ing no more pens ink, and paper than he does, contrives to make a greater reputation. His first saying is, "that man cannot be cleverer than I am." Then he says, "Why should he be more successful?" Then he hates and abhors him because he is more successful; and then he very naturally abuses him because he abhors him. No men in France hang more together than literary men; no men defend their order with more tenacity. M. Thiers, as "ministre," does not forget that he is "homme de lettres." No men in England pull one another so much to pieces. When Mr. Brougham, when Mr. Macaulay first appeared as politicians, all the papers, and all the newspaper writers, poured forth their ridicule and their abuse on these literary young men who presumed to make speeches. It was utterly impossible, shouted forth all these gentlemen,-employed themselves every day, by-the-by, in writing and deciding upon the politics of Europe, for any man who had also written, to have any notion of these politics. It was indignation, it was scorn, it was vituperation, that these two gentlemen excited, just among those very persons who in France would have been most proud and most happy to say: "We are delighted at Mr. Brougham's or Mr. Macaulay's eloquence; it shows the advantages of a cultivated taste; the position which literary men might and ought to aspire to"-secretly whispering to themselves, "and we too are literary men." As for property and its division in France, that subject is one too vast for me here to do more than glance at. But it is easily seen that where fortunes are not of themselves sufficient to make great and important distinctions; where every person is more or less in the situation of the basket-maker and the nobleman among the savages, and chiefly dependant for what he receives on what he is able to do: it is easy to see, that where the pen easily procures an income, which not three thousand persons possess from land, the profession of writing must hold a different rank from that which it occupies in a country where fortunes are sufficiently great to overbalance every other distinction. There are many things to say in disparagement and in favour of this, which, as I said before, I should wish to say more amply and satisfactorily, if I have the opportunity, elsewhere--which I should wish to say— after having more fully explained the various effects for good and evil which the great division of property in France has produced; effects which I shall presently attempt to trace in some matters which many would suppose they could hardly reach. But I cannot conclude this chapter without observing, that even in France people do not seem sufficiently aware of the end to which the influence of intelligence and the insignificance of fortune must necessarily lead them. They do not seem sufficiently aware of the necessity of recognising, and more fully establishing that aristocracy--for aristocracy in every country there must be--that aristocracy which time and taste have already recognised; an aristocracy which would be powerful because it is national; which would be safe because it is peaceably created; and which when peaceably created and historically established in a nation, is the most rational, because the best calculated to combine change with conservation, and moderation with improvement. Yet may we see a new Chamber of Peers taken from the category of the Academy and the Institût ;* yet may we see the concentration and the representation *The Institût, even at present, opens to the French a double ambition, and a double career. It is there that the national character is represented, and that the national distinctions blend and meet. M. Thiers seeks the title of academician with an ardour at least equal to that which has carried him so far in the Chamber of Deputies. The Duc de Raguse was as proud of the title of "Membre de l'Institút," as that of "Maréchal de France." In that society the statesman is brought into honourable connection with the poet; the philosopher with the soldier. In that society the passionate man, the literary man, the active man, the studious man, are blended together; a practical energy is given to speculation, a nobility to ambition. The warrior, the orator, ennoble their conceptions by science; the historian, the professor, correct their theories by experience-the one learns to act with dignity, the other to think with truth. of the intelligence of the kingdom more fully recognised as the proper mediator between the throne, which its political science would teach it to preserve, and the people, whom its natural affections would prevent it from betraying. LITERATURE. Literature-Society in a transitory state-Every epoch in civilization bears its certain fruit-Afterward, that society wears out, or must be invigorated by a new soil-A new stratum for society produced in France a new era-The genius of this era first visible in the Army-Now in Literature-What I intend to do in speaking of French literature. THE three influences most popular in society, and most consulted with the character and the history of France, are then-the influence of arms, the influence of women, and the influence of letters-and the government that is wise will not endeavour to destroy, but will endeavour so to mould and employ these influences as to invigorate and embellish the institutions -to improve and to elevate the social existence of the French. But there is another influence, an influence to which I have just been alluding-an influence of more modern growth, twining itself in with the history, incorporating itself with the character of the nation-an influence which, while other influences descend from the past, is now creating a future—an influence which, as I have just been speaking of the influence of literature, I will trace through the labours of literature itself. "We are not, as it seems to many, in the epoch of any peculiar revolution, but in an era of general transformation. All society is on the change. What period will see this movement cease, God alone can say." "To what end is society directing itself? Behind us, ruins; before us, an impenetrable obscurity; where we are, a terrible inquietude. Religions fall, other religions rise, or attempt to rise; the confusion of literary and political opinions is what has rarely been before." These are two passages, the one from M. Chateaubriand, the other from the preface of a youthful poet,* who seemed at one time likely to represent the character of his times. Society indeed is, in France, as it is all over the world, in a state of transition; so is society always, we may say, for civilization, retrogading or advancing, never standing still. So is society always; yet there are periods to which the epithet of "transitory" may be peculiarly applied; for there are periods at which it is more evident than at others, that a movement is taking place. No fixed taste predominates; there is an incongruity in all things, a want of unity, a want of harmony; the sons have passed beyond the recognised rule of their sires, but they have not yet found any for themselves. They are on the search, they try, they abandon, they adopt, they forsake. Each has his own scheme, his own thought: looking at them separately, these schemes, these thoughts are diverse: viewing them together, they appear less unlike, for there is always a general tendency throughout them all, a general tendency to The New Age, in which there will be unity, in which there will be harmony, in which there will be an insensibility to the movement that must always be going on. For society has its restingplaces, at which it collects and breathes itself; at which it prepares for new efforts, engendering new ideas-ideas which, until they triumph over those more antiquated, are unheeded; and then comes another epoch of doubt, uncertainty, and search. So is it for ever. . . . . .† That we are in one of those periods of search and discovery, of mingling and jarring doubts, of disputes, * M. Barbier. †The reign of Louis XIV. was a stationary epoch; remark the 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 Chateaubriand 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, is incessantly providing means for its regeneration and support. The form of society which, since the period of Richelieu, had been gradually developed, was 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 blazé'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 similarity between the government and the manners and the literature which existed then; remark the similarity, the harmony, if I may so express myself, between a royal ordonnance, a poem of Racine, a court dress, and a cabriole chair. Every thing was grand, 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 much; they 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. |