the writings of Mesdames de Genlis, de Staël, d'Epinay, Campan, &c. represent a period which existed about 1789, before the Revolution. The Revolution has changed every thing in France; and yet we, as well as all the rest of Europe, persist in blinding ourselves to the alteration, and do not observe, or do not record, the influence which it has had on the opinions, the manners, and the moral habits of society, in that country. Europe sees always this society as it existed when the latest news was published about it; which is, in fact, forty years ago.

The old monarchy of Louis XV bequeathed to the French the corrupt manners of which Lauzun and Madame d'Epinay have left us pictures, so faithful and so true, and at the same time, now and then, so disgusting. With Louis XVI fell the monarchy-it was replaced by the reign of terror; and those women who had made such faithless wives, and dissipated mothers, knew how to die with heroism. Among the thousands of women of the highest ranks, and of the first society, who passed from the bosom of luxury, and pleasure of the most refined, and certainly not of a guiltless kind, to the scaffold, there was but one female, Madame du Barry, the old mistress of Louis XV, who did not die, like a martyr and a heroine. So far is it true, thanks to the national vanity in France, that courage is common to both sexes and to all classes in that country.

The women born under Louis XV, and who survived the terror, repaired again to society when security returned, after the 18th Brumaire (November, 1799), the commencement of the reign of Buonaparte. These females, without doubt, retained the moral habits of their youth-this youth, indeed, had gone -but the fine delicate tact, which distinguished their time, quickly perceived the change, and felt the propriety of a decorum, which, under the reign of the debonnair Louis XVI, and in the saloon of Madame la Duchesse de Polignac,* would have been thought excessively vulgar and ridiculous.

All the superior women born in France since 1788 have received au

early education, forte, sensible and judicious, and exceedingly opposed to that absurd and ridiculous system in vogue in the Abbaye de BelleChasse, and the other boardingschools a-la-mode at the close of the old monarchy. (See in the Memoirs of Madame Campan, a description of the education which was given to the Mesdames de France, the daughters of Louis XV, in one of these places.)

By virtue of the great events and the violent convulsions which preceded and followed the epoch of la terreur, all the girls of rank, and of the first society, had passed through a sufficiently rational and a very severe course of instruction,-when Napoleon, in 1804, brought prudery into fashion, and by his influence absolutely mounted her on the moral throne of France. Whatever had been the previous habits of the Empress Josephine-with whatever errors scandal has charged her daughter-in-law, and the sisters of Napoleon, this great man, desirous of procuring consideration for his nascent court, declared, with his will of iron, that it should be moral-and it was moral. The girls who were twelve years of age in 1804 have consequently been brought up under the domination of this unavoidable lawthat no young wife shall ever appear, any-where without being accompanied by her bushand.

The austere manners of the new reign were the exact contrary of the usages in vogue before the Revolution. A hundred monuments of the ancient monarchy prove the assertion, which out of France appears not a little extraordinary, and is scarcely believed. Call to mind the Philosophe Marie, and the Prejugé a-la-mode, comedies of Destouches; and still at this day, or at least the other day, when Louis XVIII received the ladies of his Court, they presented themselves in a manner now become strange in Paris, without their husbands, and in the grand dress of the ancient court, which exposes the neck in a manner grown unusual in France. The saloon of the King is the only place in the country where such a spectacle is to be found. For the last twenty years a young married woman has never been seen in any drawing-room in Paris, without your

fluence on the general manners of the people. A few duchesses, to be sure, have tried to square their virtue and their morals by the tradition of the court of Louis XVI, but public opinion has left them stranded. They are talked about, it is true; their names are quoted -but no longer as models of elegance or bon ton. The crowd of young women who have since entered on the world presented a barrier to the dissoluteness of the interior court of the late King and the Duchess de Berri, which it was very difficult to overthrow, in spite of the brilliant drawing-rooms to which the advocates of the old system could appeal-and in spite of the dulness which reigns in these said drawing-rooms at this present moment. In the most splendid saloons of Paris the women are most frequently abandoned to their own society and congregate in a corner, while the men sit apart discussing politics with each other, or playing at ecarté. Nothing is more

common than to see in the best society of France eight or ten handsome well-dressed young women sitting sadly in a heap, and now and then exchanging a cold monosyllable, and never for an instant attracting the attention of a man. So low are the mighty fallen, that unless evidence the most irresistible, and even physical evidence be resisted, we may pronounce that the favourite abode of that dæmon Ennui, which all Frenchmen are said to hate above all things, is to be found dans la haute société de France.

