Mustapha fell at once from the heights of confidence to the depths of despair. 'Can you not aid me?' said he to the Kara of the Crimea. I know the King of Poland,' said he, and I tell you, that with such an enemy we have no chance of safety but in flight.' Mustapha in vain strove to rally his troops; all, seized with a sudden panic, fled, not daring to lift their eyes to heaven. The cause of Europe, of Christianity, of civilization, had prevailed. The wave of the Mussulman power had retired, and retired never to return.

During this memorable campaign, Sobieski, who through life was a tender and affectionate husband, wrote daily to his wife. At the age of fifty-four he had lost nothing of the tender. ness and enthusiasm of his earlier years. In one of them he says, "I read all your letters, my dear and incomparable Maria, thrice over; once when I receive them, once when I retire to my tent and am alone with my love, once when I sit down to answer them. I beseech you, my beloved, do not rise so early; no health can stand such exertions; if you do, you will destroy my health, and what is worse,

tion in this world." When offered the throne of Poland, it was at first proposed that he should divorce his wife, and marry the widow of the late king, to reconcile the contending faction. "I am not yet a king," said he, "and have contracted no obligations towards the nation: Let them resume their gift; I disdain the throne if it is to be purchased at such a price."

"At six in the evening, Sobieski entered the Turkish camp. He arrived first at the quar-injure your own, which is my sole consolaters of the vizier. At the entrance of that vast enclosure a slave met him, and presented him with the charger and golden bridle of Mustapha. He took the bridle, and ordered one of his followers to set out in haste for the Queen of Poland, and say that he who owned that bridle was vanquished; then planted his standard in the midst of that armed caravansera of all the nations of the East, and ordered Charles of Lorraine to drive the besiegers from the trenches before Vienna. It was already done; the Janizzaries had left their posts on the approach of night, and, after sixty days of open trenches, the imperial city was delivered.

It is superfluous, after these quotations, to say any thing of the merits of M. Salvandy's work. It unites, in a rare degree, the qualities of philosophical thought with brilliant and vivid description; and is one of the numerous instances of the vast superiority of the Modern "On the following morning the magnitude French Historians to most of those of whom of the victory appeared. One hundred and Great Britain, in the present age, can boast. twenty thousand tents were still standing, not- If any thing could reconcile us to the march withstanding the attempts at their destruction of revolution, it is the vast development of by the Turks; the innumerable multitude of talent which has taken place in France since the Orientals had disappeared; but their spoils, her political convulsions commenced, and the their horses, their camels, their splendour, | new field which their genius has opened up loaded the ground. The king at ten approached Vienna. He passed through the breach, whereby but for him on that day the Turks would have found an entrance. At his approach the streets were cleared of their ruins; and the people, issuing from their cellars and their tottering houses, gazed with enthusiasm on their deliverer. They followed him to the church of the Augustins, where, as the clergy had not arrived, the king himself chanted Te Deum. This service was soon after performed with still greater solemnity in the cathedral of St. Stephen; the king joined with his face to the ground. It was there that the priest used the inspired words-'There was a man sent from heaven, and his name was John."", -III. 50, 101.

in historical disquisitions. On comparing the historians of the two countries since the restoration, it seems as if they were teeming with the luxuriance of a virgin soil; while we are sinking under the sterility of exhausted cultivation. Steadily resisting, as we trust we shall ever do, the fatal march of French innovation, we shall yet never be found wanting in yielding due praise to the splendour of French talent; and in the turn which political speculation has recently taken among the most elevated minds in their active metropolis, we are not without hopes that the first rays of the dawn are to be discerned, which is. destined to compensate to mankind for the darkness and blood of the revolution.

MADAME DE STAEL.*

study. And it is not on the first perusal of these authors that this exquisite pleasure is obtained. In the heyday of youth and strength, when imagination is ardent, and the world unknown, it is the romance of the story, or the general strain of the argument which carries the reader on, and many of the finest and most spiritual reflections are overlooked or unappreciated; but in later years, when life has been experienced, and joy and sorrow felt, when the memory is stored with recollections, and the imagination with images, it is reflection and observation which constitute the chief attraction in composition. And judging of the changes wrought by Time in others from what we have experienced ourselves, we anticipate a high gratification, even in the best informed readers, by a direction of their attention to many passages in the great French writers of the age of Louis XIV. and the Revolution, a comparison of their excellences, a criticism on their defects, and an exposition of the mighty influence which the progress of political events has had upon the ideas reflected, even to the greatest authors, from the age in which they lived, and the external events passing around them.

