men. But though he had a head and an arm sufficiently powerful to rescue a nation on the brink of a precipice, and to place it again, so to speak, on its feet, yet his temperament would not allow him to leave it in repose. bis genius delighted in adventure. He loved the emotion, the risk, and the game of war, the gaudia certaminis. "Je ne sais," says M. de St. Beuve, "qu'on n'oserait jamais rien de grand si l'on ne risquait à un moment le tout pour le tout." Our critic does full justice to the wonderful clearness of M. Thiers, and truly, we believe, states that, in reference to the Spanish campaigns, the ex-minister has had access to documents which have not been seen or examined by any other writer. In the chapter of his volume headed "Baylen," M. Thiers draws a comparison between the French and the English soldier. It is scarcely to be expected that this comparison should be in every respect correct, yet, in the main, justice is rendered to the solid qualities of our troops.

"The English soldier," says M. Thiers, "well fed, well dressed, proceeding slowly, because he is divested of personal ardor, is firm and invincible in certain positions in which the nature of the ground seconds his enduring character. But if you force him to march to attack and to conquer difficulties overcome only by vivacity, by boldness, by enthusiasm, he is at fault; he is steady and firm, but not enterprising. As the French soldier, by his ardor, his energy, his promptitude, his adventurousness, was the predestined instrument of the genius of Napoleon, so the steady, but slow soldier of England, was made for the narrow" (here M. Thiers is unjust) "but sagacious and resolute mind of Sir Arthur Wellesley."

On this passage M. St. Beuve sensibly and curtly remarks, how much in the long run prudence and tenacity have the advantage over genius and power, and energies misused

and abused.

At a period when we are making war ourselves on a considerable scale, and when the attention of the public is, above all things, concentred on the dress and accoutrements of our soldiers, it may not be unnecessary that the public should know that, at the period of the winter campaign of Spain, the attention of Napoleon was chiefly directed to two things-to the shoes and cloaks of the army. In speaking of the memoirs of the campaigns of Egypt and Syria dictated by Napoleon, M. St. Beuve, in a subsequent portion of his first volume, makes some sensible remarks on the military style of Napoleon.

His military style may be compared with the

most perfect styles of antiquity on such subjectswith the pages of Xenophon and Cæsar. But in the works of these two distinguished captains the tone of recital is more silky and subtle-at all events, lighter and more elegant.

The style of Napoleon is more blunt and abrupt, and I would say drier, if from time to time traits of imagination did not shed a light on his composition. The thoughts which Pascal left behind him in the form of notes, and meant for his eye alone, recall, by their despotic accent, to use the words of Voltaire, the character of those letters and dictated pieces of Napoleon.

M. St. Beuve consecrates some pages to the eminent preacher Lacordaire, headed "Le Père Lacordaire, Orateur." This remarkable priest, who, for the last fourteen years, has created for himself a most distinguished place in the pulpit, is characterized by the boldness of his views-by great originality and occasionally great felicity of expression. "I had the honor long ago to know intimately," says M. St. Beuve, "the Abbé Lacordaire, and I have never seen or heard him since without being moved by his words. and accents." There are some curious circumstances in the history of Lacordaire. He is the son of a doctor, and was born, in 1802, at the village of Recy-sur-Ource, five leagues from Châtillon-sur-Seine. He studied from 1810 to 1819, at the Lycée of Dijon, in which city he afterwards became a law student. His provincial course of law finished, he became a Stagiare in Paris about 1822, and soon after commenced to plead with considerable success.

But pleading did not satisfy the craving of his mind, and he desired something better. Exclaiming with Réné, "Je suis rassassié de tout sans avoir rien connu," he renounced the bar in 1824, and entered at St. Sulpice. In 1830 and 1831, we find him engaged with Lamennais and the young Montalembert in the "Avenir." In the latter year, when the question raised by this journal was before the Chamber of Peers, it was Lacordaire who replied in a vigorous but impromptu speech to the remarks of the Attorney-General Persil. It was in the "Conferences" which he preached at the College Stanislas, in 1834, three years afterwards, that Lacordaire first became known as a preacher. A little while afterwards, the pulpit of Nôtre Dame was opened to him by the Archbishop of Paris. At this cathedral he continued his sermons for two years, exercising considerable influence over the students of the capital, when suddenly and at once he left for Rome with a view to assume the habit of a Dominican.

