completion of the Concordat, Napoleon resolved to send an embassy to Rome, and nominated his uncle, Cardinal Fesch, as Minister, and Chateaubriand, then in the full bloom of his fame as author of the Génie du Christianisme, as Secretary of Legation. The appointment seemed a fitting one, and Chateaubriand accepted it as an appropriate testimony to his merits; but his elation was considerable, and he conducted himself as young men and vain men will do under such circumstances.* He immediately became, in his own eyes, the soul and centre of the embassy, and relegated the Cardinal, in fancy, to a subordinate position; imagining that Napoleon had intended him to do all the work, and his chief to be a mere roi fainéant-a sort of nominis umbra. He therefore preceded the ambassador to Rome, and, in defiance of all official etiquette and decorous reticence, procured an audience of the Pope, presented his credentials and proceeded to make good his position. The arrival of the Cardinal replaced him in his natural subordination, and reduced him to comparative obscurity. This was intolerable to a man of his insatiable vanity and extravagant expectations, and he complained bitterly of his disappointment. The secret official correspondence of the Cardinal, and the private letters of his secretary, during the whole duration of their ill-assorted union, are filled with reciprocal reproaches and complaints; and at length Chateaubriand so far forgot himself as to forward (through Madame Bacciochi, we believe) a long note to the First Consul, containing much political information and suggestions which ought to have been transmitted through the Cardinal, and many insinuations against the Cardinal himself which ought never to have been transmitted at all. The truth was, that Chateaubriand was of all men the least fitted for a diplomatic post of any sort. He was too conceited, intriguing, and insubordinate for a secondary position, and far too suspicious, irritable, and gullible through vanity, for a principal one. An ambassador should be keen-sighted, calm-tempered, firm, somewhat pachydermatous, and as free from weaknesses which foes and rivals can play upon as may be. Chateaubriand was susceptible, impulsive, unsociable, giving and taking offence with equal readiness, and as full of obvious and manageable foibles as any man

* There can be little doubt that he accepted the nomination gladly, and in the sincere hope of being able to render special services to the Church; but in his Mémoires he endeavours to persuade us that he was most reluctant; conscious, he says, “que je ne vaux rien du tout en seconde ligne;" but was induced to forego his objections by the representations of the Abbé Emery. But, as if he could never be consistent or able to see matters as they really were when himself was concerned, he goes on to say that his real determining cause was the failing health of his friend Madame de Beaumont, for whom the climate of Italy was recommended, and who agreed to accompany him if he went to Rome. "Je me sacrifiai à l'espoir de

la sauver."

that ever breathed. He soon grew sick of his situation. He considered the Cardinal to be an incapable fool, the Cardinal looked upon him as a meddling and intriguing upstart; the First Consul became weary of their squabbles, but was persuaded by the vigilant friendship of M. de Fontanes to anticipate Chateaubriand's intended resignation by appointing him Minister to the newly-constituted Republic of the Vallais. Chateaubriand returned to Paris on his way to his post, which, though really insignificant, was an apparent promotion; but, while there, was shocked and startled, in common with the rest of Europe, by learning one morning the seizure and execution of the Duc d'Enghien. In the first moment of horror and indignation, he sat down and wrote his resignation to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. It was a noble and generous impulse, and did infinite credit both to the feeling and the courage of the young diplomatist. For Napoleon, though not yet emperor, was on the point of becoming so, and was virtually all-powerful; and the man who, in defiance of all law and right, had just stained his hands with the blood of a Condé, was not likely to hesitate in punishing any inferior victim who might brave or blame him. It was a period, too, in which civil bravery and independent conscience were at their lowest ebb in France. All honour, therefore, to Chateaubriand for his prompt and spirited proceeding;-but why, in his Mémoires, should he seek to enhance the merit of the deed by speaking as if he alone of all existing Frenchmen was capable of such conduct, and as if all his friends were paralysed with consternation at his audacity?* Why, in relating an act which so much redounds to his glory, need he seek to monopolise that glory, and discolour facts that he may do so? "For many days," he writes, "my friends came trembling to my door, expecting to find that I had been carried off by the police. M. de Fontanes became nearly wild with terror at the first moment; he, like all my best friends, considered me shot." Yet Chateaubriand, when he wrote this, must have been fully conscious of its inaccuracy and injustice; for he knew that two days after the crime, when the Moniteur, by direction of Napoleon, had altered the wording of an address presented to him by M. de Fontanes as President of the Legislative Chamber, so as to give it the appearance of approving the murder, this same friend, whom he represents as wild with fright, had the courage to insist on the public correction of the error. He relates himself also, in a later portion of his Memoirs, that a few months afterwards, when Napoleon had been crowned emperor, and was

