the key of Bacon's philosophy, seems to be this--man is appointed both king and priest unto God over nature. But his kingdom depends upon his priesthood; it is not absolute; he only rules over inferior creatures, in order that as priest he may present their homage to the one Creator of all. Unfaithfulness to his priesthood must therefore deprive him of his right of kingship. Man, by his apostacy from God, has become an unfaithful priest, and so the kingdom has been taken from him. Heathenism and barbarism are thus related as cause and effect, or as crime and its consequences. Redemption, or the restoration of man to the priesthood-or access to God, his presence, and favour-will bring with it a restoration to the kingship. It thus follows that religion and science are not opposed, but parts of one and the same thing. We in our age experience the beginnings of both. Men are being Christianized and civilized together. The leaders in the two movements may not be the same, but they are related, as Aaron and Moses were brethren. Sometimes

the two interests lie apart, but they are continually approximating, and will meet at last." Bacon and his followers have asserted vigorously and successfully the rights of man as king over nature; he entitled his Novum Organum, "on the interpretation of nature and the reign of man." But until man en govern himself, he cannot be God's vicegerent again on earth; civil restitution waits upon religious. Bacon's place may thus be ascertained as the master of nature, because the servant of God. He who reads the Novum Organum in a religious spirit will thus best catch the spirit of Bacon; and the kingdom over nature he lived to establish can only be set up on the same foundations of our priesthood unto God. As the gate of humility leads to the gate of wisdom, so the knowledge of God's laws must grow out of submission to his will; and the study of Bacon will be lost labour, though we rise up early and late take rest, unless we learn that "the fear of the Lord that is wisdom, and to depart from evil that is understanding."

My life, notwithstanding certain de ceptive appearances, is not one that should excite envy; I will say more, it is ended: I do not live, I survive. Of all these several men who to a certain degree lived in me, the man of sentiment, the man of poetry, the speaker, the man of action, nothing more remains of me but the man of letters. The literary man himself is not happy. Years do not yet weigh upon me, yet I feel them. I support more painfully the weight of my heart than that of years. These years, like the phantoms of Macbeth, raising their hands over my shoulder, point with their finger not to crowns but a sepulebre: and would to God that I already lay there. I have not within me the power to smile either at the past or the future; I am growing old without posterity in my house, empty, and all surrounded

by the tombs of those whom I have loved; İ stir not a step from my dwelling without striking my foot against one of those stumbling blocks of our affections or our hopes. They are so many bleeding fibres torn from my yet living heart, and buried before me, even while this heart yet beats in my breast, like a clock forgotten in a deserted house, and which strikes the hours that no one reckons any longer! All that remains of life is concentrated in a few hearts, and in a modest inheritance. And yet these hearts are made to suffer by me, and of this inheritance I might to-morrow be dispossessed, and obliged to go and die, according to the expression of Dante, on the high road of the stranger. The hearth where my father rested his feet, and where to-day I rest mine, may at any hour be held up to public bidding, as well as my mother's bed; aye, even to the dog, who licks my hands with pity when he sees my brow gather in agony as I look on him. I owe this acknowledgment to others, who have, on the faith of my honor and industry, confided to me the inheritance of their children earned by the sweat of their own brow. I did not work every day for them—what do I say?-if I took even my full nights' sleep, or if illness (from which may God spare me

If

before my time comes) arrested a moment my pen, the assiduous tool I use for them, these worthy friends would sink with me; they would be obliged to seek in my ashes for their fortune; they would indeed recover it, but it would be from beneath my ruins. You now see why I undergo, often beyond my strength, the severe condemnation of labor.

M. de Lamartine goes on to complain of the ungenerous view taken of his motives, by those who attribute his constant appearance before the public as an author to personal vanity. Fame, he protests, has no longer any charm; and as for life itself, he asks,

What would I have to regret? Have I not seen all my thoughts die before me? What desire can I have to sing again verses which would terminate in sobbings? What taste can I have for a return to the political arena, even if re-opened, where our posthumous accents would le no longer recognisable? What very strong hope have I in those forms of government which the people abandon with the same mobility with which they conquered them?

And he adds:

Happy are the men who die stricken by the revolutions in which they were mixed.

