hunting the beaver with the sachem of the Onondagas, after chasing the stag with Louis XVI-lastly, the rhymester of the Almanach des Muses among the Iroquois, must per force be transformed, and, having departed with the idyl of the Amour de la Campagne, return with the Génie du Christianisme.

The visit to America was an absolute revelation for him. His classic recollections, cut up by the root, were effectually prevented from shooting up again, and the Cours de Littérature began to vanish from his sight in the damp dust of the Niagara. Only figure to yourself the astonishment of a literary man of the eighteenth century at sight of that strange gigantic Nature, full of life, gracefully terrible; and what a severe rebuke God gave before his face to the landscape gardener Le Notre. Dropped amidst blue herons, rose-coloured flamingoes, red woodpeckers, Chateaubriand might well smile when he thought of that old French bird Philomele, on which we live exclusively, ever since the mythologic era. His memory, still full of the heroes of Racine and Voltaire, having never seen savages but in the tragedy of Alzire, is it to be supposed that he did not start back at the sight of the first Siminole that appeared before him, with a pearl hanging from his nose, his ears pinked, and a stuffed owl upon his head?

It is, perhaps, to be regretted that he did not stay long enough to sweep his rhetoric away completely. Two years more, and Chateaubriand would have totally drowned his old formal notions in the Ohio. His too rapid passage through the hot country has produced a mixed style, in which the savage and the gentleman are at times equally apparent.

Why did he leave it so suddenly? what uneasiness caused him to renounce the splendours of the American nights? We cannot tell, and no doubt no more could he. There was just then a whirlwind in the air, which scattered to the four corners of the earth most of the men of that age-the Abbé Maury to Rome, Louis-Philippe to Elsineur, M. de Jouy to the court of Tippoo Saib, and M. de Chateaubriand to every country. Perhaps, like Réné, he heard a voice, saying, "What dost thou here alone in the recesses of the forests wasting thy days, neglecting all thy duties? Saints, you will say have buried themselves in deserts. Yes, they were there with their tears,

and employed in quenching their passions that time which thou art perhaps mis-spending in kindling thine. Whoever is endowed with strength ought to devote it to the service of his fellow-creature." Chateaubriand listened to this voice, and

recrossed the sea.

He has said since, that his object was to join Conde's army. It is possible. But scarcely was he in France-at the time when the revolution made Paris a vast focus of social decomposition, when the clubs were discussing, the people thundering, Mirabeau expiring; while the monarchy was escaping by a secret door, and the Republic bringing it back by the ear; while Sanson was swaggering on his throne in the Grêve, and going at night with washed hands to the theatre of the Vaudeville; at the hour in which all trembled, all turned pale, all were stiffened with terror-Chateaubriand went quietly in quest of a young lady whom he had previously seen twice or thrice; he spoke to her, she smiled upon him; he offered to marry her, and he did marry her. No sooner was he married than he emigrated.

From this moment is to be dated his real misery and his noviciate of man. Till this moment he had been but a poetical, elegant and melancholy dreamer; now behold him leaping with pinioned legs in the beaten track of prosaic life, famished, suffering in body, which had been thrown into a ditch like a dog, who has not a sou, who is thrust out of doors by the maids at an inn, covered with sores, plastered with mud, with straw twisted round his legs, like the most abject of beggars. Dying, he crawled away on hands and knees; he was placed in a baggage-waggon, with half his body hanging out of it: he was transferred to the hold of a vessel, and again thrown on shore. A man passing by accident, a good Samaritan of Guernsey, turned his face towards the sun, placed him with his back against a wall, and then left him.

But genius is tenacious of life. Some months afterwards, M. de Chateaubriand was in London. Retiring to an old house in the outskirts, at a crazy table, he commenced the Essai sur les Révolutions, and translated from the English for a bookseller. For eight years, he fared very hardly: his

clothes were threadbare; he never went out but in the evening. In his melancholy rambles, he was seen passing through the village of Harrow, at the time when the lively face and curly head of a boy-Lord Byron's-frequently appeared at the windows of the school.

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I like this poverty of Chateaubriand's, and even his timeworn nocturnal dress, which I should further have liked to see him keep for ever. Mr. Msaid to him one day, "There is but one real misfortune-the want of bread:" and the author of Réné had frequent occasion to think himself really unfortunate. He speaks in several places of the druggist and of the cutler who sold daggers, that lived close to his door. But these are only passing griefs, after which, resigned and pensive, we find him in the streets of London strolling at random, his eyes among the stars, or otherwise fully engaged before some palace devouring the riches displayed, and watching duchesses going in and coming out.

