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cessive groups of wild savages, but to him gentle and loving, as the beings of his fancy with whom he has peopled their glades. We follow him in all his cadences and elevations, in his bursts of eloquence, and transports of sensibility. We sympathize with the sympathy and admiration of his auditors. We wonder not at the tears of delight which spring to their eyes; and when we look up at the bald head and wrinkled front of the animated reciter, we could hug the old man for his boyish enthusiasm and sensibility, if reverence did not teach us rather to bow to him as the type and model of all that is estimable and admirable in youth, manhood, and old age.

But it is time we should proceed to the narrative. The first volume, then, is devoted to the ancestors, and the father of Monsieur de Chateaubriand, a race of gentlemen of the old noblesse, and who lived constantly away from the Court of Louis XIV. One of the most remarkable of this old race was the father of the author. He was poor, as had been his father, and was left alone in the world with his mother. He was scarcely fifteen years of age, when, kneeling before the bed of his mother, he asked her for her blessing, as he had resolved to go and seek his fortune. With his mother's blessing, he embarked at St Malo. He was twice prisoner, and twice escaped. On his return to St Malo the last time, he married a young person of noble birth, by whom he had several children. Monsieur de Chateaubriand and his sister, Lucilla, were the two youngest. They were brought up at the chateau of Combourg, the ancient mansion of the Chateaubriands, which his father had repurchased. Of the chateau of Combourg, desolate and abandoned, there is the following description in René. “I arrived at the chateau by the long avenue of pines. I traversed on foot its deserted courts; I stopped to contemplate the closed and half-broken windows. The thistles which grew at the foot of the walls, the fallen leaves which gathered about the doors, and the solitary vestibule where I had so often seen my father and his faithful servants. The marble basins were already covered with moss. Yellow weeds grew up between their dis

jointed and trembling stones. An unknown porter opened to me rudely the gate. Covering for a moment my eyes with my handkerchief, I entered beneath the roof of my ancestors. I traversed the echoing apartments, and heard nothing but the sound of my own steps. The chambers were hardly lighted by the feeble light which penetrated through the closed shutters. I visited the room where my mother had expired, that in which my father used to retire, the one in which I had slept in my cradle, and where friendship had uttered its first vows in the bosom of my sister. Everywhere the halls spread before me in melancholy nakedness, and the spider spun its webs along the abandoned cornices. I quitted these scenes precipitately. I left them with a hurried step, and dared not turn round my head as I departed. How sweet, but how rapid, are the moments which brothers and sisters pass together in the society of their aged parents!" If Monsieur de Chateaubriand had not written those Memoirs of his youth, his character might be found in René. "My temper was impetuous and unequal, alternately buoyant and joyous, and silent and melancholy.

Sometimes I assembled about me my young companions, and then suddenly abandoned them to contemplate a passing cloud, or to listen to the rain falling on the leaves." But that which we find not in René, we find in his Memoirs; that his respect for his father was mingled with terror. His father was a man of tall stature, of a physiognomy sombre and severe, imposing in all his manners, his step heavy, his voice solemn, his look stern. During the day, young François de Chateaubriand would rather make a long circuit than meet his father; but on the fall of night the whole family assembled together in the half-deserted chateau, situated in the midst of woods, and far from all other habitation. In a vast hall they spent their evenings; the mother and the two youngest children sitting within the embrasure of the immense chimney, and the father, enveloped in his cloak, pacing the apartment backwards and forwards in silence. As this lord and master got more distant from the chimney corner, the conversation between the mother