* As to myself, I would a thousand times over have died the death of Cato, were I of the religion of Cato; but I am not: I adore God in his designs. I believe that the patient death of the humblest mendicant on his straw is more sublime than the impatient death of Cato upon the blade of his sword.

Lamartine finds comfort in his despondency. His isolated position. is not without dignity, and with a more lofty head and a firmer voice he thus concludes :

From actor that I was for twenty years in this sad oratorical or popular drama of my country, the prompt distaste of the people and the ordinary mobility of human things have cast me amongst the most obscure spectators. I do not complain; it is the good side of such disgraces; when the crowd precipitates itself in a direction whither a man will not go, happy is he to stand alone! My existence is now more my own. I wrap myself in this obscurity: I hug it round me more and more every day, as a winter inantle about my limbs. Would I could do as much with my name. But whence, you will ask me, is derived this inward happiness, in contradiction with a situation which you paint as so painful? One word explains it, and with that word I wish to terminate. It is

that I have become frankly and exclusively HOMME DE LETTRES; it is that I live, tanks to this passion for literature, in company with all men who have bequeathed me their written soul, as we leave a portion of our written soul to those who shall come after us; it is that my soul is pleased, edified, and fortified in this society of the mighty dead; and it is also because that, independently of these beneficial influences inherent to literary labor, I joy to think that this laborpleasure for some, pain for others, for me a duty,-will not be altogether lost for those to whom I owe the fruit of my meditations.

The effect produced by this appeal was instantaneous and general. By one class the politician was forgotten; to another he became the more tenderly endeared. The public with its whole heart responded to the suffering cry of its most profoundly sentimental and most ideal poet. Of all political parties, the one represented by the Journal des Débats had most reason for being angry with M. de Lamartine. For years before the fall of that monarchy whose steadfast supporter the Débats was, M. de Lamartine had stood aloof; and although he combined with no one section of the opposition, yet was his hostility the more telling because of its apparent freeness from personal aim or factious motive. He seemed to have risen in his purposed isolation to the height of supreme arbitrator and judge, and seldom did he mount the tribune except to pronounce condemnation upon a system with which he could have no sympathy. Although by birth, education, and family connexion attached to the Bourbons, whom he had served both in military and civil capacities, and under whom he would probably have risen to the highest employments in the state, yet did this lofty gentleman bend what were probably his secret aspirations to a sentiment which told him that another restoration was impossible. In ascribing to sentiment rather than to the cooler discernment of the understanding the conviction of M. de Lamartine on this head, we may seem to depress the politician; but who is there who needs to be told that sensibility as often leads to correct inferences, as the most rigid exercise of the reasoning faculties? The poet learned through his sympathies the true state of the popular feeling, which he reproduced under forms of

brilliant imagery the most seductive to the popular fancy. In another sense M. de Lamartine might have said, with the Roman philosopher, that he was never less alone than when alone; for when he sat apparently isolated in the Chamber, he commanded the widest extent of popular sympathy of any man in the House. While standing thus apart, he only offended one sect, whose high priest was M. Guizot, the immediate followers of whom affected an indifference of their single-handed antagonist hardly rising to disdain. The ministry of the day, like the royal master whom its members served, was of a positive character. They looked to number rather than quality so long as the majority remained faithful, they cared little for mere flights of eloquence, which their adherents listened to with languid inattention, as the melodious rhapsodies of a poet out of his proper place. But the day came when that isolated man was to decide the most tremendous question ever put to a human being. Louis Philippe had abdicated the crown in favour of his infant grandson. The Duchess of Orleans was at the bar of the Chamber of Deputies, waiting their assured sanction for assuming the regency. At a former period the question of regency itself had been before the parliament. It was when, after the death of the Duke of Orleans, the bereaved father with laudable prudence determined to provide a regency during the minority of the Comte de Paris, in case he himself should die before his grandson attained his age. The King named the Duc de Nemours, and when the bill came before the Chamber, it was opposed by one man. M. de Lamartine declared himself the champion of the Duchess of Orleans, whose better title he supported in a speech as masterly in argument as it was glowing in style. That he was right against the mighty majority, never more numerous than on the occasion in question, was proved in the most striking manner on that great emergency, when the provision broke down, and as a last hope, the Duke de Nemours, obliged to abdicate his own rights, led with his own hand his sister-in-law to the representatives of the nation to ask them to undo their own work. Where then was M.

de Lamartine?

