London, from April till September, 1822.

LITERARY FUND ATTIC IN HOLBORN FAILURE OF MY HEALTH

VISITS TO PHYSICIANS-ÉMIGRÉS IN LONDON.

A SOCIETY has been formed in London for rendering assistance to literary men, English and foreign. This society invited me to attend its annual meeting; I considered it a duty to accept the invitation, and to become a subscriber to its funds. The chair was occupied on the occasion by his Royal Highness the Duke of York ;-on his right hand were seated the Duke of Somerset, Lords Torrington and Bolton, whilst I was placed on his left. There, too, I met my friend Mr. Canning; the poet, orator, and illustrious minister, made a speech, given in all the newspapers of the day, which contains the following passage, too complimentary to myself:-" Although the person of my noble friend, the Ambassador of France, is but little known here, his character and writings are well known throughout the whole of Europe. He began his career by an exposition of the principles of Christianity; he has continued it by defending those of monarchy; and he has just arrived in this country, to help to unite two states together by the common bonds of monarchical principles and Christian virtues."

It is many years since Mr. Canning, himself a literary man, took instructions in London on politics from Mr. Pitt; it is almost as long since I began, in obscurity, to write in the capital of England. Having both arrived at offices of great distinction, we here were joined together in a society dedicated to the duty of giving aid to literary men in misfortune. Is it the affinity of our greatness, or the relation of our sufferings, which has brought us together? What have the Governorgeneral of India and the Ambassador of France to do at a banquet of the suffering Muses? The men there seated are George Canning and Francis de Chateaubriand, remembering their past adversity and perhaps happiness: they drank to the memory of Homer, reciting his verses for a morsel of bread. Had the Literary Fund existed when I arrived in London from Southampton, on the 21st of May, 1793, it would, perhaps, have paid the visits of my physician to the attic in Hol

born; where my cousin, La Bouëtardais, the son of my uncle de Bedée, had hired a lodging for me. Great stress was laid on the effects of a change of air, in order to give me the strength necessary for a soldier's life; but my health, instead of being altered for the better, declined. My chest was affected; I became thin and pale; coughed frequently, and breathed with difficulty; I suffered from copious perspirations and spitting of blood. My friends, as poor as myself, took me from physician to physician. These Hippocrateses kept this band of beggars waiting at their doors, and then, at the cost of a guinea fee, informed me that I must submit to my illness with patience. Dr. Godwin, well known for his skill in cases of drowning, gained by experiments made on himself, according to his directions, behaved more generously he gave me his advice without fees, but at the same time told me, with that sternness which he employed towards himself, that I might linger on some months, perhaps a year or two, provided I avoided every kind of fatigue. "Do not reckon on a long life" this was the sum of his consultations.

The certainty, thus acquired, of my approaching end, by increasing the natural melancholy of my imagination, gave me an incredible repose of mind. This disposition of mind explains a passage in the remarks prefixed to the Essai Historique, and also the following passage in the Essai itself:-" Attacked by an illness which leaves me little hope, I look upon objects with a tranquil eye; the calm air of the tomb is felt by the traveller who is only a few days distant from its repose.'

The bitterness of the reflections scattered through the Essai will no longer excite surprise: this work was written under a sentence of death; in the time between judgment and execution. A writer, who thought himself on the verge of the grave, amidst the bereavements of exile, could not be supposed to look upon the world with a very smiling countenance.

me.

The question was how to spend the days of grace granted I might have been able to live or die quickly by the sword; its use was forbidden me: what then remained? A pen, unknown and untried, and I was ignorant of its power. Would my innate taste for letters, the poetry of my youth, or the rough sketches of my travels, suffice to draw the attention of the public? The idea of a work upon revolutions, comparatively considered, suggested itself to my mind; I dwelt upon

it as a subject very appropriate to the feelings and interests of the day; but who would undertake to publish a manuscript without any one to speak in its praise? and during its composition, how should I get my living? Though I might have only a few days longer to live, yet it was necessary to have some means of support for this brief period. My thirty louis, already seriously broken in upon, could not go very far, and in addition to my own particular sufferings, it was necessary to contribute to the common wants of my countrymen in exile. My companions in London had all obtained, more or less, employment; some were put into the coal trade, others, assisted by their wives, engaged in making straw hats, and others taught French, with which they themselves were not thoroughly acquainted. They were all in good spirits: that light-mindedness, which constitutes the great defect of our nation, was at that moment changed into a virtue. They laughed at Fortune to her face; that plundering goddess was ashamed to carry off that which no one would ask her to give back.

London, from April till September, 1822.

