sullen, incurious, and malign. The morning was wet and gloomy, just such another as that on which the remains of Voltaire were transported to their present abode : and what with the rain, the people, and the carriages, it was an undertaking of no small difficulty to scramble up from the Place St. Michael to the Place of the Pantheon. Thinking less of the grandeur of the building than of the change it was about to undergo, I looked to see what had become of the revolutionary inscription over the portico, legible enough some weeks before-of Aur grands hommes la patrie reconnoissante; and also, though more defaced, that of Unité, Indivisibilité de la République, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, ou La Mort. A canvass was at present spread over the plinth; behind which, I was informed, workmen were daily employed, substituting for the Republican mottos, the more devout inscription of D. O. M. sub invocatione sanctæ Genovefa sacrum.

I had visited the interior of the building two or three months previously, when there was no sign of preparation for the intended ceremony; and must confess, that all that was pilgrim in me blushed for the present contrast. There were unpleasant feelings in both contemplations: in the first, the silence of the house of prayer recalled all the indignities and massacres that the church had suffered, the vain attempts of the revolutionists to supply the place of religion by theatric ceremony and fictitious heroism, with the fate of those wretched mortals :

"Who play'd such antic tricks before high Heaven."

They had overturned the altars, and chased away the ministers of religion; but its spirit, methought, had not departed. The silent solemnity of the space, so beautifully bounded by pillar, arch, and dome, and unbroken through so many years, seemed the worship that Time paid to the Almighty.

The ceremony of the consecration, for all its imposing appearance, did not excite in me any such elevated ideas. The rich altar and its gigantic tapers, its gew-gaw ornaments and flimsy canopy, did not strike the eye of a protestant, and perhaps a somewhat bigoted pilgrim, with much veneration. The beautiful tapestry of the Gobelins seemed as much misplaced; and on the Mosaic circle, in the midst of the building, was a table covered with artificial flowers and relics in glass cases, not at all calculated to please either my taste or my devotion. The King of France was not present, and I was sorry for it.-I love the man and the monarch, who is so ill appreciated by the idle gossips of my own country. The Duchesse d'Angoulême, who seemed to enjoy the scene, looked too proud to inspire interest, and is withal not handsome enough that she should dispense with gentleness. Her voice too, which is absolutely wolfish, together with her haughty carriage, leads every one to ask-" Can this be the daughter of the gentle Louis Seize?"

In the midst of the solemnity I could not help indulging in the comical and obvious thought of the philosophers who lay in the vaults, awaking, each like another Epimenides, from his forty years sleepeach deeming it impossible that he could have enjoyed the privilege of Christian burial, and unable to account for the chant of innumerable

-

voices over their graves." *Their next astonishment would naturally be to see themselves side by side, who were such sworn enemies in life; the mutual recognition in such a case recalls the idea in Byron's "Darkness," where, after the calcination of the globe, the two only survivors approach an ember from opposite sides, and both setting themselves to blow it into a flame, discover, each the other, to be the very object of his deadliest hatred. But death, thought I, must be a great allayer of feuds, so I continued my fancies, supposing Voltaire and Jean-Jaques to shake hands, and set out in quest of the light, and of the strange. turmoil above them. Their sarcophagi seemed previously to excite their attention as soon as Voltaire perceived they were of wood, he exclaimed, "Brother, this cannot be France, the land of liberality and magnificence!—and see, what a heap of illegible inscriptions have been placed round about me, almost as interminable as my own scribbling. You," continued he to Rousseau, and viewing his tomb, "have been more lucky, Here rests the man of nature and of truth; though late, I still rejoice in assenting to your praise. But come, bone or spirit, whichever we be, and yet I know not," said the philosopher, with a sneer, "these vaults are cold, let us seek our way to the assembly of noisy mortals above." They seemed to grope along the passages, Voltaire going first, and peeping into every cranny as he proceeded. The inscriptions on the tombs perplexed him; wherever he pried, his eye met no inscription familiar to his old habits. Sénateur Impérial — Membre de la Légion d'Honneur, were enigmas to them, who, unlike Epimenides, were aware that they had been in their graves full forty years, but were uninformed of the great mass of public events, which had "curdled" a long age of changes into so short a space. A superb mausoleum for a moment attracted their attention-it bore Lannes, Duc de Montebello, mort au champ d'honneur à Essling. "They have been fighting, and creating Dukes, that's for certain," said Voltaire. Methought I perceived him at this moment to mount the steps ascending from the vault into the church, which steps the bones of a being very different from either of them had ascended a little time beforeof no less a person than St. Genevieve herself. The philosophers, however, entered the church, and commenced interrogating and conversing with some of the congregation. Whether the people around took them for madmen, or liberals, I cannot say; but in a little time, one of the gens d'armes led them both out. "Dynasties and religions change," exclaimed Rousseau, "but the Bastille and its agents ever remain the same."

