The Press. — London, England, 1856-03-01 00:00:00

Nittraturt. Memoirs of Celebrated Characters. By Alphonse de Lamartine. Three Vols. Vol. 111. London: Bentley. UPON a former occasion (Pastas, vol. ii., p. 615) the character of Lamartine was elucidated at such length in our columns that there can be no occasion for prefacing our review of this volume. Yet we must say that we have been affected strongly with some of the personal traits of the author revealed in many of its eloquent pages. That particular blending of moral aspiration and rhetorical faculty, com bined with versatile literary power, which constitutes the essence of Lamartine's genius, are repeatedly manifested here. Some parts of the composition arc rather hurried, and the translator has not done his author full justice ; the construction of his sentences is in many places too loose and tangled, and the harmony of the original iswanted. The present and concluding Vo l u me of this series contains five literary characters— " William Tell," " Madame de Sevigne," " John Milton," "Antal.," " Bossuet." All these papers have the stamp of Lamartine's mind, but they are of unequal value. One of them, however, is of surpassing merit. Lamartine has never written better, or thought more justly, than in his masterly portrait of Bossuet, which is the finest literary picture of that renowned divine with which we are acquainted. That one essay is enough to show that the author, if he chose, could rival Mr. Macaulay as an essay-reviewer,—a class of writer which, as Lamartine truly states, is quite peculiar to our times. In his sketch (for it is little more) of " Milton" the author observes : It is a characteristic of the age in which we live, to take more interest in the writer than in his works; we turn to the page for a history of the man. What would Tasso be without his fatal attachment, and his dungeon? What would Jean-Jacques Rousseau be without his" Confessions"? What would Voltaire himself be without his " Correspon dence " ? Human nature seems to have become entirely historical ; it studies, analyses, and contemplates itself in all the prominent indiv.duals who collectively constitute the age. The book falsifies, but the man cannot; his life reveals him in spite of himself. For this reason, biogra phies in the style of Plutarch have become, in our estima tion, the most valuable portion of historic records : one remarkable character lights up to us an entire age. A pre sentiment of this bias of the public mind in the present day impressed on the author the idea of the series he is now writing, under the title of the " ;:iviliser," in which he purposes to depict universal history from the single lives of illustrious men. That passage was not written without a reference to our " Quarterlies " ; but we must enforce attention to the fact that this particu lar style of writing has dangerous vices. It creates popular rather than profound his torians ; matter is sacrificed to manner ; for the essayist cares to interest more than in struct. We mist also express our dissent from the notion that history can be properly seen in the lives of particular men. The great charm of all these modern biographies lies rather in the exhibition of human nature, and in the easy, colloquial tone of the writers. Jn the essay on Madame de Sevigne the author gives us some interesting anecdotes of his own life; and nothing can be more artistic than the way in which he takes us to " Les Rochers," so well known (on paper) to all the readers of the great female letter-writer : It was in this identical book that we irst learned to read. A mother, educated amidst the elegant refinements of a Court, but banished after early youth by mediocrity of fortune into a country retirement similar to the " Rochers" of ➢ladame de Sevigne, found in that authoress, besides many analogies of thought and feeling, all the recollections of the aristocratic world she had frequented, —a fund of contemplation applicable to the rural solitude she inhabited with her children, and to all the pious emo tions of her own maternal heart seeking to shelter its nest tram the storms of life. This volume, every page of which was so continually studied, always reposed upon the time worn stone mantelpiece; and when our attention to the lessons which we studied beneath the shade of our garden trees and repeated at our mother's knee merited approba tion, we were rewarded by haying read aloud to us a few of the letters most suited to our age and comprehension . The chief favourites were those in which he mother speaks to Ler daughter of her woods, her avenue, her dog, her nightingale, her religion, her pious meditations upon the sunset beheld from the terrace of Livry, of her kind uncle the Abbe de Coulanges, and of her friends and neighbours, 1... THE PRESS. whose visits