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Let it not be supposed, from these extracts, that Miss Sedgwick joins in the foolish outcry against the rich, as such. Far from it it is only against wealth misapplied that her satire is directed. In the conduct of another of her characters, Mr. Beckwith, the author endeavours to exemplify the true use of riches.

We have formally noticed this little book, and made these extracts, for the purpose of doing what in us lay to aid in its dissemination. We would, if we could, send it to every fireside in our land-of the rich as well as the poor-though to the last we especially commend it. To the publication of such books we would ever lend our utmost aid, convinced that above all others they conduce to the real good of the community; and, in conclusion, we may express the hope that the fair author has but given an earnest of what she intends to do in a line of writing that has been too much neglected in this country, and which is of paramount importance at the present time.

ART. III.-Sketches of English Literature; with considerations on the spirit of the times, men, and revolutions. By the Viscount de CHATEAUBRIAND. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1836.

We have heretofore1 presented our views upon the literary pretensions and character of the Viscount Chateaubriand, and there is nothing in the work before us to induce, at our hands, a more favourable estimate as to either profundity of learning or any of the real constituents of greatness. That the French peer has a brilliant imagination, great command of language, and a captivating and imposing mode of treating his subjects, we should be loath to deny, while we would, at the same time, be strenuous in maintaining that his productions will not bear the test of severe criticism; that if time is but taken to guard against the seductions of his fine, though very frequently bombastic language, and to ponder upon the ideas which his load of words embodies, the conclusion will, in many, many instances, be arrived at, that the reader's admiration has been caught altogether by surprise, and he been induced to waste his praise and his time upon sheer nonsense.

1 See American Quarterly Review, No. 39.

Notwithstanding all this, few, very few would regret a short time devoted to the pages of Chateaubriand. In opening his works we are at once ushered into a new world; removed entirely from the ordinary current of our thoughts and feelings. Romance throws her spell around us, and, while she perverts our vision, offers novel and brilliant sights to gaze at-the melody of the sounding line lends its enchantment to another sense; and while thus the reader is partially disabled from the exercise of dispassionate judgment, the reckless boldness of assertion increases the difficulty and almost secures, the victory over the mind. As pastime, however, or relaxation, or not unwelcome momentary delusion, this is all very delightful, and the viscount will therefore not cease to be a popular writer. With that fate he will no doubt be abundantly satisfied.

It is a bold undertaking for a foreigner to attempt a critical account of the language and literature of another countryparticularly of a living tongue. But our author is a bold man, and was sensible of all its difficulties. He however deemed himself equal to the task. Hear his words:-"I have visited the United States; I have lived eight years an exile in England; after residing in London as an emigrant, I have returned thither as ambassador. I believe that I am as thoroughly acquainted with English as a man can be with a language foreign to his own. I have read most conscientiously all that it was my duty to read on the subject discussed in these two volumes. I have rarely quoted my authorities, because they are known to men of letters, and men of the world care nothing about them."

The viscount goes then at his task, in his own opinion fully prepared; and he makes a formidable and orderly opening by dividing the history of the English language into five epochs, and his subject into five great parts. He ushers it in by grave political reflections and philosophical introductions, and the reader is of course led to anticipate a minute, learned and critical account of the language and its authors, about which the noble writer had read and studied so much. On the contrary, he encounters a medley of anecdote, reflections, poetry, history, fun, biography, sketches of life and manners, all very amusing in themselves, but totally at variance with the instructive, detailed, and connected treatise the introduction had promised. From a foreigner this was probably just as well-nay, infinitely better than a laboured and dull treatise, replete, as such a one would needs have been, with the most ridiculous blunders. For ourselves we are the more pleased to see it as it is, from the amusement it has afforded us. To enable our readers to enjoy a portion of this, we have taken it up at the present moment, and intend to make them fully acquainted with its contents. As regards however the writer, who undertakes and promises

his

so difficult an execution of so grave a task, the effect upon reputation cannot but be injurious. The sensible and intellectual, though they may while away an hour in turning over the pages of such a book, and in gleaning the flowers of fancy and wit with which it may be strewn, cannot but lament that so many fine thoughts and beautiful ideas have been dissipated and wasted.