All this is not very decorous, my readers will say, in a pilgrim, and at the consecration of a church. True, my worthy friends, and selfreproach at the time uttered the same words. But psalms are soporific, especially in the dead languages, and though not altogether a profane,

Voltaire was disinterred at Selliers, Rousseau from the Isle of Poplars at Ermenonville. There were several reports circulated at the time of the consecration of St. Genevieve, that the remains of the philosophers had been transported secretly to Père La Chaise. It appears that they were only removed from their conspicuous stations in the vault to one of its darkest corners, and the statue of Voltaire, that stood near his sarcophagus, is said also to have been displaced. M. de Girardin has claimed from the King the body of Rousseau, that he may re-inter it in his Poplar Isle. The unfortunate philosopher seems doomed to be as restless, and as much fretted in death, as during life.

I am still a poetic pilgrim, and cannot tread the marble ailes of St. Genevieve, without thinking that the authors of Merope and Heloise lie buried beneath me.

And yet their names have been breathed from too many mouths to excite much enthusiasm from mine. Their measure of fame seems full, even to overflowing; and, to be plain, it suits not my vanity to utter supernumerary panegyric. Popularity during life is, after all, a passing, as well as a vulgar reward; be it ever so merited, posterity seems more inclined to reverse than to establish the decree. We consider ourselves always the fit judges of the penultimate works of genius, and do not love to be anticipated. We are indignant with the past age of critics and admirers, who dared to usurp our rights, and attempt to confer prematurely the meed of immortality on their contemporaries. We feel that the living had no claim or title to praise each other face to face, and that these points should have been left to us to settle. The reasons may be fantastic, but the existence of the feeling is indisputable. Rousseau and Voltaire-do I not in a degree, and in spite of all my veneration, feel ashamed to repeat those hackneyed names, and to confound my taste with that of every breechless man and beardless boy, who have learned to cry bravo in honour of those sounds?

Genius must undergo a purgatory of neglect, and must pay its visit, like Dante, to the infernal regions of oblivion, ere it can reach the paradise of lasting fame. Its orbit is one of eccentricity, and like the comet, burn it ever so bright, it must disappear and be forgotten for a while. We are jealous of fame that has suffered no interruption-it offends our vision, and we must bury, if we would not hate it. Thus it is with Pope and his school :--some critics cry out against the neglect, the inhumation they are undergoing. Let these indignant sons of taste be tranquil,—all things fulfil their destiny. Let the names of genius, so long and so much tainted by admirers and imitators, sink gently for an interval into silence, till their homeliness and satiety wear off, and their gloss returns afresh. Let us be contented with the protest generously uttered; this will suffice to lay the grass green over its momentary grave, anon it shall arise like a giant refreshed with slumber, and the succeeding age will behold but its beauty and sublimity, purified from the taints of a too vulgar and familiar admiration.

Now, luckily for us, we can afford to do this; we have a change of scenes and a new relay of actors to bring before us--and proper men they are, good ranters some and classic figures others, as any our country has ever enjoyed. But France, owing to whatever causes, has no such literary relay; and even if the genius, which it is naturally to be supposed she must possess, had been called forth, it would have terrible obstacles to overcome. The critics of that land are a cold, servile brood, adorers of sameness and things old, and dreading hugely any innovation that would distance them into their real insignificance. This body must be utterly overthrown ere any thing farther can be effected in the march of genius; and to overthrow them will be extremely difficult, backed as they are by the popular prejudice, that any attempt at originality would be to imitate the English;-true Frenchmen, they stand in awe of this most nonsensical of all parodoxes, viz. the unoriginality of originality itself. Our countrymen, on the contrary, are an independent race, and have at least two fashions in the year

bear witness, Bond-street and the Blues. And this is as it should be: -novelty is an innate craving and law of our nature, and certain-cut poets must go out of fashion for a while as well as certain-cut coats,in a little time all will come round as before. 'Tis not perpetual banishment, but merely a momentary exile, highly advantageous to these dead wits, if they knew but all, and very amusing to them doubtless, should they have liberty or leisure to contemplate the revolutions of this nether world.

- France, however, must be sparing of contempt towards her own old writers; she must be cautious in indulging caprice of this kind, inasmuch as she cannot afford to dispense with any class of her genius: the attempts that have been made by her to strike out of the beaten path, were endeavoured by men of feeble talents, and were easily and instantly put down. This confining the ranks of genius and narrowing its limits may increase the sum of enthusiasm towards individual authors, but it at the same time renders that enthusiasm stale and common-place. The critic has nothing new to say, the pilgrim nothing new to feel, and the literature of the country proceeds on its path, like the cars upon our metal roads, smoothly succeeding each other with harmonious rumbling, linked and unique, without rut or interruption, the heavy descending assisting the light to mount, and the whole apparatus for the most part employed in conveying cargoes of lumber into the deep.