and the children became more animated; as his footsteps sounded more distant, the children's voices became louder, but as the old Count return ed from the door to the chimney, the conversation lowered; and the more he advanced, the more the voices sank. Sometimes he would stop before the chimney, and not a whisper was heard; but if by chance there were, his stern voice demanding "who speaks?" produced again the most profound stillness. Thus were the evenings spent in alternate chatter and silence. At eleven o'clock the old seigneur retired to his chamber, then the mother and children would listen till they heard him walking above; his footstep made the old floor groan; as soon as all was silent, the mother, son, and daughter, uttered a cry of joy, and the two children began to play a thousand frolics, or amused themselves in telling ghost stories. Among these stories there is one which Monsieur Chateaubriand relates in his Memoirs. The following is a feeble sketch of this tale :-One night at midnight an old monk in his cell heard a knocking at his door. A plaintive voice called to him. The monk hesitated to open. At last he rises and opens. It was a pilgrim who demanded hospitality. The monk gave a bed to the pilgrim, and threw himself upon his own. But scarcely was he asleep, when he sees the pilgrim at the side of his bed, signing to him to follow him. They go out together. The door of the church opens and then shuts behind them. The priest at the altar celebrates the holy mysteries. Arrived at the foot of the altar, the pilgrim takes off his cowl, and shews the monk a death's head. "You have given me a place by your side," said the pilgrim," and in my turn I will give you a place on my bed of ashes." The delightful terrors occasioned by such tales as these, made the brother and sister cling close together. Nothing is more touching than the pages of Monsieur de Chateaubriand when he speaks of his beautiful affectionate sister, Lucilla. All his infancy was passed by her side; they had both the same sorrows, the same pleasures, the same terrors. "Timid," he says, "and under constraint before my father, I only found joy and content in company of my sister; she was a

little older than me. We loved to climb the hills together, and together to traverse the woods at the fall of the leaf; the recollection of these walks yet fills my soul with delight. Oh! illusions of infancy and my country, will you never lose your charms! Sometimes we walked in silence, listening to the wailing of the autumn winds, or to the noise of the dried leaves which rustled under our feet; sometimes we pursued with our eyes the swallow in the meadow, or the rainbow upon the cloudy hills, and sometimes we murmured toge ther verses which the spectacle of nature inspired. We had both a strain of sadness in our hearts. This we derived from God and our mo ther."

We cannot afford to follow Monsieur Chateaubriand through all his school adventures. These require the charms of Monsieur Chateaubriand's style to give them that interest which they no doubt possess in his Memoirs, but which appear a good deal faded in the recollected narrative of the Revue de Paris. But we must not omit to mention that he was educated at the college of Rennes, and that his favourite studies were Horace and the Confessions of St Augustin, which last book seems to have determined the religious character of his genius. From college he entered the army, and became, as far as military drill and duties are concerned, in the language of his colonel, an accomplished officer. His new military education being finished, his father determined to send him to Paris, to make his way by his own merits; but before he enters upon this new scene, he once more visits Combourg. Thus he speaks in his Memoirs on the occasion of this last visit:-"I have only revisited Combourg three times," (since his first absence we suppose.) "At the death of my father, all the family were assembled in the chateau, to say to each other adieu. Two years afterwards I accompanied my mother to Combourg; she went to have the old manor-house furnished, as my brother was about to establish himself there with my sister-in-law; my brother, however, came not into Brittany, and shortly after mounted the scaffold with his young wife, for whom my mother had prepared the nuptial bed. The last time I took

the road to Combourg, was on arriving at the port where I was to embark for America. After sixteen years of absence, when about to quit my native soil for the ruins of Greece, I went to embrace the remnants of my family in the lands of Brittany, but I had not courage to undertake the pilgrimage to my paternal fields. It was among the shades of Combourg that I have become what I am. It was there I saw my family united and dispersed. Of ten children only four remained. My mother died of grief, and the ashes of my father were scattered to the winds. If my works survive me, if I should leave behind me a name, the traveller, perhaps, some day, guided by these Memoirs, will stop a moment in the places I have described. He may recognise the chateau, but he will look in vain for the wood; it has been felled; the cradle of my dreams has disappeared like my dreams themselves. Alone remaining upon its rock, the antique dungeon seems to regret the oaks which surrounded it, and protected it from the tempests. Isolated like it, I have seen, like it, the family which embellished my days, and afforded me shelter, fall around me. Thanks to Heaven, my life is not built so solidly upon the earth as the towers in which I passed my youth!"

The scene now changes to Paris. The venerable Monsieur de Malesherbes, the defender of Louis XVI., and whose daughter was married to the elder brother of Chateaubriand, seems to have been the first who appreciated the talents of young François. The following is the sketch which the Memoirs give of this venerable character, who afterwards, in his extreme old age, with his grand-daughter and her husband, perished by the guillotine:-" The alliance which united his family to mine procured me often the happiness of approaching him. I seemed to become stronger and freer in my mind when in the presence of this virtuous man, who, in the midst of the corruption of courts, had preserved, in an elevated rank, the integrity and courage of a patriot. I shall long recollect the last interview I had with him: it was in the morning. I found him, by chance, alone with his grand-daughter. He spoke of Rousseau with an emotion that I

fully partook of. I shall never forget the venerable old man condescending to give me advice, and saying, I am wrong to speak of these things with you; I should rather urge you to moderate that warmth of heart which brought so much evil on our friend. I have been like you: injustice revolted me; I have done as much good as I could, without counting on the gratitude of men. You are young; you have many things to see. I have but a short time to live.' I suppress what the freedom of intimate conversation, and the indulgence of his character, made him add. The pain which I experienced on quitting him, felt like a presentiment that I should never see him again!

