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That we are in one of those periods of search and discovery, of mingling and jarring doubts, of disputes, pretensions, and contradictions that we are in one of those periods which the world calls 'transitory,' and which ought rather to be called confused,' there is no denying; but the vague truism which M. de Châteaubriand so pompously puts forth may hardly pass for a description of the peculiar genius which separates modern France from ancient France.

Every epoch of civilization bears its certain fruit; but to get a further produce you must stir and upturn the ground anew, and invigorate the earth that is grown fatigued and old, by mingling it with a fresh and uncultivated soil. This is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of necessity; it is the law of nature, the law of the world, which, incessantly perishing,

Everything was grand,

dress, and a cabriole chair. stately, ceremonious, decorous; rigid in its rules of art and etiquette: the same genius presided over the drama that regulated the cotillon. It was the age of the court, of the unities, of the minuet. The reaction from the solemn regularity of one period was the irreligious disorder of the other. Then, men had thought too muchthey wished to think no longer; and for a time the empire of action and of the sword replaced the theoretic realities of the revolutionary tribune.

is incessantly providing means for its regeneration and support.

The form of society, which since the period of Richelieu had been gradually developed, had arrived, at the period of the revolution, at its utmost state of refinement, and exhausted in the school of the eighteenth century all its powers. The wit, the grace, the incredulity, the scientific vice, the cold and bloodless philosophy of a blaze'd, debauched and clever court, could produce nothing more than "La Pucelle"-"L'Esprit"-"Les Liaisons Dangereuses." What could come after the philosophers and the poets and the novelists of Louis XV. and Louis XVI. -what could come after the profligate productions of an age, the life and spirit of which were completely enervated and worn out, but a long imbecility or a total change?-A total change took place, a new era came-for a new stratum for society was laid—a new era came, in which France was formed of new materials, endowed with new thoughts, and clothed with new expressions.

The genius of this dawning time did not first make itself visible in literature; for it is a mistake to suppose that, because literature sometimes represents the mind of an epoch, it does so always. It does so only when that

mind is not otherwise and more forcibly expressed. This is why the character of the empire was traced-not with the pen, but with the sword; while the placid sweetness of Delille, and the common-place prettiness of M. Jouy, were striking as a contrast to the marvellous magnificence of their age. But, from the fall of Napoléon, philosophy and letters have been gradually assuming an ardent spirit and a vivid colouring, analogous with the glory and the fever of that man's reign. It would be far, I fear, beyond the compass of this work, to enter fully into the merits of the different existing writers, or even to take an extended critical survey of the different species of writing now most popular in France. This I should have wished, if I had been able to devote a volume to the purpose. But all that I here hope is, to show that a great change has taken place in French literature-connected with the nature and the causes of which change we shall easily trace an influence-the influence of which I have spoken-and which, affecting the literature, has also affected the philosophy, and the religion, and the society, and the government, of the French people.

HISTORY.

Consider History and the Drama-France for the first time remarkable for historical composition-The old Chronicles, the Memoirs that succeeded them-The history of the eighteenth century-The history of the nineteenth-The first brought a bastard kind of antiquity into your parlour, the last carries you back into antiquity itself—Michaud-Barante-Thierry—

Thiers--Mignet-Guizot-Sismondi -Châteaubriand -The modern French Historian is like the old French Novelist, and attempts rather to paint than to describe -Why?-History only interesting to those persons whose actions make history, and whose fortunes are affected by it-The diffusion of honours, of employments, of property, has diffused the interest of History -The Historian writes now to a country where he wrote formerly to a clique-He adopts, therefore, a popular and more powerful style.

CONFINED, as I now am, in the observations I have to make on this part of my subject, I shall proceed to consider French Literature in its two most important divisions-History and the Drama and the most striking circumstance, perhaps, in the present literature of

France is, its new preeminence in historical composition.

The old chronicles, indeed, were bold and vigorous; the bones, if I may use such an expression, with which a history might have been formed but the innumerable memoirs which succeeded them, and in which the courtly times of France are handed down to posterity, appear as compiled exaggerations of the fashionable articles which could to-day be taken from the Morning Post. Alas! the authors of these memoirs never spoke, wrote, or thought, of the nation. They were satisfied in recording the minutest whisper that crept around the precincts of the throne. "Have you heard the most miraculous, the most extraordinary, the most stupendous, thing in the world?" says Madame de Sévigné, in her memorable letter which announced the possibility of a Princess of the House of Orléans condescending to ally herself with the Duc de Lauzun. M. de Turenne, says Dangeau - from the utmost height of his sublime gravity-M. de Turenne, eldest son of M. de Bouillon, and grand chambellan en survivance,' struck the king's nose the other day in giving him his shirt.

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"Le roi se promena dans ses jardins, où il s'amuse à voir planter; il faisait un tems

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