*Why, too, spoil the record of one of the few single-minded acts of his whole life by hinting at a motive of vanity? Why the reflection, "En osant quitter Bonaparte, je me plaçais à son niveau” ?

even more absolute and formidable than before, he said to Fontanes, with his customary brutality, "Eh bien, Fontanes, vous pensez toujours à votre Duc d'Enghien." His interlocutor was bold enough to reply in a tone of grave rebuke, "Il me semble que l'Empereur y pense autant que moi." In truth, Chateaubriand was far from being as unique as he fancied in his courage on that occasion. M. Suard, an old Academician, and then editor of a journal, Le Publiciste, on being desired by the minister of the day to "set public opinion right" on the subject of the official murder, sent this plain reply, at least as bold and honourable as M. de Chateaubriand's: "I am seventy-three years old, and neither my mind nor my conscience, any more than my limbs, have grown supple with age. The trial and execution of the Duke are proceedings which I deplore, and which contravene all my notions of justice and humanity. I cannot therefore rectify' an opinion which I share.”

No one, however, ever doubted Chateaubriand's courage or high sense of honour in political affairs. He gave another proof of it in 1807, by publishing in the Mercure, a literary paper of which he had become the editor,-an article containing, among other pungent reflections, the following famous passage, of which the writer was immensely proud:

"Lorsque, dans le silence de l'abjection, l'on n'entend plus retentir que la chaîne de l'esclave et la voix du délateur; lorsque tout tremble devant le tyran, et qu'il est aussi dangéreux d'encourir sa faveur que de mériter sa disgrâce, l'historien paraît, chargé de la vengeance des peuples. C'est en vain que Néron prospère; Tacite est déjà né dans l'empire. . . . . Si le rôle de l'historien est beau, il est souvent dangéreux; mais il est des autels comme celui de l'honneur, qui, bien qu'abandonnés, réclament encore des sacrifices; le Dieu n'est point anéanti parceque le temple est desert."

So sunk was France then in slavery and silence, that a sentence like this was like the sudden sound of a trumpet in a Quakers' meeting or at a funeral-procession; the excitement was extraordinary; Napoleon was furious; the Mercure was suppressed, and, according to the Mémoires d'outre Tombe, the audacious writer was ordered to be arrested. This, however, was never done-probably was never ordered. The sentences which introduce and close this episode in the Memoirs are too characteristic to be omitted. Chateaubriand begins the narrative by saying, "It was not in vain that I wore a countenance tanned by exposure to the sun (he had just returned from the East); I had not encountered the wrath of heaven (Anglicè, the heat of a Syrian summer) to tremble before the anger of a man. Si Napoléon en avait fini avec les rois, il n'en avait pas fini avec moi," &c. And after describing the rage of the emperor, he concludes thus:

"Ma propriété périt; ma personne échappa par miracle; Bonaparte eut à s'occuper du monde: il m'oublia."

