schools to them? Companions alike in misfortunes, friends before they, were authors, may they never see revived among them those shameful jealousies, which have too often dishonoured an art so noble and consolatory. They have still much occasion for courage and union. The atmosphere of letters will for a long time be stormy. It was letters that nourished the revolution, and they will be the last asylum of revolutionary hatred. Half a century will scarcely suffice to calm so much humbled vanity, so much wounded self-love. Who then can hope to see more serene days for the Muses? Life is too short; it resembles those courses in which the funeral games were celebrated among the ancients, at the end of which appeared a tomb.

Esekephugon duon oson, &c.

"On this side," said Nestor to Antilochus, "the trunk of an oak, despoiled of its branches, rises from the earth, two stones support it in a narrow way, it is an antique tomb, and the marked boundary of your course.”

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253

UPON M. MICHAUD'S POEM,

The Spring of a Proscript.

M. de Voltaire has said:

Or sing your joys, or lay aside your songs.

May we not say, with equal justice,

Or sing your woes, or lay aside your songs.

Condemned to death during the days of terror, obliged to fly a second time, after the 18th of Fructidor, the author of this poem was received by some hospitable spirits in the mountains of Jura, and found, among the pictures presented by nature, at once subjects to console his mind and to cherish his regrets.

When the hand of Providence removes us from intercourse with mankind, our eyes, less distracted, fix themselves naturally upon the sublime spectacles which the creation presents to them, and we discover wonders, of which before we had no idea. From the bosom of our solitude we think upon the tempests of the world, as a man cast upon a desert island, from a feeling of secret melancholy, delights to contemplate the waves breaking upon the shore where he was wrecked. After the loss of our friends, if we do not sink under the weight of our griefs, the heart reposes upon itself, it forms the project of detaching itself from every other sentiment, to live only

upon its recollections. We are then less fit to mingle with society, but our sensibility is more alive. Let him who is borne down by sorrow bury himself amid the deepest recesses of the forest, let him wander among their moving arches, let him climb mountains, whence he may behold immense tracts of country, whence the sun may be seen rising from the bosom of the ocean, his grief never can stand against spectacles so sublime. Not that he will forget those he loved, for then would he fear to be consoled; but the remembrance of his friends would mingle itself with the calm of the woods and of the heavens, he would still retain his grief, it would only be deprived of its bitterness. Happy they who love Nature, they will find her, and her alone, a friend in the day of adversity.

These reflections were suggested by the work which we are about to examine. It is not the production of a poet who seeks the pomp and the perfection of the art, it is the effusion of a child of misfortune, who communes with himself, and who touches the lyre only to render the expression of his sorrows more harmonious; it is a proscribed sufferer, who addresses his book like Ovid: "My book, thou wilt go to Rome, and go without me! Alas! why is not thy master permitted to go thither himself? Go, but go without pomp or display, as suits the produc tion of a banished poet."

The work, divided into three cantos, opens with a description of the early fine days in the year. The author compares the tranquillity of the country with the terror which then prevailed in the towns, and paints the labourer's reception of a proscript.

Ah! in those days of woe, if some lorn wretch
A refuge sought beneath his lonely roof,
His cottage door, his kind and simple heart
Flew open to receive him, while the woods
His guileless hands had planted, their discreet

And sheltering boughs spread circling, to conceal
From wicked eyes the joyous heart he'd made.

Religion, persecuted in towns, finds also, in her turn, an asylum in the forests, although she has lost her altars and her temples.

Sometimes the faithful, warm'd by holy zeal,
Assemble in the hamlet, 'mid the gloom
Of night, to pay their homage to that Power
By whom they live, who with paternal care
Protects them thus; instead of sacred incense
Offering the flow'rs of spring, the ardent vows
Of upright souls, while echo to the woods

Repeats their humble prayers. Ah! where, alas!
Are now their antique presbyt'ry, that cross,
Those bells that tower'd to heaven?-monurnents
By our forefathers so rever'd, so cherish'd.

These verses are easy and natural, the sentiments are mild and pious, according with the objects to which they form, as it were, the back-ground of the picture. Our churches give to our hamlets and towns a character singu larly moral. The eyes of the traveller are first fixed upon the religious turret that encloses the bells, the sight of which awakens in the bosom a multitude of pious sentiments and recollections. It is the funeral pyramid, beneath which rest the ashes of our forefathers; but it is also the monument of joy, where the bell announces life to the faithful. It is there that the husband and wife exchange their mutual vows, that Christians prostrate themselves before the altar, the weak to entreat support from their God, the guilty to implore compassion from their God, the innocent to sing the goodness of their God. Does a landscape appear naked and barren of objects, let but the turret of a rustic church be added, every thing in an instant is animated, is alive; the sweet ideas of the

pastor and his flock, of an asylum for the traveller, of alms for the pilgrim, of Christian hospitality and fraternity, are awakened in the mind, they are seen on every side.

A country priest, menaced by the law which condemned to death all of his class who were seen exercising their sacred functions, yet who would not abandon his flock, and who goes by night to comfort the labourer, was a picture which must naturally present itself to the mind of a proscribed poet.

He wanders through the woods. O silent night,
Veil with thy friendly shade his pious course!
If he must suffer still, O God support him!
'Tis a united hamlet's voice entreats thee.
And you, false votaries of philosophy,
Yet spare his virtues, and protect his life!
Escap'd from cruel chains, from dreary dungeons,
He preaches pardon for the wrongs we suffer,
Wiping the tears which trickle down the cheeks
Of those that listen with delight around.

It appears to us that this passage is full of simplicity and piety. Are we then much deceived in having maintained that religion is favourable to poetry, and that in repressing our religious feelings we deprive ourselves of one of the most powerful mediums for touching the heart.

The author, concealed in his retreat, apostrophizes the friends whom he scarcely hopes ever to see again,

Thou shalt be heard no more, O sweet Delile,
Thou rival and interpreter by turns

Of the great Mantuan bard.

....

Nor thou, who by thy strains could charm our woes;
Thou Fontanes, whose voice consol'd the tombs,
Nor Morellet, whose strong and nervous pen
Pleaded the sufferer's cause 'gainst tyranny;
Suard, who, emulous of Addison, combin'd