Angelo, of Kant or Goethe, as Frenchmen or Englishmen, Germans or Italians, but as MEN, whose capacities and whose achievements are at once the patrimony and the illustration of all peoples and all lands alike. GREAT men, of the very first order of of their character and their intelligence greatness" the hights and pinnacles of override and obliterate the special ones. human mind"—are of no country. They We do not think of Shakspeare and Baare cosmopolitan, not national. They be- con, of Spinoza and Descartes, of Newlong not to the Teutonic, or the Anglo-ton and Galileo, of Columbus or Michael Saxon, or the Italian, or the Gallic race, but to the human race. They are stamped with the features, rich with the endowments, mighty with the power, instinct with the life, not of this or that phase or section of humanity, but of humanity itself, in its most unlimited development and its loftiest possibilities. There is no aprent reason why they might not have been born in any one of the nations into which the civilized modern world is divided as well as in another. The universal elements Mémoires d'outre Tombe. Par le Vicomte DE La Tribune: Chateaubriand. Par M. VILLEMAIN. VOL. LIV.-No. 4 But there are great men of a secondary stature and a more bounded range-men darkly wise, and imperfectly and irregu larly great, yet whose greatness can not be disputed, since, in spite of many moral shortcomings and much intellectual frailty, they have filled a large space in the world's eye, have done good service and earned high fame, have notably influenced the actions and the thoughts of their co 28 temporaries, and produced works "which the three great moral, political, and social after-times will not willingly let die"- convulsions of modern times-the revoand yet who are so prominently marked lution of 1789, the revolution of 1830, the with the impress of their age and coun- revolution of 1848. He was born under try, that no one can for a moment fail to feudalism; he died under socialism. He recognize their origin. Every page of opened his eyes on France when she was their writings, every incident of their an ancient and hereditary monarchy-he career, every power they evince, every beheld her " every thing in turn, and noth-, weakness they betray, proclaims aloud the ing long"-he lived to see the second ReBriton or the Frank. And we speak here public, and almost to see the second Emnot only of men of talent, but of men of pire. His writings, varied in their range unquestionable genius, too. "Talent," as-romantic, religious, polemic, and bioSir James Mackintosh well defined it, is graphical-are all peculiar and character"habitual power of execution." It is of istic, and full of energy and warmth. By many descriptions; it may be generated the common consent of his countrymen, he to some extent; it may be cultivated to is regarded as having carried the poetry almost any extent; and will naturally have of prose composition to a pitch never apa local stamp and coloring. "Genius" proached by any one before or since, eximplies a special gift, an innate and pe- cept Rousseau; and in that style of reculiar endowment. Providence, with a fined acrimony, quiet thrusts with polishmysterious and uncontrollable sovereign-ed rapier, and graceful throwing of poisty, drops the seed into any soil; it might oned epigrammatic javelins, which is so be expected, therefore, to be purely per- peculiarly French, and which Frenchmen sonal, rather than redolent of time and so inordinately value, he had confessedly place. Yet, except in the case of those no rival. He was, moreover, a real powparamount and abnormal intelligences of er in literature. His controversial writwhom we have spoken above, men of geni-ings undeniably exercised great influence us, for the most part, are essentially national and secular-visibly stamped with the image and superscription of the era in which they lived and the land which gave them birth. Of this secondary order of great men -unquestionably a man of genius, unquestionably, also, and par excellence a Frenchman, and a Frenchman of the nineteenth century-Chateaubriand was one of the most eminent and the most special. His career, his character, and his writings, are well worth the pains of studying. His career extended over the whole of the most momentous and exciting epoch of modern history, and was involved in some of its most stirring scenes. He was born in 1768, and died in 1848. He was old enough to feel an interest in the establishment of American independence; and he lived to see the United States swell in number from thirteen to thirty-three. He was presented in his eighteenth year to Louis XVI. in the days of his grandeur at Versailles, and he might have been presented in his eightieth year to Louis Napoleon, at the Elysée, as he marched back from exile on his way to the imperial throne. He was a fugitive to England in his youth, and ambassador to England in his old age. He served Napoleon and he served Charles X. He lived through over political transactions, and his sentimental writings exercised a still wider and more indisputable influence over the taste and tone of the lighter productions of his age. His character, finally, both in