AMIDST the deluge of new and ephemeral | every minute to meditate on the novelty or publications under which the press both in justice of the reflections which arise from its France and England is groaning, and the woful depravity of public taste, in all branches of literature, which in the former country has followed the Revolution of the Three Glorious Days, it is not the least important part of the duty of all those who have any share, however inconsiderable, in the direction of the objects to which public thought is to be applied, to recur from time to time to the great and standard works of a former age; and from amidst the dazzling light of passing meteors in the lower regions of the atmosphere, to endeavour to direct the public gaze to those fixed luminaries whose radiance in the higher heavens shines, and ever will shine, in imperishable lustre. From our sense of the importance and utility of this attempt, we are not to be deterred by the common remark, that these authors are in everybody's hands; that their works are read at school, and their names become as household sounds. We know that many things are read at school which are forgotten at college; and many things learned at college which are unhappily and permanently discarded in later years; and that there are many authors whose names are as household sounds, whose works for that very reason are as a strange and unknown tongue. Every one has heard of Racine and Molière, of Bossuet and Fénélon, of Voltaire and Rousseau, of Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël, of Pascal and Rabelais. We would beg to ask even our best informed and most learned readers, with how many of their works they are really familiar; how many of their felicitous expressions have sunk into their recollections; how many of their ideas are engraven on their memory? Others may possess more retentive memories, or more extensive reading than we do; but we confess, when we apply such a question, even to the constant study of thirty years, we feel not a little mortified at the time which has been misapplied, and the brilliant ideas once ob-quent on social convulsion. In the branches of tained from others which have now faded from the recollection, and should rejoice much to obtain from others that retrospect of past greatness which we propose ourselves to lay before our readers.

The two great eras of French prose literature are those of Louis XIV. and the Revolution. If the former can boast of Bossuet, the latter can appeal to Chateaubriand: if the former still shine in the purest lustre in Fénélon, the latter may boast the more fervent pages, and varied genius of De Staël; if the former is supreme in the tragic and comic muse, and can array Racine, Corneille and Molière, against the transient Lilliputians of the romantic school, the latter can show in the poetry and even the prose of Lamartine a condensation of feeling, a depth of pathos and energy of thought which can never be reached but in an age which has undergone the animating episodes, the heart-stirring feelings conse

literature which depend on the relations of men to each other, history-politics-historical philosophy and historical romance, the superiority of the modern school is so prodigious, that it is impossible to find a parallel to it in former Every one now is so constantly in the habit of days and even the dignified language and reading the new publications, of devouring eagle glance of the Bishop of Meaux sinks the fresh productions of the press, that we for- into insignificance, compared to the vast ability get the extraordinary superiority of standard which, in inferior minds, experience and actual works; and are obliged to go back to the suffering have brought to bear on the in studies of our youth for that superlative en-vestigation of public affairs. Modern writers joyment which arises from the perusal of authors, where every sentence is thought, and often every word conception; where new trains of contemplation or emotion are awakened in every page, and the volume is closed almost

*Blackwood's Magazine, June 1837.

were for long at a loss to understand the cause which had given such superior pathos, energy, and practical wisdom to the historians of antiquity; but the French Revolution at once explained the mystery. When modern times were brought into collision with the passions and the suffering consequent on democratic

ascendency and social convulsion, they were | sity have learned to abjure both much of the not long of feeling the truths which experience fanciful El Dorado speculations of preceding had taught to ancient writers, and acquiring philosophy, and the perilous effusions of sucthe power of vivid description and condensed yet fervent narrative by which the great historians of antiquity are characterized.

little wherefrom to dissent in the Monarchie selon la Charte, or later political writings of her illustrious rival.

