Joseph de Maistre,* the Abbé de Lamennais,† and a host of inferior writers, collecting around the throne a heap of sophistry, of prejudice, and of acrimonious abuse, did their best by dint of violence.

We know how fierce the battle, how absorbing; we are still wondering at the speediness with which the last struggle took place. The three days of July, 1830, brought the French Revolution one stage forward on its course; and from that period we must date the climax of a literature so extraordinary, so beyond all usual conception, that it has outdone romanticism itself, and made the desinit in piscem a matter of every-day occurrence.

We remember reading the frightful descriptions given by Mrs. Trollope, Mr. Bulwer, and the "Quarterly Review," of French society and literature; we likewise remember shrugging up our shoulders, and pitying those who borrowed their opinions of the Revolution from Ultra-Toryism and from the ex-American milliner. It will not do to pick here and there a scrap out of George Sand or M. de Balzac, as a sample of French morals and composition: we must see how such a state of things has been brought about; we must, besides, judge dispassionately, make use of our logical faculties, and not substitute party antipathies in the room of argument.

Before 1830, political forms were the topics of discussion; external regulations, only, engaged the attention of thinkers, and influenced, more or less, French literature. Since then, the very groundwork of society has been scrutinized; and after having come to the conclusion that happiness is inherent neither to a republic nor to a monarchy, anxious inquirers are now striving to go farther than political schemes. It is certainly to be deeply lamented that France, struggling as it is between Popery and infidelity, still persists in shutting its eyes to the light of the Gospel; but we ought not to be astonished when we see the human mind endeavouring to solve the grand problem of eternity. This is, we rather believe, a better employment than that of shedding the blood of one's fellow-creatures on a field of battle. Let God's holy word be widely spread and proclaimed through France, and we shall soon see an end of Socialism, Communism, Fourierism, neo Christianism, Atheism, and Romanism.

The great feature of modern society is the almost exclusive attention given to material concerns, and to the development of industry. Literature has caught the infection, we are sorry to see: M. Alexandre Dumas's prolific pen realizes all the wonders of the steam-engine; and those who know anything of Eugène Sue, will bear witness that we might, without swerving from the truth, apply to him Boileau's lines,—

Bienheureux Scudéri, dont la fertile plume

Peut tous les mois sans peine enfanter un volume.

It is comparatively easy to select, out of a long list of names, the few distinguished persons who maintain the reputation of French literature. Lamartine belongs to the period of the Restoration; Casimir Delavigne is no more; Châteaubriand and Alexandre Dumas, although in various senses, are both artistically dead. Victor Hugo, M. de Balzac, George Sand, in fictitious literature; M. Thiers, M. Louis Blanc, M. Michelet, M. Thierry, in historical researches; M. de Rémusat, M. Jules Simon, M. E. Quinet, in

* See his Soirées de St. Petersbourg; Du Pape. M. de Maistre's brother Xavier is the well-known author of the "Travels round my Room," and several other tales. + See his De l'Indifférence en Matière de Religion. Paris. In 8vo. and 12mo.

moral philosophy; M. Vinet, M. Sainte Beuve, M. Jules Janin, in literary criticism; * such are those who appear rari nantes in the gurgite vasto of the scribbling age.

M. VICTOR HUGO is well known as one of the staunch leaders of the romantic school. His success as a dramatist, a lyrist, and a novelist, is too widely spread to need here any comment; and we shall, therefore, dismiss him with the following estimation of his high talents, which we have borrowed from a Review: it is quite to the point :

"He conceives that there have existed three great and distinct ages of poetry, each adapted to, and created by, a corresponding state of society. These three are, the ages of the ode, the epos, and the drama. The primitive, or what the ancients called the fabulous, time is lyrical; the time of the ancients, epic; and that of the moderns, dramatic. The ode sings eternity, the epos solemnizes history, the drama paints life. The character of the first is naïveté; of the second, simplicity; and of the third, truth. The personages of the ode are Colossuses,-Adam, Cain, Noah; those of the epos, giants, Achilles, Atreus, Orestes; those of the drama, men,—Hamlet,