its strength and its weakness, was peculiarly French. His unsociability apart, he might almost be taken as the typical man of his class, time, and country-greatly exaggerated, however, especially in his defects. A sense of honor, quick, sensitive, and fiery, rather than rational or deep; an hereditary high breeding, which displayed itself rather in exquisite grace and urbanity of manner than in real chastening of spirit; a native chivalry of temper and demeanor, but too superficial to render him truly either generous or amiable; vanity ignobly excessive and absolutely childish; and egotism carried to a point at which it became quite a crime, and almost a disease-such were the prominent features of Chateaubriand, according to every portrait we possess. François-René de Chateaubriand was born September fourth, 1768, at SaintMalo in Brittany-most reluctantly, as he informs us-against his strong desire and in cruel disregard of his most vehement protests. The distaste for life, which he loses no opportunity of expressing-and which we may well conceive was in a measure genuine, for selfish men and proud men are seldom happy-manifested itself in him, we are required to believe, before his birth. He was not the eldest son: his father wanted a second boy, in order to secure the transmission of the family name; but Chateaubriand was so unwilling to come into the world that he sent four sisters before him, one after another, in the vain hope of quenching his parent's insatiable desire of offspring. The father of Chateaubriand was a Breton gentleman of ancient family but decayed fortunes. He had acquired a moderate competence himself by a step which in those days indicated much good sense and force of character: he had entered the mercantile marine, made one or two successful voyages, and then settled for some years in the West-Indian colonies. As soon as he was in a position of reasonable independence, he returned to his native land, purchased at Combourg, near Saint-Malo, an old ancestral estate and chateau; but the soil was poor, the chateau dreary, and the site desolate and forlorn. The son has left a most uninviting picture of both the paternal residence and the paternal character-the one cold and gloomy, the other severe, silent, passionate, and morose, with an inordinate pride of name and race as his predominating moral features. In reference to this family pride, we must notice one of the first of Chateaubriand's affectations and insincerities. He pretends to despise all such weakness; he loudly proclaims the hollowness of all such pretensions; he stigmatizes them as "odious in his father, ridiculous in his brother, and too manifest even in his nephew." So far is he, however, from being either free from this weakness or able to hide it, that he betrays it in his every page. He loses no occasion of enumerating his ancestral glories and connections; he describes with irrepressible self-glorification his entering the royal carriages and hunting with the king-privileges only granted to those of undoubted noble birth; he devotes a whole chapter to his pedigree; he returns to the subject again and again; when his father dies, he gives an extract from the mortuary register detailing in full all his titles and formalities; he assures us that "if he inherited the infatuation of his father and his brother," he could easily prove his descent from the Dukes of Bre tagne, the intermingling of his blood with that of the royal family of England. The young inheritor of all these past and future glories suffered from a defective education and a neglected childhood. He passed some portions of interrupted years at the seminaries of Dol, Rennes, and Dinan successively, before which period he seems to have spent his time in wandering along the wild shore of Brittany, or playing with the village urchins of Saint-Malo. He read fitfully, but learnt nothing thoroughly. He gained the admiration of his instructors, he tells us, on account of his singular memory for words-it seems to have been his one special faculty in youth; but he adds characteristically: "One thing humiliates me in reference to this: memory is often the endowment of fools; it belongs usually to heavy minds, rendered yet more ponderous by the baggage with which they are overloaded." He actually feels ashamed of possessing a good memory because he can not have it all to himself, but must share the endowment with ungifted men! The remainder of his youth was passed principally in his ungenial home at Combourg, lost in idleness and reveries, roaming among the woods, gazing at sunsets, building castles in the air and indulging in those vague, semi-erotic, semi-ethereal fancies, so common to imaginative minds at the opening of life; but of which-full of his notion that every thing relating to him was anomalous and unique-he says: "I do not know if the history of the human heart offers another example of this sort of thing." His sister Lucile, who seems to have been a charming person, was his sole companion and comfort in this ungenial and unprofitable life. Even with her it was melancholy enough; without her it would have been insupportable. It nourished and enriched his poetical imagination, beyond