"Monsieur de Malesherbes was a man of large stature, but the feebleness of his health prevented him from appearing so. That which was astonishing in him was the energy with which he expressed himself in his extreme old age. If you saw him seated without speaking, with his sunken eyes, his grey eyelashes, and his benevolent air, you would have taken him for one of those august_personages painted by Lesueur. But when the sensitive chords were touched, the lightning flashed forth. His eyes immediately opened and expanded. Words of fire came from his mouth; his air, from pensive, became animated, and a young man in all the effervescence of youth seemed before you; but his bald head, his words a little confused, from the defect of his pronunciation, caused by his want of teeth, recalled again the old man. This contrast redoubled the charm found in his conversation, as one admires those fires which burn in the midst of the snows of winter.

"Monsieur de Malesherbes has filled Europe with his name, but the defender of Louis XVI. was not less admirable at the other epochs of his life than in his last days, which so gloriously crowned it. As a patron of men of letters, the world owes to him the Emilius of Rousseau; and it is known, that he was the only man, the Mareschal of Luxemburg excepted, whom Jean Jaques sincerely loved. More than once he has opened the gates of the Bastile; he alone refused to supple his character to the vices of the great, and

came out pure from places where so many others had left their virtue behind them. Some have blamed him for giving in to what has been called the principles of the day. If by this is meant hatred of abuses, Monsieur de Malesherbes was certainly culpable. For my own part I avow, that if he had been merely a good and loyal gentleman, ready to sacrifice himself for the King his master, and to appeal to his sword rather than to his religion, I should have sincerely esteemed him, but I should have left it to others to write his eulogium."

From the city Monsieur de Chateaubriand passes to the Court. To be presented to the King, it was necessary to be military, and of the grade of captain at least. He therefore obtained that rank, and was admitted to the honours of the Court, and saw Louis XVI. face to face. Thus he speaks of this unhappy and amiable monarch and victim:

"Louis XVI. was of an advantageous stature; his shoulders were large, and his belly prominent. His walk was ungainly, rolling, as it were, from one leg to the other; his vision was short; his eyes half shut; his mouth large; his voice hollow and vulgar. He was fond of a hearty laugh; his air announced gaiety,-not the gaiety, perhaps, of a superior mind, but the cordial joy of an honest man, coming from a conscience without reproach. He was not without knowledge, especially in geography. For the rest, he had his weaknesses like other men. He loved, for example, to play tricks upon his pages, and to spy, at five o'clock in the morning, from the windows of the palace, the movements of the gentlemen of the Court as they left their apartments. If at a hunt one passed between him and the stag, he was subject to sudden fits of anger, as I have experienced myself. One day, when it was excessively hot, an old gentleman of the stables, who had followed the chase, being fatigued, got down from his horse, and, stretching himself on his back, fell asleep in the shade. Louis passed by, perceived him, and thought it a good joke to wake him up. He got down then from his horse, and, without wishing to hurt this ancient servant, he let fall rather a heavy stone

on his breast. Awakening up, the old gentleman, in the first moment of pain and anger, called out,—' Ah! I know you well in this trick; you were so from your infancy; you are a tyrant, a cruel man, a ferocious animal! And he continued to overwhelm the King with insults. His Majesty quickly regained his horse, and half laughing, half sorry that he had hurt a man whom he loved much, muttered as he went away,Ha, ha! he is angry! he is angry! he is angry!'