Where was the ci-de

vant champion and advocate of that desolate lady? When he spoke for her, and spoke in vain, he stood almost alone. Now he appeared invested with a popularity which had burst upon his head with the splendor of sudden light. His voice was that of the country at large. His support was looked upon as certain, and of sure result. The republican party saw the danger to their hopes in case M. de Lamartine should declare once more for the regency of the Duchess of Orleans; and how great his temptation to do so! Events had proved him right, and to turn round against their decision would be to commit the grossest of inconsistencies, that of proving false to a confirmed prediction, and of stultifying an accomplished prophecy. The republican party provided itself with a temptation the most calculated to throw a man of warm impulses, vivid imagination, and deep pride into a dilemma, rendered sublime by the necessity of a prompt solution. They placed the republic at the other side of him, holding his Own "History of the Girondists" in her hand, and asking him would he have that history realised? Would he recall to life the spirit of the martyred Girondists ? Would he have the republic established, as Vergniaud would have made it before the Reign of Terror had prepared the way for a military despotism? Would he be Vergniaud? The deduction proved equal to the anticipation. M. de Lamartine gave his casting vote for the republic, and was rewarded-some would say, punished-with the post of minister for foreign affairs; that is to say, charged with the responsibility of making the new republic be accepted by the great powers of Europe; of raising armies for her defence if need be; or of letting loose invasion, should a coalition of sovereigns threaten the government; or, more difficult still, of calming effervescence within and creating confidence without; of making turbulent democracy amenable to the principles of public order. Was he right or not? We apprehend that if the question were put to the vote, not only in France, but any where else, the majority would be overwhelmingly in the negative; and yet we are not quite sure that the majority would be

right. Could, we would ask in the first place, M. de Lamartine have succeeded, however well disposed, in dissuading the republican leaders from their intention? Could they themselves, even if so inclined, have yielded to his persuasion ? They were in a degree self-constituted leaders of a tumultuous mass, ready in a moment to push the faltering aside, and put in their place some others more confident and daring. And then, may we not suspect that they who feigned to ask advice had their minds already made up; but that, partly to obtain high moral sanction for a resolution which, in any case, would have been followed out, and partly out of real deference towards an illustrious man, whose name would have proved of inappreciable advantage to their meditated adventure, they affected a hesitation through which the clear eye of M. de Lamartine pierced at once? A yet more powerful motive remains to be urged. The question put by the republican leaders did not lie between abandonment of their cherished notion of government, and acceptance of the regency of the Duchess of Orleans, with the honest and loyal intention of throwing no difficulties in the way of her rule during the minority of her son.

On the contrary, avowing their doubts only as to the prematureness of proclaiming a republic, for which the mind of the country was not ripe, they merely proposed a question of adjournment. Would they postpone the republic for some years, taking advantage in the meantime of an inevitable relaxation of authority to widen divisions, excite contempt and disgust, and wear down all remaining respect for royalty in the opinion of the country? To the mind of the least factious of politicians this must have appeared an odious game one stamped with party hypocrisy so transparent as to need the connivance of a whole people, and consequently to ensure their demoralization. Enough must have been revealed in such an interview, to convince M. de Lamartine that with the proclamation of the regency would have taken root an organised conspiracy, and that he himself stood so far committed as that he could hardly escape the rôle prepared to be imposed upon him—that of chief conspirator,

The position, then, amounted to this. Both branches of royalty had fallen. The return of the Bourbons was not to be entertained. As a desperate chance, the house of Orleans put forward a lady, the least compromised, the most innocent, one of the purest virtue, and of distinguished talents; but how could she conquer the settled estrangement of the nation? How dispute with a resolute, active party, as subtle as it was daring, and who would only agree to protract the fall of herself and her son, in order to render it the more overwhelming? We think there is enough in such considerations to acquit M. de Lamartine of those insinuations of levity and vanity, which have been put forward as the only motives for inducing him to pronounce for an immediate republic.

Our object is not to discuss the character and conduct of M. de Lamartine as a politician; much less to write a biographical sketch of his life. We mean to look at him in his present position of Homme de Lettres; but, in order to understand and appreciate that position in the greatness of moral beauty we shall show it to possess, we must needs accompany the Homme d'Etat of the republic a little farther. We must, in fact, measure his present mournful resignation and patient toil by a popularity as universal as was ever enjoyed by any man in this world, and, for a certain time at least, as well deserved.

