to turn its anticipations (in part at least) into prophecies. It is as follows:

Europe is hastening to a democracy. France is nothing else than a republic clogged by a director. Nations have grown out of their pagehood. Arrived at their majority, they pretend to have no longer need of tutors. From the time of David to our own times, kings have been called-nations appear now to be called in their turn. The brief and unimportant exceptions of the Grecian, Carthaginian, and Roman republics, do not alter the general political fact of antiquity, that the state of society was monarchical all over the globe. But now society is quitting monarchy, at least monarchy such as it has been understood till now."

"The symptoms of social transformation abound. It is in vain that efforts are made to reorganize a party for the absolute government of a single man-the elementary principles of this government no longer exist-men are changed as much as principles. Although facts seem to be sometimes in collision, they concur nevertheless in the same result; as in a machine, wheels which turn in opposite directions produce a common action."

"But sovereigns, submitting themselves gradually to the necessary popular liberties-detaching themselves without violence and without shock from their pedestals, may yet transmit to their sons, for a period more or less extended, their hereditary sceptres, reduced to proportions measured by the law. France would have done better for her happiness and independence had she preserved a child who could not have turned the days of July into a shameful deception; but no one comprehended the event. Kings are bent obstinately on guarding that which they cannot retain. Instead of descending gently on an inclined plane, they expose themselves to fall into a gulf -instead of dying gloriously, full of honours and days, monarchy runs the risk of being flayed alive-a tragic mausoleum at Venice contains only the skin of an illustrious general.”

"Even countries the least prepared for liberal institutions, such as Spain and Portugal, are urged for

ward by constitutional movements. In these countries, ideas have outgrown the men whom they influence. France and England, like two enormous battering-rams, strike with redoubled strokes on the crumbling ramparts of the ancient society. The boldest doctrines on property, equality, and liberty, are proclaimed from morning to evening in the face of monarchs trembling behind a triple hedge of suspected soldiers. The deluge of democracy is gaining on them. They mount from floor to floor, from the ground floor to the top of their palaces, whence they will throw themselves struggling into the waves which will overwhelm them."

"The discovery of printing has changed all social conditions-the press, a machine which can no longer be broken, will continue to destroy the old world till it has formed a new one. Its voice is calculated for the general forum of all people. The press is nothing else than the word, the first of all powers-the word created the universe. Unhappily the word in man participates of the human infirmity-it will mix evil with good, till our fallen nature has recovered its original purity."

"Thus the transformation brought about by the age of the world will have place. All is calculated in this plan. Nothing is possible now except the natural death of society, from whence will spring the regeneration. It is impiety to struggle against the angel of God, to believe that we can arrest Providence. perceived from this height, the French revolution is only a point of the general revolution-all impatience should cease-all the axioms of ancient politics become inappli

cable.

actions, instructive, magisterial, avenging. If the monarch who first gave us liberty paid for the despotism of Louis XIV. and the corruption of Louis XV., can it be believed that the debt contracted by Egalité at the scaffold of the innocent King is not to be acquitted? Egalité, by losing his life, expiated nothing. The tear shed at the last moment redeems no one-the tears of fear, which moisten merely the bosom, fall not upon the conscience. What! shall the race of Orleans reign by right of the vices and crimes of their ancestors? Where, then, is Providence? Never could a more frightful temptation come to unseat virtue, to accuse eternal justice, or insult the existence of God, than such a supposi

tion!'

"I have heard these reasonings made, but must we thence conclude that the sceptre of the 9th August is to be broken immediately? No. Raising our view to universal order, the reign of Louis Philippe is but an apparent anomaly, but an unreal infraction of the laws of morals and equity they are violated, these laws, in a limited and relative sense, but they are observed in a sense unlimited and general. From an enormity consented to by God, I shall deduce a consequence still weightier -I shall deduce the Christian proof of the abolition of royalty in France. It will be this abolition itself, and not an individual chastisement, which will be the expiation of the death of Louis XVI. None shall be admitted, after this just one, to cincture his brow solidly with the diadem--from the forehead of Napoleon it fell in spite of his victories, and from that of Charles X. in spite of his piety! To finish the disgrace of the crown in the eyes of the people, it has been permitted to the son of the regicide to sleep for a moment in mock kingship in the bloody bed of the martyr.