*The following extract from an English paper characterizes M. Vinet :-" To return to M. Vinet. He has two positions,-a position in Europe, a position in Lausanne. It is of the latter I am now to speak. And in the latter he commands admiration as a lecturer, a writer, and a Preacher. And, as you will expect, it is only as a Preacher that you are now required to contemplate him. His oratory, if I may judge, is faultless. I am sure that I have never heard it equalled in either House of Parliament. He has not the inexhaustible rotundity and unbroken flow of the Premier; but his tones are always modified by the nature of what he says, and never override his sentiments. He has not the earnest, the affectionate, and captivating strains of the Secretary for the Colonies; but he is free from intervals of weakness, and as much a stranger to hesitation as he is to monotony. He has not the plausibility and dignity of the Chancellor; but his matter never sinks while his manner rises. You see before you the gaunt tall figure of Lord Brougham; a face expressive of extraordinary mind, and extraordinary humility. If I may venture on a judgment, you see all Lord Brougham's power without any of his recklessness. He never defeats himself. His vehemence is always chastened. Each sentence is finished, each movement in place. The eye is never offended, the ear is never disappointed. His voice rises when it ought to rise, and falls when it ought to fall. The canvass shortens and expands with wonderful rapidity and pliancy. He appears to command his hearers with the same ease with which he commands himself. The faculty of bringing each word close to you, which I have heard ascribed to Sheridan, and which has particularly pleased me in Sir William Follett, he possesses in an eminent degree. There is nothing harsh and dissonant to interrupt the work. All is clear, strong, and deep; all is subservient to edification. You cannot hear him without thinking of yourself as well as of him. There is not the least excess of artistical display. I have seen him exhibit the qualities I ascribe to him in a small room, sitting down and surrounded by less than twenty hearers. The excitement of a large audience is quite unnecessary to him. As he has published two volumes of discourses, and a great number of detached sermons, I may leave you to form your own opinion of his matter. He urges high aims, as he evidently possesses high attainments. He is more inclined to preach ethically than doctrinally. It has been among his tasks to counteract the Antinomian element of the religious réveil in the canton, or at least to guard it from Antinomian dispositions. His eloquence, of course, gives him a great authority in Lausanne. He is quite the tower of his friends and the terror of his enemies. I feel my utter inability to give you an adequate idea of the sway he exerts. Perhaps it is not greater than naturally arises where such a reputation, such a pen, and such a tongue as he possesses, are combined with a brilliant and imposing Christianity, which, if I mistake not, is as catholic in ǎσknσis as in mind and spirit it is ProtestHe seems to combine in his ensemble an expression of the middle age and an expression of the nineteenth century,—of the monk, in short, and the philosopher. You have the bearing of the one, and the conversation of the other."

ant.

Macbeth, Othello. The ode expatiates on the ideal, the epos on the lofty, the drama on the real; and this triple poetry descends from three great sources, the Bible, Homer, and Shakspeare.".

M. Hugo's true character.-" Pensive and wayward, sensitive and contemplative, alive to the brilliancy of the world, easily affected by the recollections of the past, desponding for the future; but showing, in his pride and in his high-mettled fierceness, the unbroken spirit of youth, and, in fact, proving that his melancholy and his sorrow are rather the reaction of an overwrought temperament than the bitterness of the heart, worn and bruised by a life of care and sad experience...... We are grievously mistaken if Mr. Wordsworth does not rank M. Hugo among his ardent admirers.”

M. Hugo as a novelist.—“ The English writer to whom we should most unreluctantly compare the author of Han d'Islande, is Maturin: this would be but slender justice, however; for with Maturin's power of working upon the passion of fear, and of conceiving situations of great horror, he possesses a taste and a knowledge and art which save him from overstepping the mark, and consequently producing sensations of a nature entirely opposed to those intended.”

