she could not retain. But she said, 'Walk in, sir,' and went before me through one of those long and narrow corridors, which serve as a vestibule to English houses. She introduced me into a parlour, and told me the General would attend me. I was not moved; greatness of soul or of fortune never disconcert me. I admire the first, without being humbled by it. The world inspires me with more pity than respect. Never has the face of man troubled me. In a few minutes the General entered. He was a man of large stature, his demeanour calm, rather cold than noble. He resembles his pictures. I presented him my letter in silence; he opened it, turned to the signature, which he read aloud, exclaiming Colonel Armand!' It was thus that the Marquis de la Rouverie had signed. We sat down. I explained to him as well as I could the motive of my voyage. He answered me by monosyllables in French or English. He listened to me with astonishment. I approached him, and said with vivacity-But it is less difficult to discover the North-East pas sage than to create a people as you have done.'-Well, well,' said he, young man, stretching to me his hand. He invited me to dine with him on the following day, and we parted.

"I was exact to the rendezvous. We were but five or six guests. The conversation turned almost entirely on the French Revolution. The General shewed us the key of the Bastile. These keys were silly toys, which were then distributed in the two worlds. If Washington had seen, like me, the vanquishers of the Bastile in the gutters of Paris, he would have had less faith in his relic. The seriousness and the force of this revolution was not in its bloody orgies. At the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685, the same populace of the faubourg St Antoine demolished the Protestant temple of Charenton with as much zeal as they devastated the church of St Denis in 1793. Such was my meeting with this man, who has emancipated a whole world. Washington had sunk into the tomb before any fame was attached to my name; I passed before him as the most unknown being. He was in all his splendour, and I in all my obscurity. Perhaps my

name did not remain a whole day in his memory. Happy am I, nevertheless, that his regards have fallen upon me. I have felt myself warmed by them during the rest of my life. There is virtue in the regard of a great man. I have seen since Bonaparte. Thus Providence has shewn me two persons, whom it has been pleased to place at the head of the destinies of their age."

Having taken leave of Washington, Monsieur de Chateaubriand pursues his route. The following passage, which will find a place in his Memoirs, will shew, however, how little his mind was bent on discovery. The fact seems to be, that this project originated in that ardent longing for indefinable enterprise which characterises genius, before it knows its own nature and quality. Monsieur Chateaubriand soon found the vast and the romantic in his heart and in nature, which had allured him in a project which he only saw in its distance and its consummation, without calculating the severe self-denial which it would impose upon the fancy. The passage we allude to is as follows:

"I then set out for the country of savages, and embarked in a packetboat, which ascended the river Hudson from New York to Albany. The society of passengers was numerous and agreeable, consisting of many women, and some American officers. A fresh breeze impelled us gently to our destination. Towards the evening of the first day, we assembled on the deck to take a collation of fruits and milk. The women were seated on benches, and the men placed themselves at their feet. The conversation was not long noisy. I have always remarked that the aspect of a fine scene of nature produces an involuntary silence. Suddenly one of the company cried out,

It was here where Major Andre was executed.' Immediately all my ideas were scattered. A very pretty American lady was asked to sing a romance made on this unfortunate young man. She yielded to our entreaties, and sung with a voice, timid, but full of softness and emo tion. The sun was setting. We were then sailing between lofty mountains. Here and there, suspended over their abysses, single cabins sometimes appeared and

army under the banners of the French princes. In this I thought I heard the voice of honour, and I abandoned my projects."

Returned to Philadelphia to embark, the first thing that reminded him he was a civilized man, was his want of money to pay his passage. The Captain, however, consented to take him, trusting to his word for payment. In his passage, he encounters a terrible tempest. The description of this tempest finishes the fourth book. "When a Dutch vessel is assailed by a tempest, officers and sailors shut themselves up in the inside of the vessel; all the port holes are shut; the dog of the vessel is alone left on the deck, who howls at the storm. Meantime the officers and sailors drink and smoke till the storm ceases. When it is over, the dog ceases to bark, and the crew come again on the deck-and I," says he, "I am the dog of the vessel, whom the restoration left on the deck to give warning of the storm, whilst it was under shelter."

As soon as Monsieur de Chateaubriand returns to Paris, he marries, and takes obscure lodgings in a little obscure street, behind the church of St Sulpice. His picture of Paris, at that moment of terror, is said to be magnificent and terrible. Robespierre, Danton, Marat, the Convention, the Jacobin club, the theatres, the cries, the clamours, the atrocious vociferations of the Mountain, of the populace, the street scenes, the tribune, the prisons: every thing which the ravelled up scene of horror, which Paris in 92 presented, has afforded matter for his eloquent pen. But honour and patriotism called him away from these orgies of blood and crime. He emigrates; and the following justification of this step, as it might properly find a place in his Memoirs, we here transcribe.