question, but it nourished and consolidated all his moral failings at the same time-his farouche and somber humor, his unamiable egotism, his slavery to passion and to fancy, and his normal attitude of self-study, self-wonder, and self-worship. His father rose at four o'clock, summer and winter; and his harsh voice calling for his valet resounded through the house. At noon the family assembled for dinner in the great hall, previous to which hour they worked or studied in their own rooms, or were supposed to do so. After dinner | dors. All the traditions of the castle, its robthe father went to shoot, or fish, or look bers and specters, suddenly recurred to their after his farm; the mother went to her memory. The people were firmly persuaded oratory; the daughter to her room and that a Count de Combourg, with a wooden leg, who died three centuries before, appeared at her tapisserie, and the son to the woods, certain epochs, and that he had been met on the or to his books and dreams. At eight grand staircase of the tower: sometimes, also, o'clock they supped; then the father shot the wooden leg walked by itself along with a owls, and the rest of the family looked at black cat." the stars, till ten o'clock, when they retired to rest. We may readily concede that a youth thus passed was not calculated to inspire "The evenings of autumn and winter were any vivid love of existence, and we have passed in a somewhat different manner. When no doubt also that Chateaubriand was supper was over, and the four convives had re- constitutionally of a melancholic temperaturned from the table to the fireplace, my moment. Chateaubriand's early years were ther, with a sigh, threw herself upon an old couch, and a stand with one candle was placed beside her. Lucile and I sat by the fire; the servants cleared the table and retired. Then my father began his walk, and never stopped till bed-time. He wore an old white robe-dechambre, or rather a sort of mantle, which I have never seen on any other man. His head, nearly bald, was covered with a great white cap, which stood straight up. When he walked away from the hearth, the large room was so dimly lighted by its solitary taper that he became invisible-his steps only were heard in the darkness. Gradually he returned toward the light, and emerged little by little out of the gloom, like a specter, with his white robe, white cap, and long pale face. Lucile and I exchanged a few words in a low voice while he was at the other end of the room, but we were silent the instant he approached us. As he passed, he inquired of what we were speaking. Seized with fear, we made no reply, and he continued his walk. The rest of the evening nothing was heard but the measured sound of his steps, my mother's sighs, and the whistling of the wind. The castle-clock struck ten. My father stopped; the same spring which had raised the hammer of the clock seemed to have suspended his steps. He drew out his watch, wound it up; took up a large silver torch with a large wax taper, went for a moment into the little western tower, then returned torch in hand, and went toward his bed-room in the eastern tower. Lucile and I put ourselves in his way, embraced him, and wished him a good night. Without replying, he bent toward us his hard and wrinkled cheek, proceeded on his way, and withdrew to the bottom of the tower, and we heard the doors close after him. undeniably full of gloomy and depressing influences, but they were amply redeemed by subsequent successes. He achieved fame while still young; he rose to the hight of grandeur and renown, according to his estimate of such things; he was loved by many and admired by all; he lived long, he lived actively, he lived on the scene of the most thrilling events, and he lived through a period more replete than any other with interest and excitement. If he had been less of an egotist or more of a Christian, he must have been thankful for life at least, even if he had not consciously enjoyed it. Yet the burden of his song is the same at every age. It must not be supposed that his youthful studies and reveries were wholly unproductive: he seems to have talked well when excited and sufficiently at ease to overcome his native shyness; and his sister, struck with some remarkable indications of talent, persuaded him to write. He did so for a while; then he became discouraged, threw his work aside, and grumbled at Lucile for having suggested it. Meantime the young aspirant had embraced no profession, though he had dreamed of nearly all, and was unfit for any. His father designed him for the navy, and sent him to Brest to prepare for his commission; but he renounced the career for some unexplained cause, and returned "Then the charm was broken; my mother, to the paternal mansion. His mother my sister, and myself, all transformed into sta wanted to make him a priest; but Cha tues by my father's presence, suddenly recov-teaubriand felt no vocation in that line, ered our vitality. The first effect of our dis- though some preliminary studies were unenchantment was to produce a torrent of words. dertaken, and he actually received the 'If silence had oppressed us, it paid dearly for it. tonsure from the Bishop