"Another reason, taken from the category of human considerations, may also prolong, for a short time more, the duration of the sophism government struck out of the shock of paving stones.

"For forty years every government in France has perished by its own fault: Louis XVI. could twenty times have saved his crown and his life; the republic succumbed only

by the excess of its crimes. Bonaparte could have established his dynasty, but he threw himself down from the pinnacle of his glory; but for the ordinances of July, the legitimate throne would be still standing. But the actual government will not apparently commit the error which destroys-its power will never be suicidal-all its skill is exclusively employed in its conservation-it is too intelligent to die of folly, and it has not that in it which can render it guilty of the mistakes of genius, or the weaknesses of virtue.

"But, after all, it must perish. What are, then, four, six, ten, or twenty years in the life of a people? The ancient society perished with the Christian policy from whence it sprung. At Rome, the reign of a man was substituted for that of the law by Cæsar; from the republic was the passage to the empire. Revolution, at present, takes a contrary direction; the law dethrones the man: from royalty the transition is to a republic. The era of the people is returned-it remains to be seen how it will be filled.

"But first Europe must be levelled in one same system. A representative government cannot be supposed in France, with absolute monarchies around it. To arrive at this point, it is but too probable that foreign wars must be undergone, and that, in the interior, a double anarchy, moral and physical, must be traversed.

If property alone were in quèstion, would it not be touched? would it remain distributed as it is? A society, or individuals, have two millions of revenue, whilst others are reduced to fill bags with heaps of putrefaction, and to collect the worms from them-which worms, sold to fishermen, are the only means of existence to their families, themselves aborigines of the dunghill: can such a society remain stationary on such foundations, in the midst of the progress of ideas?

"But if property is touched, immense disorder will result, which will not be accomplished without the effusion of blood; the law of sacrifice and of blood is everywhere: God delivered up his Son to the nails of the cross, to renew the order of the universe. Before a new right shall

spring from this chaos, the stars will often have risen and set. Eighteen hundred years since the promulgation of Christianity have not sufficed for the abolition of slavery; there is still but a small part of the evangelic mission accomplished.

"These calculations go not quick enough for the impatience of Frenchmen. Never, in the revolutions they have made, have they admitted the element of time; this is why they will always be disappointed by results contrary to their hopes. Whilst they are disordering, time is ordering; it puts order into their disorder -rejects the green fruit-detaches the ripe-and sifts and examines men, manners, and ideas.

"What will the new society be? I am ignorant. Its laws are to me unknown. I cannot conceive it, any more than the ancients could conceive the society without slaves produced by Christianity. How will fortunes become levelled? how will labour be balanced by recompense? how will the woman arrive at her complete emancipation? I know not. Till now, society has proceeded by aggregation and by families; what aspect will it offer, when it shall be merely individual, as it tends to become, and as we see it already forming itself in the United States? Probably the human race will be aggrandized, but it is to be feared that man will diminish-that the eminent faculties of genius will be lost that the imagination, poetry, the arts, will die in the narrow cavities of a bee-hive society, in which every individual will be no more than a bee-a wheel in a machinean atom of organized matter. If the Christian religion should become extinct, man would arrive, by liberty, at that social petrifaction which China has arrived at by slavery.

"Modern society has taken ten centuries to arrive at its consistency. At present, it is in a state of decomposition. The generations of the middle age were vigorous, because they were in a state of progressive ascendency; we are feeble, because we are in progressive descent. This descending world will not resume its vigour till it has attained the lowest grade, whence it will commence to reascend towards a new life. I see, indeed, a popu

lation in agitation, which proclaims its power, exclaiming, I will-I am; the future belongs to me-I have discovered the universe. Before me nothing was known-the world was waiting for me I am incomparable-my ancestors were children and idiots.'