We have heard of brave men being political cowards, and vice versâ ; the same observation may be applied to philosophy and taste: those who were bold and powerful enough to set aside the trammels even of religion, offered their hands, like helots, to be bound by rules of taste. That Rousseau never attacked the host of critics is surprising, but perhaps he had learned from his early tilt against French music that the nation would suffer itself more easily to be shaken out of its religious and moral principles than out of those literary prejudices, which were wound around its amour-propre. We need not be in the least surprised at Voltaire's obsequiousness, whose campaigns of argument resembled those of his military friends in war, where he never ventured a movement without being assured of a back. He seized the floating scepticism of the fashionable society in which he first moved, and borrowed far more than he invented of it. In arguing, in illustrating a case, or dressing it up with all the accompaniments of shrewdness and ridicule, no one was his equal; but the principle on which he set out, was generally taken from the first mouth or the next page. His was not the spirit that sinks into its own depths, and tries the soundings of the abyss; it was rather that which catches its own overflowings, and plays over the aperture and in the fume of thought, rather than searches or dives in its own

"Whirling gulf of fantasy and flame."

The name of Voltaire is reverenced in France, that of Rousseau is loved. Vanity cherishes the one, but the other is adored as the presiding genius of passionate thought. The state of feeling in France at this moment is indeed a curious contemplation. The impulse, given by Napoleon, was exactly suited to one half of the national characterthe enthusiasm for glory, for active and manly exertion, &c. &c. The

masculine half of the national character found its counterpart in Napo leon, and was carried by that wonderful man to its loftiest pitch. But he was an Italian as to the rest; the side of feeling was paralyzed in him--he was blind and "faithless to the divinity of virtue;" and honour, love, sensibility, were but instruments of policy in his ambitious view. If he could not, however, communicate all his soul to the nation which he led and moulded, his genius was still too great to allow the existence of a spirit contrary to his own. Thus the chivalrous feelings towards the fair sex, natural to Frenchmen, their innate sensibility, their tenderness, were not extinguished, for such things die not-but they slept beneath his reign. He aroused the sterner passions of humanity, while he silenced the more delicate with awe, or shamed them with a sneer. His spirit has passed away, and old feelings begin to spring up, but they are yet young. Love once more is worshiped as a deity, and mutual affection, though yet in real life a prodigy to be met with, commences to have an existence, at least in theory*. Men of years and taste weep over the fadaises of Marmontel's Shepherdess of the Alps, as well as over the burning eloquence of St. Preux; and our English writings of the sentimental cast, which have been translated into their tongue, find in them rapturous admirers. I have seen not only ladies, but mustachio'd heroes shed tears of bitterness over the translations of Washington Irwin's tales of "The Wife," and "The Broken Heart." Their taste every way evinces infancy of feeling: they linger around the prettinesses of sentiment, and in the philosophy of the heart have not yet acquired maturity sufficient to enjoy the manly sensibility of Scott.

This is but a poor tribute to the philosophic brethren;-I substitute speculation for feeling, and take refuge from apathy in the niceties of critical discussion. "Tis true:-we know too much of these men-we have heard too much of them, and their lives resemble mirrors that have been breathed on and tainted by too frequent and near approaches. And even could we overcome this, there is not much to repay us. In both, human weakness is too clearly visible, and weakness of the pettiest kind-the meanest envy and the most infantine spleen. There is in them every thing that can degrade, and little that can elevate human nature. The very deism of Voltaire is cold and calculating—it has a debtor and creditor kind of tone about it, worthier of a Jew upon 'Change, than of a philosopher or a man of learning. That of Rousseau, with the same defect, is still of a loftier nature; his religious and moral works have all the narrowness of special pleading, but there is a warmth and fire in the special pleading on both sides. There is a feeling even in his very sophisms, that baffles the shrewdest logic-he is sincere, even in paradox; and if he has contributed to deceive and

* It is doubtless a very laudable and prudent custom, that young gentlemen should learn the fortunes of the young ladies with whom they form an acquaintance, and also that young ladies should make the same inquiries. But all these precautions of prudence are taken secretly at least in England; in France there is no modesty of the sort, no pretence to disinterestedness; the buzz excited by a new face is audible enough, and the consideration of pounds, shillings, and pence, not at all spoken in a whisper. A lovely girl made her appearance as a new face, at a ball at the præfecture of Tours; the usual question was asked openly by every French officer in the room. The answer was, "she had the protection of Monsieur." This did not satisfy the sparks; and the lovely face, backed by the protection of Monsieur, went partnerless.