That habit he has worn in France since

1841, and, wonderful to say, without any diminution of his popularity. Sermons in the Roman Catholic Church, and more especially in France, are so different in tone and spirit from any thing we are accustomed to in these countries, that we had rather be excused from saying any thing in reference to Lacordaire's discourses even as mere literary works. The oraison funèbre, in which the père is supposed to excel, is generally a pompous, turgid, and tawdry panegyric, in which simplicity and good taste are too often set at naught. True, there are exceptions in some of the oraisons funèbres of Bossuet and Fléchier. But the great mass of these Eloges are obnoxious to the remarks which we make.

Lacordaire (says M. St. Beuve) pronounced three funeral orations-that of O'Connell, that of the Bishop of Nancy, (Forbin Janson,) and that of General Druot. The oration on O'Connell pleases me little. It is not free from the declamation common to these times. Each age has its idolatries-the idolatry of the age of Louis XIV. was royalty-that of ours is popularity. The sacred orator has too much respected popularity in the person of the great agitator, who, when living, spared neither mendacity nor invective

to arrive at his ends. The second oration, that on M. Janson, the bishop, is simple and true; and the third is a chef-d'œuvre among modern productions. It may be read after the oraisons funèbres of Condé and Turenne. If Bossuet still remains

great and incomparable, how much preferable appears this work of Lacordaire to any of the pro

ductions of Fléchier!

The Revolution of February, 1848, opened the doors of the National Assembly to Lacordaire. But after the invasion of the Assembly, on the 15th May, he resigned, and has since confined himself to preaching in the Church of the Carmes.

There are some remarkable and valuable observations of St. Beuve in criticising the "Discours sur l'Histoire de la Révolution d'Angleterre," by M. Guizot. It must, as the critic says, be acknowledged to the honor of M. Guizot-and that is one of the causes of his personal importance-that literature as well as history have never been for him more than a means, more than an instrument of action, of teaching, and of influence. M. Guizot early adopted certain ideas and systems, and by all ways and means, by the pen, by word of mouth, in the professor's chair, in the Chamber, in power as well as out of power, he has left nothing undone to naturalize those ideas and to cause them to prevail in France. Thus it was after the Revolution of 1848. Fallen suddenly from power, he

again raised his flag under the form of history; and as an historical writer, disquisitionist, and critic, he has more artfully and successively combated the existing system than any one of its numerous opponents. Guizot has, perhaps, labored more than any Frenchman of his time. He has written more than any of his contemporaries, and he is, besides, one of those men whose instruction is the most varied and vast-who is acquainted more than most men with languages ancient and modern, and yet he is not a littérateur properly so called. Both Guizot and Thiers are political men who commenced their career as writers; they have passed through the wicket of literature to other employments, and have again recurred to literature in the hour of need, but neither of them, and least of all M. Guizot, belongs to the class of men of letters whom Napoleon called "Coquettes." Literature has never been his end, but only his means.

64

We agree with M. St. Beuve in thinking that Guizot is not a painter in history. Even when he narrates, as in his Life of Washington," as St. Beuve remarks, it is a certain abstract beauty of which he gives you the idea. His power of expression is strong and ingenious, but he is not picturesque. Sometimes he can use the graver, says our critic, but never the pencil.

As a professor Guizot spoke well, but yet without any extraordinary bursts. There was neatness, perfect lucidity of exposition, frequent repetitions of abstract terms, but little elegance of style, and little warmth of feeling. But on the parliamentary stage it was different. Here Guizot had the warmth incident to his ambition. On this scene, as our critic truly remarks, he felt himself at home and at ease, and he grew great with the occasion. From 1837, as St. Beuve says, (he might go further back, even to 1834 and 1835, and say that from that epoch,) Guizot had revealed his great parliamentary talent. There was about him a wonderful faculty of exposition, an air of authority, and a marvellous serenity, considering how the storm raged and the lightning flashed around him. His faculty of speaking on these occasions was not merely a high gift, but a great power, and he often laid the parliamentary tempest. But, as is shrewdly remarked by the author before us, there were two atmospheres-an atmosphere within and without the Chamber; and the atmosphere without was more charged with the electric fire of discontent than the atmosphere within. Hence the explosion of February, 1848.