PELLETIER -LITERARY LABOURS MEETING WITH HINGANT—OUR WALKS-A NIGHT IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

PELLETIER, the author of Domine salvum fac regem, and chief editor of the Actes des Apôtres, continued in London what he had begun in Paris. He was not precisely a man of vice, but he was eaten up by a vermin of smaller defects, from which it was impossible to cleanse him. He was a libertine, a spendthrift; getting a great deal of money and wasting it on his pleasures; at the same time the slave of legitimacy, and ambassador of King Christophe to George III.; diplomatic correspondent of the Count de Limonade, and consuming in champagne the salary paid him in sugar. This ghost of a M. Violet, playing the grand airs of the revolution on a pocket-fiddle, came, as a Breton, to offer me his services. I mentioned to him the plan of my Essai, of which he strongly approved: "It will be magnificent," said he, and immediately recommended me to take rooms near Baylis, his printer, who

would print the work secretly, and according as it was written: Deboffe, the bookseller, was to manage its sale; and he, Pelletier, would trumpet its praise in his journal, the Ambigu, whilst notice of it might be taken in the Courrier Français in London, of which M. de Montlosier had just become editor. Pelletier entertained no doubts. He spoke of obtaining for me the cross of St. Louis, for my share in the siege of Thionville. My Gil Blas, tall, thin, and rough-looking, with powdered hair, and bald forehead, continually gesticulating, put on his round hat, took me by the arm, and conducted me to Baylis, the printer's, where, without more ado, he engaged a lodging for me at a guinea a month.

I was now in full sight of the golden future; but upon what plank was I to cross the present? Pelletier procured for me translations from Latin and English; at these I laboured all day, and at night on the Essai Historique, into which I worked up portions of my travels and my reveries. Baylis furnished me with books, and I very unseasonably laid out a few shillings on the purchase of some old volumes exhibited on the stalls.

Hingant, whom I met with on board the Jersey packet, had kept up an intercourse with me. He was engaged in literature, a savant, who secretly wrote novels, the pages of which he used to read to me. He lodged very near Baylis's, at the bottom of a street running into Holborn. I breakfasted with him every morning at ten o'clock; we talked over politics, and particularly about my works. I told him how much I had built of my nightly edifice-the Essai; and then I returned to my work by day-the translations. We met again for dinner at an eating-house-at a shilling a-head; afterwards we betook ourselves to the fields. Often, also, we walked alone, for both of us liked to give way to our dreams.

On those occasions I directed my course to Kensington or Westminster. Kensington was very agreeable to me; I wandered about in its retired spots, whilst the part of the gardens towards Hyde Park was crowded with a brilliant throng. The contrast between my poverty and their riches, my forlornness and their numbers, was agreeable to me to contemplate. I saw young English ladies passing in the distance, with a feeling of that delightful confusion, formerly inspired by my sylphide, when, after I had adorned her with all the suggestions of my

passion, I scarcely dared to raise my eyes to my own work. Death, to which I believed myself drawing near, added a mystery to the vision of a world, from which I had almost departed. Was a look ever cast upon the stranger seated at the foot of a pine-tree? Had any of those beautiful women an idea of the invisible presence of René?

Westminster was another lounge: amidst the labyrinth of the tombs, I thought upon my own just about to open. Was the bust of an unknown man like myself ever to be placed among such illustrious statues? Next, the sepulchres of monarchs presented themselves to my eyes; neither Cromwell nor Charles J. was to be found amongst the number. The ashes of Robert d'Artois, a traitor, reposed under the flags trodden by my loyal feet. A destiny, similar to that of Charles I., had just befallen Louis XVI.; every day the iron was reaping its harvest in France, and the graves of my kindred were already dug.

The chapel-service and the conversations of strangers interrupted my reflections. It was inconvenient frequently to repeat my visits, for I was obliged to give the watchmen of those who were no longer alive, the shilling which was necessary for my own subsistence. Outside the abbey, indeed, I whirled about freely with the rooks, and stopped to examine the towers, twins of unequal size, glowing under the rays of the setting sun, above the dark covering of London smoke.

On one occasion, however, it happened, that from an earnest desire to view the interior of the temple at the decline of day, I forgot myself in admiration of the architecture so full of boldness and caprice. Overwhelmed by a feeling of the sombre vastness of the Christian Churches (Montaigne), I kept wandering about, till I was overtaken by night: the doors were closed: I tried to find a way out-called for the usher-and knocked at the gates; all this noise, spread about and wasted in the silence, proved of no avail; and I was obliged to rest among the dead.

After some hesitation in the choice of my lair, I stopped near the monument of Lord Chatham, at the bottom of the gallery of the chapel of the knights and that of Henry VII. At the entrance to the steps leading to the aisles, shut in by folding gates, a tomb fixed in the wall and opposite a marble figure of death with a scythe, furnished me a shelter. A fold