"I put to myself this question when writing the Siege of Trent. Why has Thrasybulus been raised to the clouds? And why are French emigrants trodden to the dust? Both cases are rigorously the same. The fugitives of the two countries, forced into exile by persecution, took arms in foreign lands in favour of an ancient constitution of their country. Words cannot alter things. Except that the first contended for a

VOL. XXXV. NO. CCXXI,

democracy, and the latter for a monarchy, the facts are the same.

"An honest foreigner by his fireside, in a tranquil country, sure to rise in the morning as he laid down at night, in possession of his fortune, his doors well shut, his friends within, and security without, may prove, whilst drinking his glass of wine, that the French emigrants were to blame, and that a citizen should never quit his country. But this honest foreigner is at his ease; no one persecutes him; he can go where he will, without the fear of being insulted or assassinated; his house is not set fire to; he is not bunted like a wild beast, merely because his name is John, and not Peter, and that his grandfather who died forty years ago had a right to sit in a church with three or four harlequins in livery behind him. * * But it is for misfortune to judge of misfortune. The vulgar heart of prosperity cannot comprehend the delicate sentiments of misfortune. If one considers without passion what the emigrants suffered in France, who is the man, who, putting his hand to his heart, would dare to say, 'I would not have done as they did!""

Monsieur de Chateaubriand then determines to emigrate, but he has no money; the fortune of his wife consisted only of assignats. At last he gets a notary in the Faubourg St Honoré'to advance him 12,000 francs on these assignats. But on returning home he meets with a friend; they walk and talk together, and at last they enter a gambling-house. At that time gaming was perhaps the most innocent amusement that remained. To a gentleman society was dangerous, and the relaxations of the people were in the clubs and round the scaffold. Whether from curiosity, or ennui, or weakness, Monsieur de Chateaubriand plays, and loses all his money except 1500 francs. With this he departs, gets into a fiacre, and drives home. On arriving, however, when he would hand his portfolio to his wife, he finds it gone. He had left it, with his last 1500 francs, in the hackney-coach. Nevertheless, Monsieur de Chateaubriand had imbibed too much equanimity of soul in the forests and among the savages of America, to be disturbed by this. He sleeps as pro

2 $

foundly and tranquilly as if nothing had happened. In the morning, by great good luck, a young priest comes to him and returns him his portfolio, within which was his name and address, with the money. This priest had hired the hackney-coach immediately after he left it. He now directs his course to Bruxelles, travelling as a wine-merchant, and commissary of the army. Bruxelles was then the general rendezvous of the army of the Princes. The emigration was at that time divided into two parties, the first come and the last come; the first attributed to themselves exclusively the right of restoring the ancient dynasty. Monsieur de Chateaubriand was therefore very ill received, and from captain of cavalry became simple soldier, in one of the Breton companies, which were marching to form the siege of Thionville. With his knapsack on his back, and his musket on his shoulder, he marched gaily forward. One day he met the King of Prussia, Frederick William, on horseback. "Where are you going?" said the monarch. "I am going to fight," replied young Chateaubriand. "I see the French nobleman in that answer," said Frederick, and, saluting him, passed on. Monsieur Chateaubriand had a similar conversation at Bruxelles with Champfort, a man once of celebrity, but whose name is now almost forgotten. "From whence do you come?" asked Champfort. "From Niagara." "Where are you going to?"-"To where battles are fought." Nevertheless, in spite of this gaiety and buoyancy of spirit, he felt sensibly the immense sacrifice he had made to principle, and the very small return of gratitude and consideration it brought with it. "The Bourbons had not need," says he, "that a cadet of Brittany should return from beyond the seas to offer them his obscure devotion: If I had lit the lamp of my hostess with the journal which changed the destinies of my life, and continued my voyage, no one would have perceived my absence, for none knew that I existed. It was a simple question between me and my conscience, which brought me back to the theatre of the world. I might have done as I wished, as I was the only witness of the debate. But of all witnesses this is the one before which I should fear most to blush."

We regret that our limits will not permit us to follow the young soldier through his campaigns, and to give in his own words, for no other words could do them justice, the piquant anecdotes he relates, and to shew the sportive happy spirit with which he sustained-enjoyed, we might say-every privation. Sometimes we have him preparing the soup for his company, at others washing his shirt in the stream; but we wonder not at the gaiety and serenity of his temper, for at this moment he was writing Atala. One day the manuscript of Atala, which he carried in his knapsack, was pierced by a ball, and thus saved the poet's life; but he adds, with a smile, " Atala had still to sustain the fire of the Abbé Morellet."

