Volume I Part 21 (2/2)

'”La harpe tremble encore, et la flute soupire”

'Sometimes we doubt this, and think the music has finally ceased, so sultry still lies the air around us, or only disturbed by the fife and druround of social life The ear grows dull

'”Faith asks her daily bread, And Fancy is no longer fed”

'So materialistic is the course of common life, that we _ask daily_ new Messiahs from literature and art, to turn us from the Pharisaic observance of law, to the baptism of spirit But stars arise upon our murky sky, and the flute _soupire_ from the quarter where we least expect it

'_La jeune France_! I had not believed in this youthful pretender I thought she had no pure blood in her veins, no aristocratic features in her face, no natural grace in her gait I thought her an illegitiant youth of Ger hospital, as not worth a parent's care, and that now, grown up, she was trying to prove at once her parentage and her charht be headed, Innocent Adultery, Celestial Crio, and coht Chateaubriand (far too French for er and Courier stood apart Nodier, Paul de kock, Sue, Jules Janin, I did not know, except through the absurd reports of English reviewers; Le Maistre and Laalaxy I begin to divine theof St Simonianism, Cousinism, and the movement which the same causes have produced in belles-lettres I perceive that _la jeune France_ is the legitiht by her, but not born of her, but of a coin to see, what she has learned froland, and what the bloody rain of the revolution has done to fertilize her soil, naturally too light

'Blessed be the early days when I sat at the feet of Rousseau, prophet sad and stately as any of Jewry! Every onward e, every doard step into the solemn depths of my own soul, recalls thy oracles, O Jean Jacques! But as these things only glimmer upon me at present, clouds of rose and alade, which I et a fair look at theet the works of these alorking geniuses, but by slow degrees, in a country that has no heed of them till her railroads and canals are finished,--I need not jot down my petty impressions of thethem, aided, honored by them, but not of them He is to _la jeune France_ rather the herald of a tourney, or the master of ceremonies at a patriotic festival, than a warrior for her battles, or an advocate to win her cause

'The works of M de Vigny having coh this thick volume

'I read, a year since, in the London and Westminster, an admirable sketch of Armand Carrel The writer speaks particularly of the use of which Carrel's experience of practical life had been to him as an author; how it had tempered and sharpened the blade of his intellect to the Dah not in equal degree

'De Vigny _passed_,--but for manly steadfastness, he would probably say _wasted_,--his best years in the army He is now about forty; and we have in this book the flower of these best years It is a night-bloo Cereus, for his days were passed in the duties of his profession These duties, so tiresoround in which the seed sprang up, which produced these ht-flowers

'The first portion of this volume, _Servitude et Grandeurs Militaires_, contains an account of the way in which he received his false tendency Cherished on the ”wounded knees” of his aged father, he listened to tales of the great Frederic, whom the veteran had known personally After an excellent sketch of the king, he says: ”I expatiate here, alreat man whose portrait was thus drawn for me at home,--a portrait after nature,--and because my admiration of him was the first symptom of my useless love of arms,--the first cause of one of the reat king reestures seeiarist

'At the military school, ”the drum stifled the voices of our masters, and the mysterious voices of books seearithion of Honor,--the fairest star of heaven to us children”

'”No iddy by the noise of cannon and bells for the _Te Deum_ When one of our former comrades returned to pay us a visit in uniform, and his arm in a scarf, we blushed at our books, and threw them at the heads of our teachers Our teachers were always reading us bulletins frorande armee_, and our cries of _Vive l'Empereur_ interrupted Tacitus and Plato Our preceptors resembled heralds of arms, our study halls barracks, and our examinations reviews”

'Thus was he led into the army; and, he says, ”It was only very late, that I perceived thatether active, a nature altogether contemplative”

'He entered the army at the time of Napoleon's fall, and, like others, wasted life in waiting for war For these young persons could not believe that peace and calm were possible to France; could not believe that she could lead any life but one of conquest

'As De Vigny was gradually undeceived, he says: ”Loaded with an ennui which I did not dream of in a life I had so ardently desired, it becaht from the vain and tiresohts, in which I enlarged in silence the knowledge I had acquired from our public and tumultuous studies, proceeded my poems and books From these days, there remain to me these recollections, whose chief traits I here asselory of arht it in the souvenirs of my comrades My own little adventures will not serve, except as frame to those pictures of the military life, and of the manners of our armies, all whose traits are by no s up, in the most natural manner, this little book on the army

'It has the truth, the delicacy, and the healthiness of a production native to the soil; the merit of love-letters, journals, lyric poe life into a book, but because the writer could not help it What, ny, was the false position of two beings towards a factitious society: the soldier, now that standing arames or pastimes are not the mode He has treated the first best, because with profounder _connoissance du fait_ For De Vigny is not a poet; he has only an eye to perceive the existence of these birds of heaven But in feays, except their own broken harp-tone's thrill, have their peculiar sorrows and difficulties been so well illustrated The character of the soldier, with its virtues and faults, is portrayed with such delicacy, that to condense would ruin The peculiar reserve, the habit of duty, the beauty of a character which cannot look forward, and need not look back, are given with distinguished finesse

'Of the three stories which adorn this part of the book, _Le Cachet Rouge_ is the loveliest, _La Canne au Jonc_ the noblest Never was anything e_ _La pauvre petite femme_, she was just such a person as my ---- And then the farewell injunctions,--_du pauvre petite mare_,--the nobleness and the coarseness of the poor captain It is as original as beautiful, _c'est dire beaucoup_ In _La Canne au Jonc_, Collingwood, who e of duty, is taken too raw out of a book,--his letters to his daughters But the effect on the character of _le Capitaine Renaud_, and the unfolding of his interior life, are done with the spiritual beauty of Manzoni

'_Cinq-Mars_ is a roht out, figures in good relief, lights well distributed, sentiood and bad of human nature painted with that impartiality which becoht, no failure anywhere; also, no wonderful success, no genius, no ic It is one of those works which I should consider only excusable as the ah few could write it, chiefly valuable to the writer

'Here he has arranged, as in a bouquet, what he knew,--and a great deal it is,--of the tiency in ”La Marechale d'Ancre,”--a ed and finished ai is better than anything I have seen in Victor Hugo, and as good as Schiller Stello is a bolder attempt It is the history of three poets,--Gilbert, Andre Chenier, Chatterton He has also written a drama called Chatterton, inferior to the story here The ”ination ht, these productions are worthless; for taste, beauty of sentiment, and power of description, remarkable His advocacy of the poets' cause is about as effective and well-planned as Don Quixote's tourney with the wind-ny?--from a joint-stock company Poet's Fund, or how?

'His translation of Othello, which I glanced at, is good for a Frenchate, La Serieuse, Madame de Soubise, and Dolorida, please iac sweetness and finish, which are rare It also em of a cabinet picture Soive you at once the key-note of the situation, as this:--