A very few days after M. St. Beuve had reviewed Guizot's "Discours sur la Révolution d'Angleterre," he treated on M. de Feletz and literary criticism. Of M. de Feletz, a principal writer in the "Débats," some account was given in the sixth number of the "British Quarterly Review.' Since that article was written, M. de Feletz has passed to the quiet to which we are all passing. This amiable, accomplished, and clever old man, who, under a polite and polished exterior, the utmost urbanity, and the most pleasing and gracious manners, concealed a benevolent heart, expired at Paris, on the 11th February, 1850, in his eighty-third year. Since his death two able pens have done this remarkable man justice; the one M.Villemain, in his "Souvenirs littéraires," the other M. St. Beuve. It is a theory of M. St. Beuve, and it is a theory not without plausibility, that when a strong or powerful man appears after an epoch of social and political revolution, setting public affairs in order, and putting every thing to rights, literature and criticism lend him a helping hand. Thus, under Henry IV., and after the League, there was Malherbe; under Louis XIV., Boileau; and, in 1800, after the Directory, and under the First Consul, men of the stamp of Malherbe and Boileau, the writers in the "Débats," persons of mind and sense, judicious, clever, and learned. In 1801, the "Débats" counted amongst its writers, Geoffroy, Dussault, Feletz, Delalot, St. Victor. There are appreciations of these writers from the mouth of Feletz which M. St. Beuve records, and which we regret we cannot extract. It were impossible, however, to exclude the following

kit-cat sketch of Feletz himself:

M. de Feletz, who so well appreciated Hoffman, resembled him in some things, but in others was a person sui generis. A man of the world, safe, social, and companionable, he never considered the calls of society as an obstacle to his peculiar talent or to the preparation of the staple of his labor. Society, indeed, with him, was rather a help and an inspiration than a hindrance. When I use the term labor, the word is improper; for De Feletz, in writing, only conversed and whiled away the time. Born in Perigord, of a noble family, after excellent studies at Ste. Barbe, at which college he professed, during some years, philosophy and theology, he passed through the Revolution with constancy and dignity, undergoing all the persecutions that honor a victim. In 1801, still young, he found himself ready and ripe for letters and la société renaissante. He lived in, and was sought by the best company. His mornings were devoted

Vide British Quarterly Review" for May, 1846, p. 481, article "Journalism in France."

to the reading of the authors then in a course of reprinting-to La Bruyère, to Montesquieu, to Hamilton, and to l'Abbé Prévost. He wrote in an easy tone that which would suggest itself to an jects which best suited his tastes, and in which "esprit juste et fin" at a first reading. The subhe succeeded best, were those which had relation to the eighteenth century. Upon the letters of Madame du Deffand, Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, upon the memoirs of Madame d'Epinay, and the Abbé Galiani, he has written pages which may be read with pleasure. He has, above all, judged excellently well Madame du Deffand, l'aveugle clairvoyante, as she was called.

In a fortnight after he had so well criticised de Feletz, M. St. Beuve discoursed to the Parisian public on the letters of the Marquise du Deffand. Most well-informed persons know the history of Madame du Deffand, and we will not repeat it here. Married to a man whose only recommendation was his birth, she left him in disgust. In her early days she was certainly no model of virtue. "Elle fut la maîtresse du Régent (says M. St. Beuve) et de bien d'autres."

But be this as

it may, however, towards 1740 her salon had become the centre of the very best company. She was allied with every thing that was illustrious in the great world and in the world

of letters.

A friend of Voltaire, she was also a friend of Montesquieu and D'Alembert. The distinctive character of her talent was to seize on the truth without illusion of any kind, whether in reference to persons or to things.

Some twenty years afterwards, in her sixtyeighth year, this clever lady was afflicted with blindness. She then inhabited an apartment in the Convent of St. Joseph, Rue St. Dominique. She lived in the great world as though she were not afflicted with the saddest infirmity, forgetting this infirmity as far as she could, and causing it to be forgotten by others by force of her address and agreeableness. Rising late and turning night into day, giving suppers at her own apartment or supping out, she had for familiar friends the President Hénault, Pont de Veyle, the Choiseuls, the Maréchales de Luxembourg and de Mirepoix, and others too numerous to mention. This was about 1765. In the autumn of that year there arrived in Paris an Englishman most distinguished by his cleverness and wit. This was Horace Walpole, and with that name is bound up the great literary and most romanesque event of Madame du Deffand's life. The kind old lady was instantly smitten with the bold, lively, ingenuous, and vivid character of Walpole, so unlike any thing she had encountered for half a century. She found in our countryman all the qualities