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 commonplace prettiness of M. Jouy were striking as a contrast to the marvellous magnificence of their age. But from the fall of Napoleon, 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 now hope is, to show that a great change has taken place in French literatureconnected with the nature and the causes of which change we shall easily trace an influence-the influence of which I have spoken-and which, in affecting the literature, has not less 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 men back into antiquity itself-Michaud-Barente-Thierry-Thiers-Mignet-Guizot— Sismondi-Chateaubriand-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 style, and appeals to the senses instead of to the judgment.

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 perhaps the first thing to strike us in the present literature of France is, that it is, for the first, pre-eminent in historical composition.

The old chronicles, indeed, were bold and rigorousthe 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 creeped 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 con

descending to ally herself with the Duc de Lauzun. M. de Turenne, says D'Angeau-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.

"Le roi se promena dans ses jardins où il s'amuse à voir planter, il faisait un tems effroyable et le chapeau du roi était percé: on envoya le port-manteau chercher un autre. Le port-manteau donna le chapeau au Duc de Nismes qui sert pour le D. d'Aumont qui est en année. Le Duc de Nismes le présenta au roi ; mais Mons. de la Rochefoucauld prétendit que c'était à lui de le donner et que le D. de Nismes empietait sur ses fonctions. Ceci a fait une assez grande affaire entre eux quoiqu'ils fussent bons amis."

"On one of his days of business, Louis XIV.," says Madame de Maintenon's memoirs, "remained with this lady but a short time before the minister came in, and a still shorter time after he had gone out. His majesty went to the chaise percée,' returned to the bed of Madame de Maintenon, where he stood for a few minutes, and then wishing her good-night, sat down to table."

The enumeration of facts like these is so far important when you see what the court was that governed the country, you may come pretty accurately to the conclusion that the country was very ill governed.

But for thinking of the country at all, as you read some hundreds of volumes, you are entirely indebted to a patriotic imagination. After the great fire which destroyed Rennes, there were discovered among the ruins different coagulated masses of various colours, out of which a vast number of pretty ornaments were made; and it was from these useless trinkets on some ladies' dress that the greater part of France became informed that the capital of a province had been destroyed. So, during the whole period I am speaking of, it is to some trumpery toy, to some paltry passion, to some miserable closet-wise intrigue, to some crafty

confession of a still more crafty mistress, that we are to look, as the signs and tokens of a great people's destiny.

But if the memorialist was necessarily narrow in his range, he at all events contrived to give you some idea of the region he described. Not so the historian. While the one, impressed with the greatness of his subject, prosaically repeated the chit-chat of the royal nursery, pompously perorated upon the “chaise percée” of a king; the other, passing in contemptuous silence over the character, the customs, the arts of the people he described, expended the fire of his genius in a tremendous outpouring of battles, sieges, victories, defeats, murders, and invasions. Quick over your mind rushed a deluge of dates and deaths; and the people who could count the greatest number of obscure names upon their fingers, and cite an insignificant fact with the nicest accuracy, were deemed, by all reputed judges, the most accomplished possessors of historical lore.

Voltaire rescued history from Daniel and Griffet. The “Essai sur les Mœurs,” in its marvellous combination of wit, research, and philosophy, is, perhaps, one of the most astonishing evidences on record of the power of the human mind; but, wonderful as a testimony of intelligence, it is more than imperfect as a history. It wants the power, without which all history is lifeless-it wants the power which transports you to distant regions and to distant times, and which brings the dim face of weird antiquity plain and palpably before you; it wants the power which makes you look upon the things and mingle with the men that are described. What you see in Voltaire's history is Voltaire. His cynical, intelligent, and thoughtful face comes back to you from every page, as so many refractions of the same image from a broken mirror. You never get beyond the philosopher's study. Like Don Quixote in the duke's castle, you pass through every atmosphere without stirring from the same place. It is the shrewd old gentleman of the eighteenth cen

tury talking to you most sagaciously about a number of things which he has got carefully under lock and key, and will never let you get a glimpse of.

I forget who it is who says, that what is most visible in the history of every time is the time of the historian writing; this, which is true of all the historians of the Voltairian school, is especially true of Voltaire. He looks at every thing, and argues upon every thing, with the eyes and with the feelings not merely of his own age, but of his own country and his own clique.

66

We know that Herodotus relates of the Babylonian ladies, that they were all obliged, once at least in their lives, to prostitute themselves to strangers in the temple of Milita, or Venus. "Can any one," cries Voltaire, "believe in such a story? Is it likely-is it possible that such a custom should exist among a people in any state of refinement ?-What is not natural is never true." Now," says Grimm, "it would be very difficult to say what is natural; and if we were to strike out from history every thing that seemed unnatural to us, there would only remain the chronicle of our own times." Did Grimm say the truth? Certainly, human sacrifices in any state of society are not very natural. Suicide, which was a fashion among one of the most sensible people in the world, was one of the most unnatural fashions that can well be imagined. It is not very long ago that it was the fashion in England for all young ladies to wear pads, in order to make them appear with child; which, among a people who set the highest value on female chastity, was also very unnatural, surely. The law of Babylon was at least as natural as the vow of celibacy; nor are we to suppose that, if the Babylonish ladies were refined, their notions of refinement must necessarily have resembled those of the Parisians. But the best part of the story is, that not above half a century after Voltaire wrote, a person appeared in France, actually in France, who preached nearly the same doctrines in the Chaussée d'Antin that, Herodotus says, were followed in Babylon. Nay, there was even a moment of doubt as VOL. II.-G 13