Some fifteen or twenty years ago, the most popular of the contributors to French fictitious literature was M. DE BALZAC. This gentleman had not, indeed, directed his attention to the study of the past, nor had he fallen in with the antiquarian fureur, which was introduced by Sir Walter Scott's imitators. M. de Balzac endeavoured to paint his own times; he undertook to note down, as he observed them, the follies, the vices, the heartlessness of the nineteenth century; he sallied forth from his watch-tower as a French Sir Lytton Bulwer, squeezing philosophy out of the worthless dolls, whose chief characteristic is an irreproachable paletot, or an exquisite silk bonnet. M. de Balzac, however, made a gross mistake: of unquestionable faithfulness as a dissecter of human nature, witty, brilliant, and powerfully descriptive, he aimed at something more; he wrote upon Christianity; ergo, he blundered most egregiously. The collected works of M. de Balzac have lately been published under the title,-"The Comedy of Human Life," and it is in the preface of this edition that we are enabled to find the author's views of Christianity. We shall quote a reflection or two :— "L'homme n'est ni bon ni méchant; il nait avec des instincts et des aptitudes susceptibles de se developper vers le bien ou vers le mal.”

That is to say :— -"Man is neither good nor bad; he comes into the world with instincts and dispositions which can be developed for one purpose or for the other." Whereas the Bible positively declares to us, that we are shapen in iniquity.

"Obligé de se conformer aux ideés d'un pays essentiellement hypocrite, Walter Scott a été faux, relativement à l'humanité, dans la peinture de la femme, parceque ses modèles etaient des schismatiques. La femme Protestante n'a pas d'idéal. Elle peut être chaste, pure, vertueuse; mais son amour sans expansion sera toujours calme et rangé comme un devoir accompli. Il semblerait que la Vierge Marie ait refroidi le cœur des sophistes qui la bannissaient du ciel, elle et ses trésors de miséricorde. Dans le Protestantisme, il n'y a plus rien de possible pour la femme après sa faute, tandis que dans l'église Catholique l'espoir du pardon la rend sublime. Aussi n'existe-t-il qu'une seule femme pour l'écrivain Protestant, tandis que l'écrivain Catholique trouve une femme nouvelle dans chaque nouvelle situation.” Translation as follows:Obliged as he was to espouse the ideas of an essentially hypocritical nation, Walter Scott has represented humanity under false colours in his

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character of woman; and the reason is, that schismatics had sat for his models. The Protestant woman has no ideal. She may be chaste, pure, virtuous; but her unexpansive love shall be always calm and orderly, as proceeding from a consciousness of fulfilled duty. It would seem that the Virgin Mary has hardened the hearts of the sophists who drove her from heaven altogether with her treasures of mercy. In the Protestant religion there is nothing possible for a woman when she has once committed a fault; in the Catholic Church, on the contrary, the hope of pardon renders her sublime. Consequently the representation of the female character is ever the same among Protestant writers, whilst every new situation brings a new woman before the Catholic author."

So much for Protestant ladies, as conceived by M. de Balzac ; and we are disposed, we must confess, to acknowledge as a compliment, rather than otherwise, the piece of criticism which they have incurred from the pen of the spirituel novelist.*

To close our review by a striking finale, we have purposely kept until now what we wanted to say about GEORGE SAND. If there is a writer who may be called the faithful portrait of the nineteenth century, with its scepticism, its errors, its aspirations, its plans of social reform, George Sand is that writer. No name, perhaps, has been the object of more opprobrium ; no literary character has met with such staunch defenders, such violent enemies. In George Sand, two distinct persons seem to be united and to meet. There is, first, the writer handling the French language as Jeremy Taylor, or Sir Thomas Browne, did theirs, and showing how the most harmonious music can be produced by combination of letters and syllables. To this George Sand no one would deny the laurel-wreath. But behind the externals of the book, under the purple vestment and the gorgeous decorations, there is another George Sand, there is the reformer, or rather the destroyer, whose sophisms lie open to the severest condemnation.

We cannot, of course, enter into anything like an account of the celebrated Madame Dudevant's writings; but our readers will allow her to state her case before them in a summary way, until we are able to examine a little more minutely the philosopher who undoubtedly stands now at the head of French literature.

"Cela me fit penser que l'ignorance de la critique n'était pas seulement relative aux questions sociales, mais encore aux questions humaines; et je me permis de lui demander, dans un roman intitulé Lelia, comment elle entendait et comment elle expliquait l'amour.

