senses recoil, for such are the emotions of nature. But see religion, how it soothes the infirm, with what tenderness it contemplates those disgusting wounds,it discovers an ineffable beauty, an immortal life in those dying features, where philosophy can see nothing but the hideousness of death. There is the same difference between the services that philosophy and religion render to human nature as exists between duty and love.

To justify M. Gilbert for having defended christianity, I cannot rest too much on the authority of the great king whom I have so often cited in this article. The philosophers themselves considered him as a philosopher, and certainly he cannot be accused of harbouring any religious superstitions; but he had a long habit of governing men, and he knew that the mass could not be led with the abstract principles of metaphysics. In pursuing his refutation of the System of Nature, he says: "How can the author pretend to maintain, with any face of truth, that the christian religion is the cause of all the misfortunes of human nature. To speak with justice, he should have said, simply, that the ambition and interests of mankind make use of this religion as a pretence to disturb the peace of the world, and to satisfy their own passions. What objection can seriously be made against the system of morality contained in the decalogue? Did the gospel contain no other precept but this one: Do not to others what you would not that they should do to you, we should be obliged to confess that these few words contain the very quintessence of all morality. Besides, were not charity and humanity, with the pardon of offences, preached by Jesus in his excellent scrmon on the mount?—The law itself must not be confounded with the abuses of it, the things inculcated, with the things practised."

Ripened by age and experience, perhaps warned by that voice which speaks from the tomb, Frederick, to

E e

wards the close of his life, had shaken off those vain systems which lead to nothing but errors. He began to feel the foundations of society tremble under him, and to discover the deep mine that atheism was silently hollowing out. Religion is made more especially for those who are the most elevated above their fellow creatures. It is stationed around thrones, like those vulnerary herbs which grow about the mountains of Switzerland, there where falls the most terrible are likely to be encountered.

It is probable that the two satires of M. Gilbert, and some stanzas of his odes will retain a place among our li terature, This young poet, who died before his talents were matured, has neither the grace and lightness of Ho. race, nor the beautiful poetry and exquisite taste of Boi. leau. He tortures his language, he seeks after inversion, he drives on his metaphors too far, his talents are capricious and his muse fanciful, but he has forcible modes of expression, verses well constructed, and sometimes the vein of Juvenal. Thanks to the re-establishment of our temples in France, we have no occasion for new Gilberts to sing the woes of religion, we require poets to chaunt her triumphs. Already some of our most distinguished literati, Messrs. Delille, Laharpe, Fontanés, Bernardin de St. Pierre, and others have consecrated their meditations to religious subjects. A new defender, M. de Bonald, has arisen, who, by the depth of his ideas and the power of reasonings, has abundantly justified the lofty and all-seeing wisdom of the christian institutions. Every one among our youth who gives any promise of talent, returns to those sacred principles which made Quintilian say: "If thou believest, thou shalt soon be instructed in the duties of a good and happy life." Brevis est institutio vita, honesta beataque, si credas.

219

ANALYSIS

OF THE WORK OF M. DE BONALD

Entitled: "PRIMITIVE LEGISLATION considered in the latter times by the light of reason alone."

"FEW men are born with that particular and decided disposition towards one only object which we call talent; a blessing of nature, if favorable circumstances assist its developement, and permit the exercise of it; a real misfortune, a torment to its possessor, if it be contradicted."

This passage is taken from the book we are about to examine. Nothing is more affecting than those involuntary complaints which sometimes escape from true talent. The author of Primitive Legislation, like many other celebrated writers, seems only to have received gifts from nature to feel disgust at them. Like Epictetus he has been obliged to reduce his philosophy to these maxims anechou kai apechou, suffer and abstain. It was in the obscure cottage of a German peasant, in the bosom of a foreign country that he composed his Theory of Political and Religious power, a work suppressed by the Directory in France; it was in the midst of all possible privations, and menaced with the law of the proscription, that he published his Observations upon Divorce, an admirable treatise, the latter pages of which, in particular, are a model of that eloquence of thought which is so superior to the eloquence of words, and which subdues every thing, as Pascal says, by the right of power. In fine, it is at the

moment when he is about to quit Paris, letters and his genius, if I may be allowed the expression, that he gives us his Primitive Legislation; Plato crowned his works by his Laws, and Lycurgus banished himself from Sparta after having established his. Unfortunately, we have not, like the Spartans, sworn to observe the laws of our new legislator. But let M. de Bonald be 'satisfied; when, as in him, the authority of good morals is combined with the authority of genius, when the soul is free from those weaknesses, which place arms in the hands of calumny, and console mediocrity, obstacles must vanish sooner or later, and we must arrive at that position in which talent is no longer a mortification, but a blessing.

The judgments generally passed upon our modern literature, appear to me somewhat exaggerated. Some mistake our scientific jargon, and inflated phraseology for the progress of genius and illumination; according to them language and reason have advanced much since Bossuet and Racine:-but what advance!-Others on the contrary find nothing that is endurable; if they are to be believed we have not a single good writer. Is it not a tolerably well established truth, that there have been epochs in France when the state of literature was very much below what it is at present? Are we competent judges in such a cause, and can we very justly appreci ate those writers who live in the same time with ourselves? Such, or such a cotemporary author whose value we scarcely feel, may be one day considered as the glory of our age. How long have the great men of Louis XIV found their true level? Racine and La Bruyère were almost unknown while they lived. We see Rollin, that writer full of learning and taste, balance the merits of

Fléchier and Bossuet and give us plainly to understand that the preference was generally given to the former. The mania of all ages has been to complain of the scarcity

of good writers and good books. What things have not been written against Telemachus, against the Characters of La Bruyere, against the most sublime of Racine's works? Who does not know the epigram upon Athalia? On the other hand, let any one read the journals of the last century; let them farther read what La Bruyère and Voltaire themselves said of the literature of their times; will it be believed that they speak of the period when the country could boast a Fénélon, a Bossuet, a Pascal, a Boileau, à Racine, a Molière, a La Fontaine, a JeanJacques Rousseau, a Buffon, a Montesquieu?

French literature is about to assume an entirely new face; with the revolution, other thoughts, other views of men and of things must have arisen. It is easy to see that writers will be divided into two classes; some will make it their great endeavour entirely to quit the ancient routes, others will no less assiduously endeavour to follow those models, but always presenting them under a new point of view. It is very probable that the latter will, in the end, triumph over their adversaries, because, in upholding their own labours by great authorities, they will have much safer and abler guides, documents much more fertile in themselves, than those who would rest upon their own talents alone.

M. de Bonald will contribute not a little to this victory; already his ideas begin to obtain a currency; frag ments of them are to be traced in the greater part of the journals and publications of the day. There are certain sentiments and certain styles, which may be almost called contagious, and which, if I may be pardoned the idea, tint all minds with their colouring. This is, at the same time, a good and an evil. An evil inasmuch as it disgusts the writer whose freshness is thus, as it were faded, and whose originality is rendered vulgar;-a good, in as far as it tends to circulate useful truths more widely.