It is very far, however, from our purpose to criticise this work seriously. This would be treating the book itself ill, though the author might well deserve it. It is indeed below serious criticism. Our design is, as we have said, to gather the amusement it affords, and spread it before our readers. This we shall do in as connected a way as so very desultory matter will permit. The "Sketches of English Literature," contain notices of the Middle Ages-their laws, buildings, dress, entertainments, and manners; the Reformation, with a brief view of Luther and the other reformers—its merits compared with the Papacy, and a defence of the latter; the Protectorate; the Revolution of 1688, and of the great men who flourished at that epoch, and a comparison between it and the French revolutions of 1789 and 1830; and last, and by no means least, the private opinions, adventures, writings and sayings of the noble author himself. Who will not say that these various themes present a broad and fruitful field for a fancy so discursive as that of Chateaubriand, or who that knows the character of his genius but would anticipate his uneasiness at being confined within narrower bounds? The author, nevertheless, in his preface deems it proper to put the reader on his guard. He says:

I ought to premise that in this historical view I have not stuck close to my subject: I have treated of every thing-the present, the past, the future; I digress hither and thither. When I meet with the middle ages, I talk of them; when I run foul of the reformation, I dwell upon it; when I come to the English revolution, it reminds me of our own, and I advert to the actors and the events of the latter. If an English royalist is thrown into jail, I think of the cell which I occupied at the prefecture of police. The English poets lead me to the French poets; Lord Byron brings to my recollection my exile in England, my walks to Harrow hill, and my travels to Venice and so of the rest. The book is composed of miscellanies which have all tones, because they relate to all things: they pass from literary criticism, lofty or familiar, to historical observations, narratives, portraits, and recollections, general or personal. That I may not take any one by surprise, that the reader may know from the first what he has to expect, that he may be aware that English literature here forms but the ground of my medley, the canvass for my embroidery, I have given a second title to this work." pp. vii., viii.

Some apology however was thought necessary, even by the viscount himself, in placing at the very front of his book, a lengthened dissertation upon the middle ages under the different aspects we have adverted to above, and he does it in the

following very ingenious way. His remarks, it must be admitted, have much of the tone of the philosopher, while they are full of the fancy of the poet :

"When we study the literature of different countries, a great number of allusions and traits escape us, if we do not bear in mind the manners and customs of the respective nations. A view of literature, apart from the history of nations, would create a prodigious fallacy; to hear the successive poets calmly singing their loves and their sheep, you would figure to yourself the uninterrupted existence of the golden age on the earth. And yet, in that same England of which we are treating, these strains resound amid the invasion of the Romans, the Picts, the Saxons, the Danes; amid the conquest of the Normans, the insurrections of the barons, the quarrels of the first Plantagenets for the crown, the civil wars of the Red and White Rose, the ravages of the reformation, the executions commanded by Henry VIII., and the burnings ordered by Mary, amid the massacres and slavery of Ireland, the desolations of Scotland, the scaffolds of Charles I. and Sidney, the flight of James, the proscription of the Pretender and the Jacobites-the whole intermingled with parliamentary storms, court crimes, and a thousand foreign wars. "Social order, separate from political order, is composed of religion, intelligence, and material industry. In every nation, even at the moment of the direst catastrophes and of the greatest events, there will always be a priest who prays, a poet who sings, an author who writes, a philosopher who meditates, a painter, a sculptor, an architect, who paints, chisels, builds, and a workman who labours. These men, surrounded by revolutions, seem to lead a life apart: if you look at them only, you see a real, a genuine, an immutable world, the base of the human edifice, but which appears fictitious and foreign to the society of convention, the political society. The priest, indeed, in his hymns, the poet, the philosopher, the artist, in their compositions, the artisan in his work, mark occasionally the time in which they live, and the recoil of the events which wrung from them in more abundance their sweat, their complaints, and the productions of their genius.

