amidst his conquests, among the solitudes I had explored and discovered in risk and peril! But, no! I was destined to return to my country, to a change of misery-to be entirely different to what I had ever been before. This sea, in whose lap I was born, was now to become the cradle of my second life; I was borne on it, on this my first voyage, as on the bosom of my nurse, as in the arms of the confidante of first tears and my first pleasures. my The ebb of the tide, in default of a breeze, was gradually carrying us out to sea, the lights on shore grew fainter, and at last disappeared. Exhausted with reverie, with vague regrets, and hopes still more vague, I retired to my cabin, and lay down in my hammock, rocked to the sound of the waves caressing the sides of the vessel. The wind rose; the unfurled sails, till then hanging useless by the masts, spread themselves to meet it, and when I went on deck next morning, we were out of sight of France. Here my destinies change: as Byron says-" Again to sea!" Revised in December, 1846. London, from April till September, 1822. INTRODUCTION. On THIRTY-ONE years after my departure for America as a simple sub-lieutenant, I set out for London with a passport couched in the following terms :-" Laissez passer sa Seigneurie le Vicomte de Chateaubriand, Pair de France, Ambassadeur du Roi près sa Majesté Britannique, &c." (his Lordship Viscount de Chateaubriand, Peer of France, and Ambassador from the King to the King of Great Britain, &c.) There was no description of the person; my dignity was to convey a sufficient knowledge of my face everywhere. A steam-boat, ordered for my special use, conveyed me from Calais to Dover. On landing at Dover, April 5, 1822, a salute was fired from the forts. An officer, sent by the commandant, came to offer me a guard of honour. my arrival at the " Ship," the master and servants of the hotel received us with bare heads and profound bows; and the mayoress of the town sent me an invitation to a soirée, in the name of the ladies of the borough. Mr. Billing, one of the attachés to the embassy, awaited my arrival. A dinner of enormous dishes of fish and huge joints of beef was served up for his Excelleney the Ambassador, who had no appetite, and was not at all fatigued. The people gathered in crowds under the windows of the hotel, and made the air resound with huzzas. The officer from the garrison returned, and, in spite of my refusal, placed sentinels at the door. On the next day, after distributing a great deal of money belonging to the king my master, I set out for London in the midst of salvos of artillery, in a light carriage drawn by four beautiful horses, and driven at a rapid pace by two gaily dressed postillions. The servants followed in other carriages, and outriders wearing my livery accompanied the cortége. We passed through Canterbury, attracting the eyes of John Bull and of the persons in the various equipages which we met on the road. At Blackheath, a place formerly haunted by highwaymen, I found a new village; and soon after we came full in view of the immense cloud of smoke with which London is constantly covered. Having plunged into this gulf of coal-smoke as into the jaws of Tartarus, and being driven across the whole city, the streets of which I recognised, we alighted at the hotel of the embassy, in Portland Place. M. le Comte Georges de Caraman, the chargé d'affaires; the Vicomte de Marcellus and the Baron de Decazes, secretaries to the embassy, and other officials, received me with dignified respect. The whole of the ushers, porters, and servants of the hotel were stationed in the path. Cards were presented to me from the members of the king's government and the foreign ambassadors, who had been already informed of my approaching arrival. On the 17th of May, in the year of grace 1793, on my way to the same city of London, I landed at Southampton from Jersey. No mayoress paid any regard to my transit; the mayor of the town, Mr. William Smith, gave me a card of the route to London on the 18th, accompanied with an extract from the Alien Bill. The description given of me in English was as follows:Francis de Chateaubriand, French officer in the Emigrant army, five feet four inches high, brown hair and moustaches. The cheapest conveyance was taken along with some sailors on leave; the humblest places of refreshment were selected; and poor, ill, and unknown, I entered into the large and opulent city under the rule of Mr. Pitt; I went to an humble lodging at six shillings a week, in the upper-floor of a corn-dealer's house, in a small street running into Tottenham Court Road. Ah! Monseigneur, que votre vie, Another species of obscurity now overshadowed me in London; my political position threw my literary reputation into the shade; there was not a fool in the three kingdoms who did not prefer the ambassador of Louis XVIII. to the author of the Genie du Christianism. We shall see how the matter will turn out after my death, or when I shall cease to replace the Duke