The power of language as an instrument of government, had never been so conspicuously exhibited as during the period when M. de Lamartine was looked on as not only the minister for foreign affairs, but the living expression of the republic itself. He wrote a manifesto to foreign sovereigns, which, if it did not reassure their minds, did certainly accomplish the object of satisfying the French nation, who saw its own attitude athwart a blaze of words which dazzled its delighted senses. putation after deputation thronged to the Hotel de Ville, of workmen whose legitimate employment was suspended, and of refugees from all countries, tendering their country's alliance to the all-emancipating republic; and none went empty away. Their ears were filled with music, their souls elevated with hope; and for the moment

De

these enchanted beings thought not of what stern necessity was preparing in the back-ground. One day of terrible trial came. The red flag was planted in face of the tricolor, and behind that red flag loaded cannon. The eloquence which raised a pure light of heroic association about that tricoloured flag which had made the round of the world, showing it as a labarum inscribed with promise of future glory-the eloquence which appalled memory by an incantation that revived the scene in the Champs de Mars, where that red flag was trailed in the blood of the people that eloquence will stand for ever as a monument of eloquence itself. It was a speech, but it was an achievement. It was, to use a well-known phrase, a great fact. The orator had reached his apogee. The red flag, which subdued fanaticism lowered in shame, was taken up as it were surreptitiously by one who sat at the councilboard, and who aspired to become the head of the republic of which he was one of the provisional ministers. Conquered in open field, the red flag skulked into conspiracy. While secret clubs and savage factions were preparing to renew the reign of terror, and while they had their Danton and Robespierre in their eye, the country at large looked to Lamartine for preservation. He virtually held carte blanche on which to write any decree he thought necessary for the public safety. He might have assumed any position, provided he grap pled with one dangerous man.

It

was thought he would have done so. The trial day came. It was resolved to create a governing Direction of five. Lamartine supported Ledru Rollin, and placed him by his side. At that moment popularity fell from him who had been elected by ten departments of France, and whom no department would have rejected. Faith became lost in him as a man of action. We do not propose to discuss this question, even within the limited degree of suggestion which we opened in reference to that of the adoption of the republic in preference to an unstable regency. The deed could not have been effected without a bloody struggle; seeing which, M. de Lamartine preferred, no doubt, to trust still further to his well-proved ascendancy. The struggle nevertheless came, and

the direction passed into the hands of a worthy soldier. Still M. de Lamartine must have derived consolation from the fact that France was saved from anarchy by the fidelity of that young garde mobile, the formation of which he himself had decreed in a moment of "happy inspiration." Minister no longer, this gallant citizen shrunk not from peril: nay, in an agony of despair, he courted death at one barricade after another. His horse was shot under him, and for his better fame the man was spared, as if Providence, while allowing him to atone in the eyes of his fellow men for any errors he may have committed, resolved to make evident the unsuspected depth of real greatness that lay within his noble heart.

Homme de Lettres is a term for which, strictly speaking, we have no equivalent in our language. We might, to be sure, render it easily by a literal translation plain enough to mislead an ordinary reader by its apparent obviousness of meaning. We might write man of letters," or literary man," or " gentleman," and so relieve ourselves of the trouble of explanation; and yet we are forbidden to do so, by the associations which in a Frenchman's mind throng about what to him is a title of honor definite and distinct, while to us, in its English rendering, it is a vague mark of a taste, an inclination, or a pursuit -anything rather than a recognised profession implying honorable rank in society. In France the homme de lettres is a professional title, like that of barrister or surgeon. It is, according to the French mode of adding the title to the name, engraved upon the visiting card; wide nevertheless is the distance which separates the partner in the authorship of a two-act vaudeville from the accomplished novelist, the sublime poet, or the profound historian. The title still is the same for all. Fame and merit must settle the moral differences of rank in the republic of letters, by those delicate indications of respect which have their own nice laws, and which, while affording due satisfaction, inflict no comparative pain. Society admits the whole literary legion of honor, and then it is for the brightest star to exercise its supreme powers of attrac tion. There must arise, however, a certain vagueness about a title capa