ceeding republicanism. Though the one was by birth and habit an aristocrat of the ancient and now decaying school, and the other, a At the head of the modern prose writers of liberal nursed at the feet of the great Gamaliel France, we place Madame de Staël, Chateau- of the Revolution, yet there is no material difbriand, and Guizot: The general style of the ference in their political conclusions; so comtwo first and the most imaginative of these pletely does a close observation of the progress writers-De Staël and Chateaubriand-is es- of a revolution induce the same conclusions sentially different from that of Bossuet, Fénélon in minds of the highest stamp, with whatever and Massillon. We have no longer either the early prepossessions the survey may have thoughts, the language, or the images of these been originally commenced. The Dix Années great and dignified writers! With the pompous d'Exil, and the observations on the French grandeur of the Grande Monarque; with the revolution, might have been written by Chaawful splendour of the palace, and the irresisti-teaubriand, and Madame de Staël would have ble power of the throne; with the superb magnificence of Versailles, its marbles, halls, and forests of statues, have passed away the train of thought by which the vices and corruption then chiefly prevalent in society were combated by these worthy soldiers of the militia of Christ. Strange to say, the ideas of that despotic age are more condemnatory of princes; more eulogistic of the people, more confirmatory of the principles which, if pushed to their legitimate consequences, lead to democracy, than those of the age when the sovereignty of the people was actually established. In their eloquent declamations, the wisdom, justice, and purity of the masses are the constant subject of eulogy; almost all social and political evils are traced to the corruptions of courts and the vices of kings. The applause of the people, the condemnation of rulers, in Telemachus, often resembles rather the frothy declamations of the Tribune in favour of the sovereign multitude, than the severe lessons addressed by a courtly prelate to the heir of a despotic throne. With a fearless courage worthy of the highest commendation, and very different from the base adulation of modern times to the Baal of popular power, Bossuet, Massillon, and Bourdaloue, incessantly rung in the ears of their courtly auditory the equality of mankind in the sight of heaven and the awful words of judgment to come. These imaginary and Utopian effusions now excite a smile, even in the most youthful student; and a suffering age, taught by the experienced evils of democratic ascendency, has now learned to appreciate, as they deserve, the profound and caustic sayings in which Aristotle, Sallust, and Tacitus have delivered to future ages the condensed wisdom on the instability and tyranny of the popular rule, which ages of calamity had brought home to the sages of antiquity.

It is by their works of imagination, taste, and criticism, however, that these immortal writers are principally celebrated, and it is with them that we propose to commence this critical survey. Their names are universally known: Corinne, Delphine, De l'Allemagne, the Dix Années d'Exil, and De la Littérature, are as familiar in sound, at least, to our ears, as the Genie de Christianisme, the Itineraire, the Martyrs, Atala et Réné of the far-travelled pilgrim of expiring feudalism, are to our memories. Each has beauties of the very highest cast in this department, and yet their excellences are so various, that we know not to which to award the palra. If driven to discriminate between them, we should say that De Staël has more sentiment, Chateaubriand more imagination; that the former has deeper knowledge of human feelings, and the latter more varied and animated pictures of human manners; that the charm of the former consists chiefly in the just and profound views of life, its changes and emotions with which her works abound, and the fascination of the latter in the brilliant phantasmagoria of actual scenes, impressions, and events which his writings exhibit. No one can exceed Madame de Staël in the expression of the sentiment or poetry of nature, or the development of the varied and storied associations which historical scenes or monuments never fail to awaken in the cultivated mind; but in the delineation of the actual features she exhibits, or the painting of the various and gorgeous scenery or objects she presents, she is greatly inferior to the author of the Genius of Christianity. She speaks emotion to the neart, not pictures to the eye. Chateaubriand, on the other hand, has dipped his pencil in the finest and most In Madame de Staël and Chateaubriand we radiant hues of nature: with a skili surpassing have incomparably more originality and va- even that of the Great Magician of the North, riety of thought; far more just and expe- he depicts all the most splendid scenes of both rienced views of human affairs; far more hemispheres; and seizing with the inspiration condensed wisdom, which the statesman and of genius on the really characteristic features the philosopher may treasure in their memo- of the boundless variety of objects he has ries, than in the great writers of the age of visited, brings them before us with a force and Louis XIV. We see at once in their produc-fidelity which it is impossible to surpass. tions that we are dealing with those who speak After all, however, on rising from a perusal from experience of human affairs; to whom of the great works of these two authors, it is years of suffering have brought centuries of hard to say which has left the most indelible w'sdom; and whom the stern school of adver- impression on the mind; for if the one has

accumulated a store of brilliant pictures which | incessantly occupied with no other object but have never yet been rivalled, the other has drawn from the objects on which she has touched all the most profound emotions which they could awaken; and if the first leaves a gorgeous scene painted on the mind, the latter has engraved a durable impression on the heart.

the gratification of vanity, the thraldom of attachment, or the imperious demands of beauty, and the strongest propensity of cultivated life, the besoin d'aimer, influencing, for the best part of their lives, the higher classes of both sexes. In such representation there would probably be nothing in the hands of an ordinary writer but frivolous or possibly pernicious details; but by Madame de Staël it is touched on so gently, so strongly intermingled with sentiment, and traced so naturally to its ultimate and disastrous effects, that the picture becomes not merely characteristic of manners, but purifying in its tendency.