"Cette nouvelle demande mit la critique dans une véritable fureur. Jamais roman n'avait déchainé de tels anathêmes ni soulevé d'aussi farouches indignations. J'étais un esprit pervers, un caractère odieux, une plume obscène, pour avoir esquissé le fantome d'une femme qui cherche en vain l'amour dans le cœur des hommes de notre temps, et qui se retire au désert pour y rêver l'amour dont brûla Sainte Thérèse. Cependant je ne demeurai pas convaincue que les Pères de l'Eglise, dont j'avais à cette époque la tête remplie, m'eussent inspiré la pensée d'un livre abominable.

"Je fis un nouveau roman que j'intitulai Jacques, et dans lequel, prenant un homme pour type principal, je demandai encore, et cette fois au nom de l'homme, comme je l'avais fait jusqu'alors au nom de la femme, quel était

A very clever paper on M. de Balzac was published some time since in La Voix Nouvelle, the new Paris Protestant periodical.

l'idéal de l'amour dans le mariage. Cette fois, ce fut pis encore. J'étais l'ennemi du mariage, l'apologiste de la licence, le contempteur de la fidélité, le corrupteur de toutes les femmes, le fléau de tous les maris.

"Plus tard, dans un roman appelé Spiridion, je demandai à mon siècle quelle était sa religion. On m'observa que cette préoccupation de mon cerveau manquait d'actualité. Les critiques, qui m'avaient tant reproché de n'avoir ni foi ni loi, de n'être qu'un artiste, c'est-à-dire, dans leurs idées d'alors, un brouillon et un athée, m'adressèrent de doctes et paternels reproches sur ma pretention à une croyance, et m'accusèrent de vouloir me donner des airs de philosophe. Restez artiste, me disait-on alors de toutes parts, comme Voltaire disait à son perruquier, Fais des perruques.'

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"This made me believe that periodical criticism was in ignorance with respect, not only to social, but to human questions; and I took the liberty of asking my judges, in a romance entitled Lelia, how they understood, and how they explained, love.

"The consequence of my fresh query was a perfect outburst of fury. No novel had ever provoked such anathemas, nor raised such fierce indignation. I was a perverse mind, an odious character, an obscene writer; and all that because I had sketched the phantom of a woman, who, after having in vain sought for love in the heart of the men of our own times, withdraws to the desert like Sainte Theresa. However, I did not feel convinced that I had found the idea of an abominable work in the Fathers of the Church, who were, at the time, monopolizing my thoughts.

"I wrote a new novel which I named Jacques, and where, taking a man for the principal hero, I asked once more, what was the ideal of love in marriage; but putting the question this time in man's name, as I had done it until then in woman's. It was still worse: I became the enemy of marriage, the apologist of licentiousness, the contemner of fidelity, the corrupter of womankind, the plague of husbands.

“At a later period, I asked of my age, what was its religion, in a book called Spiridion. I was answered, that such a pre-occupation on my part had no actuality. Formerly, the critics had taxed me with being merely an artist; that is to say, according to their ideas, a scapegrace and an atheist : now they reproached to me, most wisely and paternally, my pretensions to a belief, declaring that I wanted to assume the air of a philosopher. 'Remain an artist,' was the general cry; as Voltaire said to his perruquier, 'Make wigs.""

The above is certainly a candid exposé of the animadversion which George Sand encountered in his literary career. And yet, in the presence of undeniable facts, with the proof before our eyes, we are told George Sand does not "confound the boundaries of order and virtue," nor "unloosen the principles that hold society together." An English reviewer, inquiring "how so excellent and so interesting a writer can have been so long excluded from our shelves," answers, "Sand is a political writer, not as a partisan, but as a great social reformer. In common with all the truly imaginative writers of the time, she feels it to be out of joint." + We, too, are of opinion that there is something wrong; but we would humbly ask, if the rotten principle is to be found in the laws laid down by God himself. "The codes that govern modern civilized societies tend more to destroy than to enlarge

* Preface to the duodecimo edition of George Sand's Works. Douglas Jerrold's Weekly Newspaper, January 23.