interrupted her evening reveries and her gar dening occupations. We were as intimately acquainted with the footpaths of Les 11,Qhers and the parterres of Livry as with these of our own little domain. Thus these places and these impressions fixed themselves indelibly in our imaginations at ten years of age ; and we beheld in the mother we heard of but the counterpart of our own, and in the children little more than a reflection of our selves. Since that period the book ceased to command my attention : it contained a tenderness of feeling suffi cient for any age, but not enough of passionate warmth to satisfy the ardour of my youth. Then, like a great master of effect, the author brings " Les Roeliers" vividly before us : Many years afterwards, while hunting one day in the forests of Upner Burgundy. the chase led me accidentally to the edge of a wooded bill, from whence, appearing through the yellow leaves and transparent haze of autumn, I beheld an extensive valley spread under my feet : the basin was formed by smiling meadows, through which flowed a narrow river, bordered on either side by large willows, while numerous herds of red and white horned cattle were crossing at the ford; the breeze from the sur face of the water, as it turned the leaves, gave them a power of reflection as if they had been plates of silver ; the murmuring stream, apparently without current, seemed to issue from the vast shadow of an extensive forest, as if produced by the droppings of the mist from its innumer able branches: on the northern side it sparkled with the rays of the setting sun as far as the eye could follow its course between high wooded banks, at one moment seem ing to meet and inclose it, and again opening to afford it a p usage. He then draws a most graphic ske►ch of the whole scene—too long for us to extract—and vividly describes his sensations at learning where he was : " Where then are we V' I asked. "At Bourbilly," was his response, the château of Madame de Sevigne." At this name, the landscape, till now lifeless and indifferent, became suddenly illuminated, as though its magnetic sound had kindled wateh•lights on every turret of the château and on the summit of each hill beneath the melan choly horizon. The lazy waters, extravasated puddles of the Serin in the meadows, seemed to multiply reflections of the infant with the fair hair, who became the idolised child of her own century. I thought I heard her name murmured by the river, the leaves of the trees, the echoes of the old walls, and in the cries of the rooks fluttering round the battlements of the keep. Such was the power of a name, not only living itself, but capable of 1 eanitnating the dead scene with which it had once been identified. Nothing can be more dramatic than that pre sentation of the subject. He next enters on the history of Madame de Sevigne's life. He does not depreciate her, neither does he raise ber to a higher pedestal. Lamartine's estimate of her is, that she was a woman wholly ab sorbed by the maternal instinct, and that her feelings on other subjects were superficial. Sense, not sentiment, predominated in the mero intellect of Madame de Sevigne ; and that is the sort of character not likely to re ceive full appreciation of one with so much French sensibility as Lamartine. Yet, though exceptions may fairly be taken to particular passages, we are on the whole disposed to accept Lamartine's view of Madame de Sevignit as sound. The conclusion of the ea tique is perfectly just. Many of our readers will feel the force of this passage : Enter the interior of all dwellings, select from the volumes lying on the mantelpiece the one oflenest perused, and bearing the marks of most constant opening, nineteen times out of twenty it will prove to be the correspondence of Madame de Sevigne ; the masterpieces of human genius yield the first place to this immortal conversation. It is the classic of closed doors. Above all, it is a book more suited to old-age than to the budding years of existence: it does not possess enough of passion to satisfy youth. Before it can afford us pleasure, the first heat of life must be tamed or deadened by the progress of time. It is the book for the evening, and not for the early dawn. It has a subdued light ; it abounds in shadows, reveries, a sort of vague repose, and the calmness of the setting sun. It suits the period when men, ceasing all desire to advance or to act, seat themselves before the door or at the fireside, to discourse in a low tone of the events and crowds that occupy the world, without being tempted to mingle with them again. It is less life than a conversation upon life. This book refreshes after the heart has been exhausted by the emotions of the day,—it is the volume of repose. There is however an important lesson conveyed by these pages, and the life of