A large society of these poor neglected women, who have talents, hearts, and habitual belief, for they all learnt their catechism under Buonaparte, is a fine materiel for a new sect. They have imaginations, and they have the passions and feelings of twenty-five, that period so greedy of emotion which the prudery of the existing manners controls, and subdues, but at the expense of considerable weariness and disgust. Moreover, since 1820, the triumph of the priests, the knavery of the Jesuits of Montrouge and St. Acheul, who in a secret manner govern France, and a thousand petty sanctified rogueries and vexations, have disgusted the more generous souls with Papism. The priests have absolutely put the ladies of fashion out of love with their catechism. Behold the moment for

we

the establishment of a new sect! " My salon shall become celebrated through all Paris. I shall take the lead of something; at least, on parlera de moi." A gospel and a creed were only wanting. It does not take much to turn a French head. But, how establish a new religion in Paris, without being covered with ridicule? that ridicule which twenty-five years ago quenched the theophilanthropy of La Reveillere-Lépaux. A happy thought suggests itself; our friend Benjamin Constant is just going to publish his history of the religious sentiment-he shall be the St. Paul of the new church. His politics are on the wane: he will be enchanted to head a new school. He shall first prove to the world that the sentiment religieux must have a forme, that is, a form of worship; then, with that address and dexterity which well know enables him to say all, and make all understand, without getting laughed at, he shall show the vices of all the existing forms; then, when he shall have clearly convinced his readers that all the known forms are bad, he must stop ; then, at this moment I will open my salon; but all must be done gently and cautiously. Benjamin shall publish this work volume by volume; tread slowly, but surely; and like St. Paul the first in his Epistles to the Corinthians, take measure of their spiritual wants. If Madame de Staël had not been surprised by the sudden death which deprived the world, one may almost say, in the flower of her age, of a woman the most extraordinary that was ever produced; she who carried French conversation, and the brilliant art of improvisation on every subject that fell out, to the highest degree of perfection, would have declared herself the chief of the new religion. Being unable to dazzle by her beauty, and now no longer capable of shining by that amiability which supplied its place; disgusted at the want of that birth indispensable for making a distinguished appearance at the Court of a Bourbon,-Madame de Staël, at the moment of her death, was on the point of opening a rival salon in opposition to the Court. The standard of this salon would have unfolded to the astonished eyes of all Europe the word religion. The tricks of

Jesuits for the last few years would have rendered the success of such a salon more probable. For the last twenty-five or thirty years, Madame de Staël had demanded of Benjamin Constant, at that time her friend, a work on religion. This is the book, the first volume of which M. Benjamin Constant has just given to the world. Scandal says, that during this long space of thirty years, M. Benjamin Constant has changed three times his opinions on this important subject. When he commenced his work at Berlin, at that time being exalted by the German illumination, the character of Jesus Christ filled the work from one end to the other. Nay, we believe, that a special revelation of the person of the Redeemer was promised to the true believer. At present, it is with infinite difficulty that we can discover his name within the four corners of the book. In all probability, the work would never have appeared at all, had not the occasion, of which we have spoken above, created a new necessity for it. It is the text book, or it was intended to be, of the witty, handsome, seducing, young duchesses, who wish to have something to do; and pour se desennuyer are about to open a drawing-room, where their guests may converse on serious subjects, and take measures for the establishment of the new faith. It was thus that Madame Guyon, the friend of Fénélon, arrived at a name under Louis XIV. It is true, that was a fine time for raising a new sect, for then persecution was in vogue. The new religion will only be persecuted by ridicule.

M. Constant is, perhaps, the man in France who possesses in the greatest perfection the very difficult art of placing his opinions beyond the reach of ridicule. M. Constant gives us the history of all religions; but, in order to treat this tremendously long subject in four volumes, it was necessary not to write exactly the history of all religions, but the history of the religious sentiment, which is discussed in this work. Now, what is this religious sentiment? After the loss of the battle of Waterloo, Napoleon, discussing at the Palais de l'Elysée the different courses which were open to him, exclaimed, "Ah! if I were only my grandson, I would retire

upon the Pyrennees, and all France would rise for me.' What then is this charm, which would have led the French to slaughter for an insolent despot, because he could count a king or two among his ancestors? This singular sentiment is very easy to explain, although the grave Germans find it exceedingly mysterious; it is the effect of the imagination, the which is a piece of the organization of the man, just as is his eye or his hand. All men who are properly made have imaginations. At the end of every deluge, of every earthquake, or, even after a simple burst of thunder, this imagination has revealed to all people the existence of the Gods. This is what M. Constant calls the sentiment religieux.

Sixty years before the discoveries of Franklin, and the age of conductors, a tempest, accompanied by a considerable disengagement of electricity, and with a good many strokes of pretty loud thunder, roused in the greatest part of the European world the idea of the infinite and terrible power of God. At present, we see nothing more in thunder than an ordinary phenomenon, which we can explain with perfect ease. On this subject, M. Benjamin Constant says, Les croyances de tous les peuples se refugient au delà de la circonférence de leur connaissance. All this part of the book of M. Benjamin Constant is borrowed from M. le Marquis de la Place. This great man, in his Mecanique Celeste, has developed the truth which we have just glanced at with a strength and clearness of logic, which, to us, is far preferable to the pretty sentimental phrases of M. Constant. Perhaps it is for this reason that M. Constant has forgotten to mention the name of La Place.

We must, however, not forget that the apparent end of M. Constant is to give the history of the sentiment religieur, independent of the forms with which men have invested it. Constant explains cleverly enough the origin of these forms; that is to say, the origin of external worship. It is a wellknown fact, that the more a sentiment is sincere and violent in any human being, the more intolerant this being is of those men who do not feel as he does. The mere sight of a man who doubts of that which he believes, shakes more or less the steadfastness of his own belief, and