But Chateaubriand's real entrance into the arena of political life was effected by his famous pamphlet, Bonaparte et les Bourbons; and a more splendid inauguration never man had. Like the Génie du Christianisme, this fierce and spirit-stirring invective came out in the very nick of time; like that production, it caught the tide on its turn; it gave utterance to the pent-up feelings of millions, decided the movements of the wavering, and clinched and whetted the passions of the exasperated and the wronged. It was written during the last struggle of Napoleon for existence and for empire on the soil of France; (the author tells us it was written amid mortal anxieties and in the greatest danger, with locked doors at night and with loaded pistols by his side); it appeared when the allied armies were at the gates of Paris, when Napoleon was at Fontainebleau in the agonies of meditated abdication, and when the conquerors and the people were alike hesitating as to the government and the ruler they would choose. Never was a shot so opportune or so telling. By enumerating all the crimes and tyrannies of Napoleon, and painting them in colours and in traits that made the heart of the whole nation at once rage and bleed, it gave the coup-de-gráce to the falling oppressor; and by appealing to all the ancient and longdormant but not extinguished sentiments of loyalty and chivalry which were once so powerful among the French people, by pleading the old glories and the recent sufferings of the exiled race, it went far to determine the deliberations of the liberators and the liberated alike in favour of what was, in fact, the only sound decision,-the recall of the Bourbons to the throne. Louis XVIII. may or may not have said, as Chateaubriand more than once asserts, that this pamphlet "was worth to him a hundred thousand men;" but if he did say so, it was only a somewhat extravagant expression of the truth. As usual, however, Chateaubriand endeavours to monopolise all the credit of the event to which he was only one-though perhaps the chief-of the contributors; and he would fain persuade us in his Mémoires that even Talleyrand was in favour of a compromise and a regency:-Talleyrand, who had especial reason to hate and dread every thing Napoleonic; Talleyrand, who so tersely urged upon the halfreluctant and still-admiring Alexander: "Louis XVIII est un principe; Bonaparte est un principe:-tout ce qui n'est ni l'un ni l'autre n'est qu'un intrigue."

In our judgment, this pamphlet is beyond question the best production of Chateaubriand's pen, because it is by far the truest and most earnest. It is the utterance, somewhat excessive perhaps, but not unwarranted, of the righteous and relentless

indignation of a public man against perhaps the greatest public criminal of modern times, pointed and heightened by the smouldering fury of the private foe. It is concentrated passion, approaching to malignity, let loose in a cause which almost hallowed the emotion. The invective is splendid; the tone and language are throughout superb. From first to last there is scarcely an ornament or a trope; for once the author thought more of his subject than of himself-more of the wounds he could inflict than of the dazzle he could make. Here he fights like a gladiator in the arena of life and death, dependent on the keenness of his thrusts and the sharpness of his sword; in all his previous displays he has been attitudinising like a fencing-master on the stage, studying every posture, pausing at every instant to admire and point out how bright is his blade, and how skilful are his lunges and his guards. The pungency and effectiveness of the style are something unrivalled, and herein, by the way, lay always Chateaubriand's chief force. His picture of the suffering caused by the conscription must have exasperated the feelings of every family in France nearly to fury. "Les générations de la France étaient mises en coupe réglée comme les arbres d'une forét chaque année 80,000 jeunes gens étaient abattus. . On en était venu à ce point de mépris pour la vie des hommes et pour la France, d'appeler les conscrits la matière première, et la chair à canon.. Bonaparte disait lui-même: J'ai 300,000 hommes de revenu." We have no space to quote; but all who wish to see the eloquence of invective carried to the very perfection of magnificence, should read the last few pages, beginning, "Bonaparte est un faux grand homme ;" and again the passage, "Bonaparte n'est point changé: il ne changera jamais;" and that where he concludes, "Que les Français et les Alliés reconnaissent leurs princes légitimes; et à l'instant l'armée, déliée de son serment, se rangera sous le drapeau sans tache, souvent témoin de nos triomphes, quelquefois de nos revers, toujours de notre courage, jamais de notre honte."

It has been objected to Chateaubriand that there was something ignoble and ungenerous in firing a shot like this, weighted with the accumulated animosity of years, into the flank of a falling foe, and in thus rejoicing over the defeat of a French ruler by foreign arms. The objection, we confess, appears to us quite unjust. Chateaubriand had opposed and condemned Napoleon in the height of his power; he had earned the right to attack him when and where he could; and the pamphlet was published at the first moment when publication was possible. The crisis was perilous and decisive; hesitation prevailed every where; a little more timidity on the part of the Allies, a little more moderation on the part of Napoleon, and a compromise