of Saint-Malo, as "The flood of words being exhausted, I a step toward becoming at some future called the chamber-maid, and conducted my mother and sister to their apartment. Before period a Knight of Malta. He at one I withdrew, they made me look under the beds, time resolved to obtain some appointment up the chimneys, behind the doors, and search in the East-Indies, and his father consentthe staircase, passages, and neighboring corri-ed to let him dispose of himself in this manner; but months flowed by, and no | tion for matrimony--none of the qualities active measures were taken to realize the to make a good husband. Nevertheless scheme. At last the paternal patience he told his sisters they might do as they was worn out: a commission in the army liked. "Faites donc !" said he. Accordwas obtained, and the future Celebrity ingly they found a young lady with a rewas sent off to join his regiment with a puted fortune of twenty thousand pounds, hundred louis in his pocket and a parting who, in spite of her friends' opposition, allocution, which was rather a scolding consented to become Madame de Chathan a benediction. The young ensign teaubriand; and, we believe, notwithpresented himself at head-quarters, and standing mortal annoyances, never repentfor a while did duty with his corps; but ed of her complaisance. She appears, he saw no service and learned no disci- both by her husband's account and by pline, spending most of his time in Paris, that of M. Villemain, and of others who watching the gradual opening of the knew her, to have been clever, lively, and Revolution. The state of affairs soon be- spiritual, and a really affectionate and came uncomfortable for an officer of a devoted wife. Admiring Chateaubriand noble family in the service of the King; vastly, but appreciating him little, and Chateaubriand appears to have been still approving and agreeing with him scarcely too egotistical a dreamer to feel any ab- ever; proud of his fame, but indifferent sorbing interest in the great drama that to literature, and never reading a line of was then evolving; he was seized with a his works-the union must have been a fancy for discovering the north-west pas- curious, if not precisely an ill-assorted one. sage so at least he says; but probably He esteemed and respected, but does not he was only restless and adventurous. pretend to have loved her; and, accordHowever, he sailed for America; re- ing to our notions, he neglected her nounced his alleged scheme on the first shamefully. He deserted her almost imdiscouragement he met with; wandered mediately after their marriage, and abanawhile in the prairies and the forests of doned her to all the horrors and perils of the new world; gained a glimpse into the the Reign of Terror. He left her behind poetry of savage life, of which he made him when he went to England, and seems the most in Atala and the Natchez; and for a time to have forgotten he was marreturned suddenly to France, with no defi- ried; he left her when he went as Secrenite reason or determinate purpose, on tary of Legation to Rome; he left her hearing of the King's flight to Varennes. when he went on a pilgrimage to the LeChateaubriand returned from America as vant; in fact, he usually left her behind him unsettled as ever in his mind, and poorer whenever he went any where. She was than ever in purse. Meantime the Revo- a kind of pied-à-terre or furnished lodglution made rapid progress. The emi- ing, which he kept in Paris to be ready grant army of Condé formed itself on the for him when he happened to return, after left bank of the Rhine; nobles and royal- his restless wanderings. The few pages ists flocked to join it, as fast as they could which he devotes to her in narrating his contrive means of escape; and Chateau- marriage are singularly cool and characbriand, mindful of his birth and antece- teristic. He does full justice to her inteldents, and moved by an ill-considered feel- ligence and character, and expresses himing of honor, resolved to follow their ex- self grateful for her devotion and affecample, though in his heart he neither tionate patience with his faults. Chacompletely embraced their political prin- teaubriand soon discovered that his wife's ciples, nor in his conscience was at all sat- property, for the sake of which he had isfied as to the morality of the emigrant married her, was all but mythical. It warfare. He makes no secret of this had been secured on the domains of the state of mind in his record of the discus- clergy, and these domains had been consions he held with Malesherbes upon the fiscated by the nation. At all events, the subject. But he had no money where- funds, whether existing or not, were inacwith to carry out his half-hesitating pur- cessible. With great difficulty he borrowpose; his family could not furnish him ed ten thousand francs; and, as ill-luck with it: he married in order to obtain it. would have it, while these were in his This, at least, is his own account of the pocket, for the first and only time in his matter, and we have never seen it contra- life, he was enticed by the fatal fascinations dicted. He tells us that he felt no vocal of the gaming-table. He lost all except |