Madame de Sevigne. In reverting to them, mothers may learn to love as much, while daughters may be taught tc love still more. We could have wished that Lamartine had given us a volume, not an essay, on De Sevigne. Her entourage is not sufficiently brilliant in this paper, and something more should have been shown of the famous per sons with whom she was in contact. The Hotel de Rambouillet ought to haze been depicted; and there are some digressions that we could have spared —as, for example, the passage in which Lamartine utters an his- SATURDAY, torical heresy purporting that Mazarin was greater than Richelieu. The author writes : Mazerin, a thousand times an abler politician, beca use more inclined to peace and more humane, is considered by vulgar estimation a man of less colossal proportions than Richelieu, because the rule of policy makes less noise than the domination of terror, and the shallow-minded feel mere reverence fur force than wisd om; b ut i n the judgment of philosophers and statesmen, Mazarin wa s th e great minister, while Richelieu was the great avenger. And again he says, winding up tho pas. sage : How blind to their own interest are the people who esteem Richelieu and who do not understand hlazarin. The " blindness " (if it be such) is likely to continue long, and is spread through many lands. Mazarin was an administrator, and a most able one, but Richelieu wits a creator, such as the world has rarely seen. He had original capacity for great affairs ; he changed the map of France, and altered the internal condition of French society, as much as if his single life had been coeval with and equipollent to a whole dynasty of sovereigns. His voli tion was sublime, and in his own brain he had an innate right to command others. Many pro totypes are to be found for Mazarin, but not one for Richelieu. He stands out boldly in history by himself, and arrests the gaze like a Luther, a Cromwell, or a Napoleon. Yet we can easily understand how one with the tenderness and moral aspirations of Lamartine cannot sympathise with the irunhearted Richelieu, so fierce and vindictive, so terrible and unfalter ing in acting up to the emotions of his soul. (To be continued.) Sinai and Palestine, in Connection with their History. By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, M.A. London : Murray. ONE of the most peculiar, and at the same time most valuable, features in Dr. Arnold's historical teaching was the importance he attached to geography. In his lectures he repeatedly enforces on the student the neces sity of good maps, showing not only the names of places, but the elevation and shape of hills and mountains, and the character of the various natural boundaries and defences of different districts. In his " History of Rome" he has acted on this principle to the fullest extent, and the consequence is that we have nearly as clear a notion of the early Italian wars, and the position of the numerous tribes which Rome successively subdued, as we have of the wars between England and Scotland. What Arnold did for Italy, his distinguished pupil, as far as concerns its physical conforma tion, has done for Palestine. The main limbs of the country, so to speak, are exhibited with remarkable distinctness, and their every vein and every muscle is laid bare with a precision that stamps them on the memory. Not a gorge, not a brook, not a hill. not a pecu liarity, is omitted. At the same time, this ela borateness of detail is combined throughout with the most vigorous and beautiful language imagination and sentiment are called in to fill up the barren outline of stone, sand, and water: as the writer warms with his descrip ion, the living reality rises before our eyes — and the effect is just as if a lecturer on ana tomy, having made us comprehend the exact structure of a human skeleton, should sud denly, by a few magic words, reclothe the dry bones with the soft and wavy garment of the flesh, and recal the glowing hues of health and beauty. Mr. Stanley's object in the present volume is to show the connection between the physi cal character of Palestine and the national character of the Jews, their history and their religion. As a fitting prelude to this the main object of his work, he has given us sketches of the land of Egypt and the peninsula of Sinai, written with the same poetic spirit and the same industrious accuracy. We would espe cially recommend to our readers the descrip tions of Thebes ani Memphis, with the tombs and statues of the primeval kings. Ibe several notices of Rameses scattered through out the introductory chapters are singularly striking. The whole impression conve3 ed by these remains is, says Mr Stanley, " that gods " and men alike belong to an age and world " entirely passed away, when men were slow " to move, slow to think, but when they did