"To destroy this illusion of two views presented separately; to avoid creating that fallacy to which I have alluded in the course of this chapter; and that I may not suddenly throw the reader unprepared into the history of the poetry, works, and authors of the first stages of English literature, I think it right to introduce here a general picture of the middle ages. These preliminary matters will facilitate the understanding of the subject. Vol. I. pp. 14-16.

To the middle ages then, if our author must have it so, let us turn and see what agreeable remarks we may find in his sketches, without, for the moment, troubling ourselves to discover their immediate connection with the subject of English literature. And the "buildings" of the middle ages first attract our notice. The architecture of that era is well described :

"Even in its external appearance, Europe then presented a much more picturesque and national aspect than it at present exhibits. For buildings, the offspring of our religion and our manners, we have substituted, from affectation of the bastard Roman architecture, such as are neither in harmony with our climate nor appropriate to our wants. The cold and servile spirit of copyism has introduced falsehood into our arts, as the

groundwork of Latin literature has destroyed in our literature the originality of the Frankish genius. It was not thus that the middle ages imitated; the minds of those times also admired the Greeks and the Romans; they sought after and studied their works, but, instead of suffering themselves to be mastered by, they mastered them, moulded them to their will, rendering them French, and heightening their beauty by this metamorphosis, full of creative vigour and independence.

"The first Christian churches in the west were only temples reversed; the pagan worship was external, the decoration of the temple was external; the Christian worship was internal, the decoration of the church was internal. The pillars were transformed from the outside to the inside of the edifice, as in the churches in which the believers held their meetings when they issued from the crypts and catacombs. The proportions of the church surpassed in dimensions those of the temple, because the Christian congregation met beneath the roof of the church, whereas the pagan multitude collected under the peristyle of the temple. But when the Christians became masters, they changed this arrangement, and adorned their buildings also on the side towards the landscape and the sky.

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"And, in order that the supports of the aerial nave might not be inappropriate to the structure, the chisel had cut them out; nothing was to be seen but flying buttresses, pyramids, pinnacles, and statues.

"The ornaments which were not essential parts of the edifice were adapted to its style; the tombs were of Gothic fashion, and the church, which covered them like an immense canopy, seemed to be moulded upon their form. The arts of design shared in this flowery and composite taste: on the walls and on the windows were painted landscapes, scripture subjects, and scenes of national history.

"In the castles of the great, coloured armorial bearings, inclosed in lozenges of gold, formed ceilings resembling those of the beautiful palaces of the cinque cento in Italy. Writing itself was drawn, the German hieroglyphic substituted for the rectilinear Roman letters, harmonized with the sepulchral stones. The detached towers which served for lookouts on the heights; the castles embosomed in woods or perched on the tops of rocks, like the eyries of vultures; the pointed and narrow bridges thrown boldly across torrents; the fortified towns which you come to at every step, and the battlements of which were at once ramparts and ornaments; the chapels, the oratories, the hermitages, placed in the most picturesque spots beside roads and rivers; the towers, the steeples of country churches, the abbeys, the monasteries, the cathedrals, all those edifices of which but a small number now exists, and whose fretwork time has blackened, filled up, or broken, had then the freshness of youth; they had just issued from the hands of the workman. In the whiteness of their stones the eye lost none of the lightness of their details, of the elegance of their towers, of the variety of their wavings, their carvings, their chiselings, their pinkings, and all the whims of a free and inexhaustible imagination.

"In the short space of eighteen years, from 1136 to 1154, not fewer than eleven hundred and fifteen castles were built in England alone.

"Christianity raised at the general expense, by means of collections and alms, the cathedrals for the erection of which each state was not wealthy enough to pay separately, and scarcely any of which is finished. In those vast and mysterious edifices were engraved in relief, and hollowed out as with a nipping tool, the decorations of the altar, the sacred monograms, the vestures and articles used by the priests. The banners, the crosses of various compositions, the cups, the shrines, the canopies,

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