But he had heavier hardships than mere privations to suffer. He receives a wound in the leg, and is at the same time attacked by the smallpox and the dysentery, which was called the malady of the Prussians. But his courage does not abandon him. He marches as long as he can walk. When he passed through the towns, the road to the hospital was always pointed out to him, but he passed on. At Namur, a poor woman seeing him tremble with fever, feeling pity for him, threw an old blanket over his shoulders, and he continued his route with this covering. At last he is perfectly exhausted, and falls into a ditch by the roadside. In this state, motionless and senseless, he is picked up by a company of the Prince de Ligne which chanced to pass, and transported in a waggon to Bruxelles. But there he found every door shut against him; he goes from hotel to hotel, from house to house, in vain. He has no money to pay for his longing; and lame, sick, ill, and apparently on the point of death, he is everywhere refused harbour. When in this abandoned condition, without help and without resource, seeking only a place to lie down and die, a carriage passes him; in this carriage was his brother. He had 1200 francs in his pocket-be gives the half to Francis, and bids him adieu to reenter France, and to die on the scaffold. Having had his wounds dressed, and recovered a little strength, M. de Chateaubriand determines to go to Jersey, to rejoin the royalists

of Brittany. He is conducted to Ostend. "At Ostend," the Memoirs here speak, "I met several Bretons, my compatriots and my comrades, who had formed the same project as myself. We hired a little bark for Jersey, and were shut up during the passage in its hold. The bad weather, the want of air and space, and the motion of the sea, exhausted the little strength I had left; the wind and the tide obliged us to put in at Guernsey. As I was on the point of death, I was carried on shore and placed against a wall, my face turned to the sun, that I might breathe my last. The wife of a sailor happened to pass; she took compassion on me, called her husband, and aided by two or three other English sailors, transported me into the house of a fisherman, and placed me in a good bed. It is probably to this act of charity that I owe my life. The next day I was re-embarked on board a sloop of Ostend. When we arrived at Jersey I was completely deli rious. I was received by my ma ternal uncle, the Count de Bedée, and remained several months in a state between life and death. In the spring of 1793, thinking myself sufficiently strong to take arms again, I crossed into England, where I hoped to find the direction of the princes; but my health, instead of mending, continued to decline; my chest was affected, and I could hardly breathe. Some skilful doctors who were consulted, declared that I might linger on for some weeks, perhaps for some months, perhaps for some years, but that I must avoid all fatigue, and not count on a long existence.

"Throw open the doors for his Excellency my Lord Viscount de Chateaubriand, Peer of France, Ambassador at London, and Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour, &c.!" It is with this exclamation that Mons. de Chateaubriand breaks off, when the contrast between his first and second sojourn in England presents itself to his mind. His Memoirs are filled with these admirable contrasts and sudden exclamations. We must here break off; indeed there is little more

to notice. The Memoirs, so far as they have yet proceeded, terminate nearly in this place. They stop after his first voyage to England. Nevertheless, his last reading was the relation of his journey to the place of exile of Charles the Tenth; so that they are not written consecutively, but are filled up according as his humour dictates. He has made only two copies of them; one in the hands of Madame de Chateaubriand, and the other in those of Madame Recambier. It is said that they are already sold to an English bookseller for L.1000 per volume. It is needless to add any comment. Doubtless it will be an invaluable acquisition to have the mighty events which have checquered Mons. de Chateaubriand's life, and the destinies of the world of Europe during its period, exhibited to us, as they have passed through and been coloured by such a mind. He himself in his own person represents a principle; the aristocratic and religious principle of society. He represents it in all its splendour, in all its purity, in all its power; a more unexceptionable representative could not be chosen to place it in its happiest light. Mons. de Talleyrand too, we are told, is writing his Memoirs. He also represents a principle the antagonist principle; the principle of popular ascendency, of unbelief, of expediency. He is equally a most favourable representative, to set his principle in its best point of view, being without violence, without crime, without exaggeration, and sincerely desirous of the good and happiness of mankind. When we have the Memoirs of these two master-minds, we may say we have the picture of the mind of Europe during their epoch, and of the two antagonist principles, whose collision has flooded Europe with blood, and still continues to agitate and threaten it with further revolutions. But how differently will the same events ap pear seen through such different op tics!

O. D.