CORINNE is not to be regarded as a novel. Boarding-school girls, and youths just fledged from college, may admire it as such, and dwell with admiration on the sorrows of the heroine and the faithlessness of Lord Nevil; but considered in that view it has glaring faults, both in respect of fancy, probability, and story, and will bear no comparison either with the great The DIX ANNEES D'EXIL, though abounding novels of Sir Walter Scott, or the secondary with fewer splendid and enchanting passages, productions of his numerous imitators. The is written in a higher strain, and devoted to real view in which to regard it is as a picture more elevated objects than the Italian novel. of Italy; its inhabitants, feelings, and recollec- It exhibits the Imperial Government of Napotions; its cloudless skies and glassy seas; its leon in the palmy days of his greatness; when forest-clad hills and sunny vales; its umbra- all the Continent had bowed the neck to his geous groves and mouldering forms; its heart-power, and from the rock of Gibraltar to the inspiring ruins and deathless scenes. As such Frozen Ocean, not a voice dared to be lifted it is superior to any work on that subject which has appeared in any European language. Nowhere else shall we find so rich and glowing an intermixture of sentiment with description; of deep feeling for the beauty of art, with a correct perception of its leading principles; of historical lore with poetical fancy; of ardour in the cause of social amelioration, with charity to the individuals who, under unfortunate institutions, are chained to a life of indolence and pleasure. Beneath the glowing sun and azure skies of Italy she has imbibed the real modern Italian spirit: she exhibits in the mouth of her heroine all that devotion to art, that rapturous regard to antiquity, that insouciance in ordinary life, and constant besoin of fresh excitement by which that remarkable people are distinguished from any other at present in Europe. She paints them as they really are; living on the recollection of the past, feeding on the glories of their double set of illustrious ancestors; at times exulting in the recollection of the legions which subdued the world, at others recurring with pride to the glorious though brief days of modern art; mingling the names of Cæsar, Pompey, Cicero, and Virgil with those of Michael Angelo, Raphael, Buonarotti, and Correggio; repeating with admiration the stanzas of Tasso as they glide through the deserted palaces of Venice, and storing their minds with the rich creations of Ariosto's fancy as they gaze on the stately monuments of Rome.

against his commands. It shows the internal tyranny and vexations of this formidable power; its despicable jealousies and contemptible vanity; its odious restrictions and tyrannizing tendency. We see the censorship chaining the human mind to the night of the tenth in the opening of the nineteenth century: the commands of the police fettering every effort of independent thought and free discussion; forty millions of men slavishly following the car of a victor, who, in exchange for all the advantages of freedom, hoped but never obtained from the Revolution, dazzled them with the glitter only of gilded chains. In her subsequent migrations through Tyrol, Poland, Russia, and Sweden, to avoid his persecution during the years which preceded the Russian war, we have the noblest picture of the elevated feelings which, during this period of general oppression, were rising up in the nations which yet preserved a shadow of independence, as well as of the heroic stand made by Alexander and his brave subjects against the memorable invasion which ultimately proved their oppressor's ruin. These are animating themes; and though not in general inclined to dwell on description, or enrich her work with picturesque narrative, the scenery of the north had wakened profound emotions in her heart which appear in many touches and reflections of no ordinary sublimity.

Chateaubriand addresses himself much more habitually and systematically to the eye. He Not less vividly has she portrayed, in the paints what he has seen, whether in nature, language, feelings, and character of her he-society, manners, or art, with the graphic skill roine, the singular intermixture with these of a consummate draughtsman; and produces animating recollections of all the frivolity which has rendered impossible, without a fresh impregnation of northern vigour, the regeneration of Italian society. We see in her pages, as we witness in real life, talents the most commanding, beauty the most fascinating, graces the most captivating, devoted to no other object but the excitement of a transient passion; infidelity itself subjected to certain restraints, and boasting of its fidelity to one attachment; whole classes of society

the emotion he is desirous of awakening, not by direct words calculated to arouse it, but by enabling the imagination to depict to itself the objects which in nature, by their felicitous combination, produced the impression. Madame de Staël does not paint the features of the scene, but in a few words she portrays the emotion which she experienced on beholding it, and contrives by these few words to awaken it in her readers; Chateaubriand enumerates with a painter's power all the features of the

Human eloquence probably cannot, in description, go beyond this inimitable passage; but it is equalled in the pictures left us by the same author of two scenes in the New World.