"But have facts answered to these magnificent words? How many hopes in talents and characters have failed! If you except about thirty men of real merit, what a throng have we-libertine, abortive without convictions, without faith, political or religious, and scrambling for money and place like mendicants for a gratuitous distribution: a flock which acknowledges no shepherdwhich runs from the mountain to the plain, from the plain to the mountain, disdaining the experience of their aged pastors-hardened to the wind and to the sun! We, the pastors, are only generations of passage-intermediate generations-obscure-devoted to oblivion-forming the chain reaching only to those hands which will pluck the future.

Respecting misfortune, and respecting myself-respecting the cause which I have served, and which I shall continue to serve at the sacrifice of the repose due to my age, I fear to pronounce, living, a word which may wound the unfortunate, or even destroy their chimeras. But when I shall be no more, my sacrifices will give to my tomb the privilege of speaking the truth; my duties will be changed-the interest of my country will prevail over the engagements of honour from which I shall be freed. To the Bourbons belongs my life-to my country belongs my death. A prophet, in quitting the world, I trace my predictions on my declining hours-light withering leaves, which the breath of eternity will soon have blown away.

"If it be true that the lofty races of kings, refusing enlightenment, approach the term of their power, were it not better, and more in their historic interest, that they should, by an end worthy of their grandeur, retire into the sacred night of the past with bygone ages? To prolong life beyond its brilliant illustration is worth nothing. The world wearies

it.

of you and of your noise. It owes you a grudge for being there to hear Alexander, Cæsar, Napoleon, have all disappeared according to the rules of glory. To die gloriously, one must die young. Let it not be said to the children of the spring, What; is there still that name of past renown, that person, that race, at whom the world clapped its hands, and for whom one would have paid for a smile, for a look, for a hair, the sacrifice of a life!' How sad it is to see Louis XIV, in his old age, a stranger to the rising generation, and having none about him to speak to of his own age, but the aged Duke de Villeroi! It was the last victory of the great Condé in his second childhood, to have met Bossuet on the borders of his grave; the orator reanimated the mute waters of Chantilly-the superannuation of the old man he impregnated with his adolescence-he re-embrowned the locks on the front of the conqueror of Rocroi, by bidding an immortal adieu to his grey hairs. Men who love glory, be careful for your tomb-lay yourselves gracefully down in ittry there to make a good figure, for you will remain there!"

The above passage opens certainly a fearful vision of the present state and future prospects of France. We cannot, we confess, include the entire of Europe so unreservedly in its prophetic anticipations. The tendency, however, of the democratic principle goes fully to the length of their complete realization; but its universal triumph is what we have yet heart and hope enough to disbelieve in. With respect to France, it is true, we see nothing but her foreign relations which would prevent its triumphing completely tomorrow. In fact, it does at this moment, in theory, triumph; and there is no antagonist national theory, which deserves the name, which could even in semblance be opposed to it. The legitimists, according to M. Chateaubriand's own confession, are in spirit defunct. They talk, we see, of opposing the angel of God, and would sit in supineness, and see the work of disorganization completed. The Philippists are simply the ministry, and their employés; and all the rest, excepting the inert mass, which is

ready to take any shape, so that it may repose in its inertness, are republicans. In truth, a very first glance over the political landscape in France, will show that monarchy is there out of its place. Monarchy is in itself the feeblest of things. It requires support strong and natural, not artificial and temporary, all around it. An aristocracy, a clergy, great landed interests, great commercial bodies, these are its visible outward bulwarks, and through these are its roots spread, and its sympathies diffused throughout a population. But in France none of these things, better than in mockery, exist. The monarchy is isolated. It exists only individually, not nationally. It is, therefore, the butt for every shaft, the object of all scorn, and all malice, a gorgeous useless thing, set up only to be hated for its eminence, and its inevitable want of sympathy with the people, decked in purple and regal attire, and placed upon a height, only to whet envious passions, and to glut them by its ultimate downfall and destruction. To this consummation, which the sagacity of M. de Chateaubriand has foreseen, are things rapidly tending in France. What is there, save physical force -which will be found ineffectual, for the spirit of Evil as well as of Good, bloweth where it listeth, and is not to be controlled or limited by material violence-what is there, we repeat, which can avert this catastrophe? Nothing. Religion and morals, those great conservatives, those great safety-valves of a state, went to wreck with every thing else at the first revolution, (perhaps before,) and went into more complete wreck than any thing else, as they have never been in any degree re-established. While these remain, disorganization, however violent, can never be of any long continuance, for they naturally seek, and will find, stability in the organs by which they are to be exercised. The spirit of disorganization, which is nothing but their absence, can never, whilst they survive, be propagated from system to system, from revolution to revelution, from dynasty to dynasty, from change to change, carrying the principle of decomposition through its every transition. But this has been,