"As for high English society, humble exile that I was, I saw nothing but the outside of it. When there were drawing-rooms at Court, or at the Princess of Wales's, ladies passed, seated sideways in sedan-chairs, their prodigious hoops protruding from the door. These fair ladies were the daughters of those whose mothers the Duke de Guines and the Duke de Lauzun had adored, in 1822 the mothers and grandmothers of the little girls who danced at my residence in short petticoats to the tune of Collinet's galoubet."

The Essai being finished, he sold it to a worthy publisher in Gerrard Street. It is a work without head or tail, containing splendid pages and enormous absurdities—a parallel between Alexander and Pichegru, fragments of a Sanscrit poem, a denial of the authenticity of the New Testament, and a fable by Mancini-Nivernois, entitled Le Papillon et l'Amour, into the bargain. All this was highly relished in England.

Subsequently, that is to say, thirty years later, Chateaubriand himself pronounced judgment with unexampled harshness on this production. The notes which he has added to it in the complete edition of his works, concur to render this work one of the most singular monuments of literature. "I cannot

suffer too much," he says at the commencement, "for having written the Essai; 'tis a series of idiotisms and silly impieties, ravings and impertinences. What did I mean to say? In truth, I know not. No doubt, I thought myself profound. How I arranged the language! what a barbarian!" Sometimes there is an ironical approbation. "Not so much amiss for a little philosopher in jacket,” and a thousand other graceful epithets, which make us, in spite of ourselves, feel compassion for the author, and be ready to beg pardon of M. de Chateaubriand for himself. But, with the lash in his hand, the author of the Essai turns round upon you, and replies like a woman in Moliere, "Well, and if it is my own pleasure to be scourged?"

Chateaubriand lived upon the Essai till the beginning of the nineteenth century, when he returned to France clandestinely, and under a false name, as if striving to smuggle his genius into the country.

III.

'More romancas in A! A deal of time I have, forsooth, to read all your trash!" Such was the exclamation of the First Consul, one day, when his sister, Madame Bacciochi, had called to see him with a small volume in her hand. That small volume was Chateaubriand's Atala.

To describe the stunning clamour that was raised about this book would be difficult. Its author was enveloped in glory, and admitted into all the salons. He was translated in his turn-he who had translated so much. His work furnished subjects for pictures, parodies, caricatures, panegyrics, epigrams. All Europe was agitated by it. Travelling subsequently in Turkey, at the door of a mosque where he had declined giving his name, Chateaubriand saw a Mussulman running towards him, and was saluted by him with the exclamation, "Ah, my dear Réné, and my dear Atala!" It was not correct, but it was flattering.

Atala has continued to dwell in the recesses of our youth, like a fond recollection, blended with the most touching things of Catholicism and of Love, like the distant sound of the organ. The present generation read it just after its first

communion, upon the corner of a pianoforte, at a time when all Paris was thronging to admire Gerard's pictures, after a review held by General Molitor. Still to this day, in all times, under all points of view, Atala continues to be a delicious fantasy, full of extraordinary reflexions, and which, for the local fidelity of the style, if not for the deep pathos of the subject, leaves Paul and Virginia behind. There are chapters coloured and graceful as the plumage of the ara. It is the first of novels in point of form; for Chateaubriand is the first that made a tool of his pen, and a solid substance of his language.

After all, it was but a trivial prelude to the Génie du Christianisme; a short anthem before the grand mass. Divested of all his philosophical opinions, Chateaubriand aspired with all his energies to the initiative of a religious reaction. He could not have chosen a better moment. France, besotted with wine by the Directory, besotted with blood by the rule of Terror, yesterday a fury, to-day a Bacchanal, weary of the butcheries of the Place de la Révolution, was completely debasing herself in the orgies of the Palais Royal. After eating anchovy salad out of the sacred pyx, she went to Meot's to intoxicate herself with wine, a bottle of which he would not have given for all the assignats in the world. She then stopped to lounge with the befeathered nymphs of the Perron. So Bonaparte had found her, so Chateaubriand had surprised her. One evening they two took her each by an arm, and led her into a more decent track. Next day, on her awaking, one of them made her sign the Concordat, the other placed in her lap the Génie du Christianisme.

Imagine a vase of myrrh overturned on the steps of a blood-stained altar, and you will have the impression produced by the appearance of that holy book. Tears of joy started into the eyes of every mother. People were almost ready to adorn the fronts of their houses, to strew the pavement of the streets with flowers, as for the entry into Jerusalem. Who is then this young man, said they to themselves, that piously brings back the God of his fathers in a fold of his cloak?

France loves God: that love cannot be taken from her. Family and religion, ye are invincible, for ye are the two