The Sun. — 1849-01-25 (London, England)

XVI. he exclaims in words worthy of one who had called himself a Bourbonist by birth, a Royalist by honour, and a Republican by conviction—"the respect which should be inspired by the virtues and misfortunes of the saintly and martyred King renders any human judgineet upon him almost sacrilegious." As affording the imagination a ghastly glimpse of the sanguinary drys of the Revolution, a glimpse caught through the crevices of memory, the following possesses a terrible fascination : " I was standing at the window of my apartments with my sisters• and a few countrymen, when we heard the cry, `Shut the doors! shut the doors!' A rei..,,ged group appeared at ono end of the street, bearing two standards, which at thr.t distane.., we, could not well distinguish; as they Came nearer we saw that they were two heads, with heir dishevelled and countenances nittortes), borne on pikes by these forerunners of Marat— they were the heads of MM. Fenton and Berthier. Every one retired from the windew except myself. The assassins stopped when they saw me, and held up the pikes, singing, capering, and leaping up to bring the pale heads as near me as pos,ib!o ; in one of them an eye had fallen from its socket, and hung on the livid cheek ; the pike was fastened into the open mouth, whose teeth bit the iroa. Murderers,' cried I, unable. to contain my indignt.tiOn, is it thus you understand liberty?' If I had had a gun I. would have fired on these wretches as I would on wolves. They replied with howls; and beat violently on the great gate, with the intention of breaking in and addir, my head to the others.- My sisters were much alarmed; the cowardly proprietors of the house overwhelmed me with reproaches. The murderers, who were being pursued, had not time to break into the house, and moved off. The eight of these heads, and of others which soon after greeted my oyes, changed my political dispositions; a horror o' these cannibal festivals seized me, and the idea of quitting France for some distant land began to gain strength in my mind." In a different mood, Chateaubriand speaks thus sadly and repentantly of the period when his mind was darkened by the mists of scepticism:— " I Lad now become an caprit fort, or to speak more truly, an esprit liable. This change in my religious opinions had been produced by reading hocks on pita°. tophy. I truly believed that on one aide a religious mind was es it were paralysed—that there were truths which could not reach it, however superior it might be in other ways. It, was this foolish pride which effected the change is my mind; in a religious spirit I supposed a Odic:jenny, en absence of faculty, which in fact exists in a philosophic spirit; a limited intelligence imagines it sees everything, because it keeps its eyes open; a superior intelligence consents to shut its eyes, because it sees everything within." Hear him again singing of the glories of a ship—a vessel isolated in mid-ocean : " The ship alone forms an object of iaterest; sensible to the slightest movement of the helm, a winged steed, she obeys the hand of the pilot, as a horse yields to the hand of the rider. The beauty of the masts and cordage, the activity of the sailors in climbing the shrouds and handing the rails, the different aspects under which the ship presents herself, sometimes heeling under the power of a contrary gale from the south, and sometimes running all sail set, before a northerly breeze—combine to form of this almost intelligent machine, one of the greatest triumphs of human ingenuity. One while the surge with its foam breaks and dashes against the hull —at another, the peaceful waves yield a ready and easy passage to the prow. The flags, streamers, and sails complete the beauty of this palace of Neptune; the lower sails, in all their extent, aro bulged out like vast cylinders; the upper ones messed in the middle by the buntline, resemble the bosom of a Siren. Driven on by a powerful wind, with her keel she furrows the field of the sea, as with a ploughshare." After telling us of his interview with Washington, be says—" There is a virtue in the glance of a great mdn!" One More quotation we must be permitted to make : it is a comparison by Chateaubriand of