Decazes at the court of George IV.,-a succession as extraordinary as the other parts of my life. When in London as the ambassador of France, one of my greatest pleasures was to leave my carriage at the corner of a square and to walk through the lanes, which I had long ago frequented, and the populous and cheap suburbs, where misery takes refuge under the protection of similar suffering, the unknown abodes which I haunted along with my companions in distress, not knowing whether I might have bread for the morrow. What a contrast with the magnificent service of the embassy! At the doors of the humble and poor dwellings which I used to frequent I met none but strange faces. I no longer saw my fellowcountrymen wandering about, so easily recognised by their gestures, their walk, the style and cut of their dress; I saw no more of those martyr priests, with their low collars, large three-cornered hats, and long black worn-out coats, whom the English saluted as they passed. The eye now everywhere fell upon new streets, bordered with palaces, noble bridges, and well-planted promenades. The open fields, covered with herds of cows, near Portland Place, had been converted into Regent's Park; a buryingground, which was visible through my attic window, had disappeared in the midst of the buildings of a manufactory. As I went to Lord Liverpool's, it was with difficulty I could recognise the open space, where the scaffold of Charles I. had been erected; and new buildings, in total forgetfulness of memorable events, have been brought close upon the statue of Charles II. In the midst of insipid pomps, how do I regret that season of tribulation and tears, in which I mingled my sorrows with a colony of unfortunate exiles! So true is it that every thing changes, and that misfortune fades away even like prosperity! What is now become of my brothers in exile? Some are dead; others have gone through various destinies ; like me they have seen their neighbours and friends disappear from the scene; they have been less happy in their native land than they were upon a foreign soil. Had we not in this foreign land our meetings, our amusements, our fêtes, and above all, our youth? Mothers of families, and young girls who began life in adversity, brought home the fruits of their labour, in order to enjoy a festive dance of their native country. Attachments were formed, after the labours of the day, in the conversations of the evening, on Hampstead Heath or over the fields around Primrose Hill. In chapels, adorned by our hands amidst ruined buildings, we offered up our prayers on the 21st of January, and the anniversary of the queen's death, deeply moved by the funeral oration delivered by the emigrant cure of our village. We were accustomed to go along the banks of the Thames, sometimes to see ships laden with the riches of the world brought into the docks, and sometimes to admire the beautiful country houses at Richmond; we so poor-so destitute—in all these things enjoyed a real happiness. When I returned in 1822, instead of being received by my friend, trembling with cold-who opened the door of a common attic and addressed me in-familiar language- who lay upon his humble couch near mine, covered over with his scanty garments -the only lamp, the light of the moon, I now passed in a blaze of light, through two rows of servants, into a room where stood five or six respectful secretaries. Overwhelmed in my passage by the words, Monseigneur, my lord, your excellency, monsieur l'ambassadeur, I at length reach a drawing-room ornamented with silk and gold. I pray you, gentlemen, leave me! A truce to these my lords! what do you wish me to do for you? Go, laugh in your offices just as if I was not here! Do not pretend to make me believe there is any thing real in this masquerade! Do not think I am fool enough to imagine that I have changed my nature merely because I have changed my dress! The Marquis of Londonderry has just called, you say; the Duke of Wellington has left his card; Mr. Canning has also been here; Lady Jersey expects me to dinner to meet Mr. Brougham; Lady Gwydir hopes for my presence at ten o'clock, in her box at the opera; Lady Mansfield, at midnight, at Almack's. Mercy! where shall I hide myself? who will deliver me? who will snatch me away from these persecutions? Return! O charming days of my misery and solitude! Revive! companions of my exile! Come, my old comrades, with your camp-beds and pallets of straw; let us go into the country, into the little garden of an humble tavern, and drink a cup of tea seated on a wooden bench, and let us talk of our foolish hopes, and our ungrateful country; let us detail our troubles and our means of mutual assistance-how to succour some of our friends more necessitous than even ourselves. Such were my feelings and thoughts during the first days of my embassy in London. I could only escape from the annoyances which beset me under my roof by indulging in mournful recollections in Kensington Gardens. These gardens have undergone |