scene, and by the vividness of description | glorious orb is at once rising-resplendent at succeeds not merely in painting it on the noonday, and setting in the west; or rather retina of the mind, but in awakening there the our senses deceive us, and there is, properly precise emotion which he himself felt on speaking, no east, or south, or west, in the beholding it. The one speaks to the heart world. Every thing reduces itself to one single through the eye, the other to the eye through point, from whence the King of Day sends the heart. As we travel with the illustrious forth at once a triple light in one single subpilgrim of the Revolution, we see rising before stance. The bright splendour is perhaps that us in successive clearness the lonely temples, which nature can present that is most beautiand glittering valleys, and storied capes of ful; for while it gives us an idea of the perGreece; the desert plains and rocky ridges petual magnificence and resistless power of and sepulchral hollows of Judea; the solitary God, it exhibits, at the same time, a shining palms and stately monuments of Egypt; the image of the glorious Trinity." isolated remains of Carthage, the deep solitudes of America, the sounding cataracts, and still lakes, and boundless forests of the New World. Not less vivid is his description of human scenes and actions, of which, during his eventful career, he has seen such an extraordinary variety; the Janissary, the Tartar, the Turk; the Bedouins of the desert places, the Numidians of the torrid zone; the cruel revolutionists of France; the independent savages of America; the ardent mind of Napoleon, the dauntless intrepidity of Pitt. Nothing can exceed the variety and brilliancy of the pictures which he leaves engraven on the imagination of his reader; but he has neither touched the heart nor convinced the judgment like the profound hand of his female rival.

To illustrate these observations we have selected two of the most brilliant descriptions from Chateaubriand's Genie de Christianisme, and placed beside these two of the most inspired of Madame de Staël's passages on Roman scenery. We shall subjoin two of the most admirable descriptions by Sir Walter Scott, that the reader may at once have presented to his view the masterpieces, in the descriptive line, of the three greatest authors of the age. All the passages are translated by ourselves; we have neither translations at hand, nor inclination to mar so much eloquence by the slovenly dress in which it usually appears in an English version.

"One evening, when it was a profound calm, we were sailing through those lovely seas which bathe the coast of Virginia,—all the sails were furled-I was occupied below when I heard the bell which called the mariners upon deck to prayers-I hastened to join my orisons to those of the rest of the crew. officers were on the forecastle, with the passengers; the priest, with his prayer-book in his hand, stood a little in advance; the sailors were scattered here and there on the deck; we were all above, with our faces turned towards the prow of the vessel, which looked to the west.

The

"The globe of the sun, ready to plunge intu the waves, appeared between the ropes of the vessel in the midst of boundless space. You would have imagined, from the balancing of the poop, that the glorious luminary changed at every instant its horizon. A few light clouds were scattered without order in the east, where the moon was slowly ascending; all the rest of the sky was unclouded. Towards the north, forming a glorious triangle with the star of day and that of night, a glittering cloud arose from the sea, resplendent with the colours of the prism, like a crystal pile supporting the vault of heaven.

"He is much to be pitied who could have "There is a God! The herbs of the valley, witnessed this scene, without feeling the beau the cedars of the mountain, bless him-the ty of God. Tears involuntarily flowed from insect sports in his beams-the elephant my eyes, when my companions, taking off salutes him with the rising orb of day-the their hats, began to sing, in their hoarse strains, bird sings him in the foliage-the thunder the simple hymn of Our Lady of Succour. proclaims him in the heavens-the ocean declares his immensity-man alone has said, "There is no God!'

Unite in thought, at the same instant, the most beautiful objects in nature; suppose that you see at once all the hours of the day, and all the seasons of the year; a morning of spring and a morning of autumn; a night bespangled with stars, and a night covered with clouds; meadows enamelled with flowers, forests hoary with snow; fields gilded by the tints of autumn; then alone you will have a just conception of the universe. While you are gazing on that sun which is plunging under the vault of the west, another observer admires him emerging from the gilded gates of the east., By what unconceivable magic does that aged star, which is sinking fatigued and burning in the shades of the evening, reappear at the same instant fresh and humid with the rosy dew of the morning? At every instant of the day the

How touching was that prayer of men, who, on a fragile plank, in the midst of the ocean, contemplated the sun setting in the midst of the waves! How that simple invocation of the mariners to the mother of woes, went to the heart! The consciousness of our littleness in the sight of Infinity-our chants prolonged afar over the waves-night approaching with its sable wings-a whole crew of a vessel filled with admiration and a holy fear-God bending over the abyss, with one hand retaining the sun at the gates of the west, with the other raising the moon in the east, and yet lending an attentive ear to the voice of prayer ascending from a speck in the immensity-all combined to form an assemblage which can not be described, and of which the human heart could hardly bear the weight.

"The scene at land was not less ravishing One evening I had lost my way in a forest, at a short distance from the Falls of Niagar