and will apparently continue to be, the case in France, till a moral revolution, which is the real want, and not a political one, takes place. To create such a revolution, out of which alone stability for any form of government can grow, is humanly impossible. The want, however, is felt and this is the only saving sign we have perceived in the nation-by all classes and all parties. A moral citizen education, it is supposed by the Republicans, would work the wonder; but even the Pagans had religious principles, which inspired their civic virtues-the object and model for emulation-and which, therefore, cannot be imitated, though they may be shammed and burlesqued. Others insist upon reviving a respect for Christianity, but Catholicism, its only form in France, has been degraded so thoroughly, so pierced through and through, and so utterly disabled, that it can never again raise its head in that country, And what are morals without religion (supposing them possible)? Merely the excogitation of human wisdom for human convenience, and therefore always subject to be questioned and disputed. How loose does such a notion-for it is nothing more -leave man of all obligations, and how utterly does it annihilate all moral convictions; for how can there be convictions, when the very foundations on which they should rest are merely opinions? According to this doctrine, there is nothing within the vail his erect form was given to man in vain, for he is forbidden to look up to heaven! Truly with these sentiments, and they are nearly universal in France, it is only natural to look forward to a new era of experiments on human nature in that country. We believe not, however, with Monsieur de Chateaubriand, (if his supposition be any thing more than bitter irony,) that these experiments will ever attain to any practical consistency. We believe the disorganizing principle to be inconsistent with any stable society, even the bee-hive society, the materializing animalizing society, which he has anticipated. We would anticipate rather that Providence will leave those wicked men, to whom our remarks point, in their wickedness, and

make them the scourges of its judgments on the earth, till, by a renewed, not a new, moral revolution, order and progress be again restored, and a new era dawn upon the world. We have dwelt, perhaps somewhat too much at length, on the moral condition of France, because we regard the state of the human heart in any country to be a much more unerring criterion of its future destinies, than any external political events whatever.

The lines from the above extract, which we have printed in italics, terrible and blasting as they are to the Orleans dynasty, have not been taken any public notice of by the government. What! does it fear to prosecute Mons. de Chateaubriand ? Yes, truly. Discretion is with it the better part of valour, and Mons. de Chateaubriand is allowed an unlimited impunity, whilst poor journalists and printers are hunted and persecuted to ruin and beggary, in violation of the charte, and by all the arts of despotism. But Mons. de Chateaubriand's name is not good to conjure with. It might raise a spirit which might tear the conjurer to pieces.

We now hasten to our concluding extract. Having presented, from Mons. de Chateaubriand, a distracting picture of human politics and miseries, we have now the pleasure of contrasting it with one from nature, which may calm and elevate the troubled thoughts his prophetic vision has raised up.

"It was twenty-two years ago, as I have just said, that I sketched, in London, the Natchez and Atala. I am precisely now, in my Memoirs, at the epoch of my voyage to America. This conjunction happens admirably. Let us suppress these twenty-two years, as they are in fact suppressed in my life, and let us depart for the forests of the new world. The recital of my embassy will come in its place. Should I remain here a few months, I shall have leisure to arrive at the cataract of Niagara, the army of the Princes in Germany, and from the army of the Princes to my retreat in England. The ambassador of the King of France can relate the history of the French emigrant, in the place itself