But what was Versailles, its Palace, and its Court, to Monsieur de Chateaubriand, whilst the Bastile was taking at Paris, and the Revolution, with its mighty events, were in full career of developement! What his opinions were at the commencement of the Revolution is not stated, but he had personal acquaintance with all the great disorganizing spirits, who let loose its fierce elements, and were afterwards pulverized and swept from the scene by its ravaging breath. He seems to have known Mirabeau intimately, dined often with him, and accompanied him to the tavern. One day as they got up together from dinner after a long animated conversation, Mirabeau, laying his two large hands on the shoulders of his young companion, said to him, alluding to their conversation, " They will never pardon me my superiority." But the horrors of the Revolution soon ensued, and whatever illusions the brilliant vision of prospective liberty and regeneration might have cast over the imagination of the young poet, they quickly melted away at the touch of humanity. The blood, the crimes, the rant and fury, which early began to blot out and swallow up every fair hope in despair and dread, awakened his uncontrollable indignation; this was too strong to be suppressed in one so ardent and humane; and on one occasion, seeing a head carried on a pike before his hotel, he called out of his window, "Murder, murder! assassins, assassins!" This virtuous ardour and indignation would soon doubtless have brought him to the guillotine, if Monsieur de Malesherbes, compassionating his youth and virtue, and foreseeing, that if he remained in France, he would surely fall a victim

to his generous and courageous sentiments, had not persuaded him to make the voyage to America.

"If I were in your place," said Monsieur de Malesherbes, "I would go to America; I would undertake some great enterprise; I would travel for ten years." This idea fired the imagination of young Chateaubriand. He had already a great enterprise in his mind. It is thus he developes in his Memoirs the idea of this enterprise :

"The voyage which I then undertook was only the prelude of another much more important, the plan of which I communicated to Monsieur de Malesherbes on my return. I proposed to myself nothing less than to determine, by land, the grand question of the South Sea passage by the North. It is known, that in spite of the efforts of Captain Cook and other navigators, it has always remained in doubt."

One can hardly help smiling at this project of discovery terminating in those beautiful tales or poems by which Monsieur de Chateaubriand has immortalized his wanderings in America. For our parts, however, we are perfectly contented that it has so terminated. Let others travel and discover, but their travellings and discoveries, however important, will never be to us half so delightful, as contemplating this young enthusiastic "échappé" from civilisation, this refugee from the artificial existence of a Court, fleeing refinement and crime, and plunging into the depths of savage life, as into a bath, to cleanse and rejuvinate his spirit, and then to send it forth in all its beautified purity, to explore, to marvel at, to be transported with the springing wonders of nature where man is not. He became, as it were, a playfellow of the forests and mighty streams; all eye, all heart, all ecstasy. But what is most delightful, he humanizes upon every thing he sees. Nothing encounters his sight, even in inanimate nature, nothing is shaped by his fancy, but it immediately vibrates upon some chord of his heart. How different is humanity from civilisation! Compare the scenes which were then going on in Paris, with those which Monsieur de Chateaubriand found in the huts of the wild Indian warriors and huntsmen. This contrast

heightens the delight which we feel in accompanying him in his poet's rambles through a new world. But we must proceed with the Memoirs. Monsieur de Chateaubriand embarked for America at St Malo, on the 6th of May, 1791. The sentiments he experienced on his first arrival, are well described in his " Génie du Christianisme."

"I remained for some time with my arms crossed, looking about me with a confusion of feelings and ideas, which I could not disentangle then, and which I cannot at present describe. This continent, unknown by the rest of the world in ancient times, and in the modern for many ages; its first savage destinies, and its fate since the arrival of Christopher Columbus; the domination of the monarchies of Europe shaken off in this new world; their old societies renewed in this young country; a republic of a nature hitherto unknown, announcing a change in the human mind, and in political order; the part which my country had taken in these events; these seas and shores owing partly their independence to French blood; a great man, Washington, arising suddenly in the midst of these discords and deserts, the inhabitant of a flourishing city in the same place, where, a century before, William Penn had bought a slip of ground from some Indians; the United States, sending to France, across the ocean, the revolution and liberty; finally, my own destinies, the discoveries which I aimed at in those native solitudes, which yet extended their vast domains behind the narrow empire of foreign civilisation; - these were the reflections which occupied my mind."

Another pointed reflection he makes is "There is nothing old in America, but the woods, the sons of the earth, and liberty, the mother of all human society."

The recital of his interview with Washington is very pleasing.

"A little house of the English construction, resembling the houses in its neighbourhood, was the palace of the President of the United States. No guards, no valets. I knocked-a young servant-girl opened to me. I asked her if the General was at home. She asked me my name, which being difficult to pronounce in English,

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