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dipped his pencil in the finest and most radiant hues of nature: with a skill surpassing even that of the Great Magician of the North, he depicts all the most splendid scenes of both hemispheres; and seizing with the inspiration of genius on the really characteristic features of the boundless variety of objects he has visited, brings them before us with a force and fidelity which it is impossible to surpass. After all, however, on rising from a perusal of the great works of these two authors, it is hard to say which has left the most indelible impression on the mind; for if the one has accumulated a store of brilliant pictures which have never yet been rivalled, the other has drawn from the objects on which she has touched all the most profound emotions which they could awaken; and if the first leaves a gorgeous scene painted on the mind, the latter has engraved a durable impression on the heart.

CORINNE is not to be regarded as a novel. Boarding-school girls, and youths just fledged from college, may admire it as such, and dwell with admiration on the sorrows of the heroine and the faithlessness of Lord Nelvil; but considered in that view it has glaring faults, both in respect of fancy, probability, and story, and will bear no comparison either with the great novels of Sir Walter Scott, or the secondary productions of his numerous imitators. The real view in which to regard it is as a picture of Italy; its inhabitants, feelings, and recollections; its cloudless skies and glassy seas; its forest-clad hills and sunny vales; its umbrageous groves and mouldering forms; its heart-inspiring ruins and deathless scenes. As such it is superior to any work on that subject which has appeared in any European language. Nowhere else shall we find so rich and glowing an intermixture of sentiment with description; of deep feeling for the beauty of art, with a correct perception of its leading principles; of historical lore with poetical fancy; of ardour in the cause of social amelioration, with charity to the individuals who, under unfortunate institutions, are chained to a life of indolence and pleasure. Beneath the glowing sun and azure skies of Italy she has imbibed the real modern Italian spirit: she exhibits in the mouth of her heroine all that devotion to art, that rapturous

regard to antiquity, that insouciance in ordinary life, and constant besoin of fresh excitement by which that remarkable people are distinguished from any other at present in Europe. She paints them as they really are; living on the recollection of the past, feeding on the glories of their double set of illustrious ancestors; at times exulting in the recollection of the legions which subdued the world, at others recurring with pride to the glorious though brief days of modern art; mingling the names of Cæsar, Pompey, Cicero, and Virgil with those of Michael Angelo, Raphael, Buonarotti, and Correggio; repeating with admiration the stanzas of Tasso as they glide through the deserted palaces of Venice, and storing their minds with the rich creations of Ariosto's fancy as they gaze on the stately monuments of Rome.

Not less vividly has she portrayed, in the language, feelings, and character of her heroine, the singular intermixture with these animating recollections of all the frivolity which has rendered impossible, without a fresh impregnation of northern vigour, the regeneration of Italian society. We see in her pages, as we witness in real life, talents the most commanding, beauty the most fascinating, graces the most captivating, devoted to no other object but the excitement of a transient passion; infidelity itself subjected to certain restraints, and boasting of its fidelity to one attachment; whole classes of society incessantly occupied with no other object but the gratification of vanity, the thraldom of attachment, or the imperious demands of beauty, and the strongest propensity of cultivated life, the besoin d'aimer, influencing, for the best part of their lives, the higher classes of both sexes. In such representation there would probably be nothing in the hands of an ordinary writer but frivolous or possibly pernicious details; but by Madame de Staël it is touched on so gently, so strongly intermingled with sentiment, and traced so naturally to its ultimate and disastrous effects, that the picture becomes not merely characteristic of manners, but purifying in its tendency.

The DIX ANNEES D'EXIL, though abounding with fewer splendid and enchanting passages, is written in a higher strain, and devoted to more elevated objects than the Italian novel. exhibits the Imperial Government of

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Napoleon in the high and palmy days of his greatness; when all the Continent had bowed the neck to his power, and from the rock of Gibraltar to the Frozen Ocean, not a voice dared to be lifted against his commands. It shows the internal tyranny and vexations of this formidable power; its despicable jealousies and contemptible vanity; its odious restrictions and tyrannizing tendency. We see the censorship chaining the human mind to the night of the tenth in the opening of the nineteenth century; the commands of the police fettering every effort of independent thought and free discussion; forty millions of men slavishly following the car of a victor, who, in exchange for all the advantages of freedom, hoped but never obtained from the Revolution, dazzled them with the glitter only of gilded chains. In her subsequent migrations through Tyrol, Poland, Russia, and Sweden, to avoid his persecution during the years which preceded the Russian war, we have the noblest picture of the elevated feelings which, during this period of general oppression, were rising up in the nations which yet preserved a shadow of independence, as well as of the heroic stand made by Alexander and his brave subjects against the memorable invasion which ultimately proved their oppressor's ruin. These are animating themes; and though not in general inclined to dwell on description, or enrich her work with picturesque narrative, the scenery of the north had wakened profound emotions in her heart which appear in many touches and reflections of no ordinary sublimity.

Chateaubriand addresses himself much more habitually and systematically to the eye. He paints what he has seen, whether in nature, society, manners, or art, with the graphic skill of a consummate draughtsman; and produces the emotion he is desirous of awakening not by direct words calculated to arouse it, but by enabling the imagination to depict to itself the objects which in nature, by their felicitous combination, produced the impression, Madame de Staël does not paint the features of the scene, but in a few words she portrays the emotion which she experienced on beholding it, and contrives by these few words to awaken it in her readers; Chateaubriand enumerates with a painter's power all the features of the scene, and by the vivid

ness of description succeeds not merely in painting it on the retina of the mind, but in awakening there the precise emotion which he himself felt on beholding it. The one speaks to the heart through the eye, the other to the eye through the heart. As we travel with the illustrious pilgrim of the Revolution, we see rising before us in successive clearness the lonely temples, and glittering valleys, and storied capes of Greece; the desert plains and rocky ridges and sepulchral hollows of Judea; the solitary palms and stately monuments of Egypt; the isolated remains of Carthage, the deep solitudes of America, the sounding cataracts, and still lakes, and boundless forests of the New World. Not less vivid is his description of human scenes and actions, of which, during his eventful career, he has seen such an extraordinary variety; the Janissary, the Tartar, the Turk; the Bedouins of the desert places, the Numidians of the torrid zone; the cruel revolutionists of France; the independent savages of America; the ardent mind of Napoleon, the dauntless intrepidity of Pitt. Nothing can exceed the variety and brilliancy of the pictures which he leaves engraven on the imagination of his reader; but he has neither touched the heart nor convinced the judgment like the profound hand of his female rival.

To illustrate these observations we have selected two of the most brilliant descriptions from Chateaubriand's Genie de Christianisme, and placed beside these two of the most inspired of Madame de Staël's Passages on Roman Scenery. We shall subjoin two of the most admirable descriptions by Sir Walter Scott, that the reader may at once have presented to his view the masterpieces, in the descriptive line, of the three greatest authors of the age. All the passages are translated by ourselves; we have neither translations at hand, nor inclination to mar so much eloquence by the slovenly dress in which it usually appears in an English version. The same plan shall be adopted in all the following numbers of this series.

"There is a God! The herbs of the valley, the cedars of the mountain, bless him the insect sports in his beams-the elephant salutes him with the rising orb of day-the bird sings him in the foliage the thunder proclaims him in the hea

vens the ocean declares his immensityman alone has said, 'There is no God!'

"Unite in thought, at the same instant, the most beautiful objects in nature; suppose that you see at once all the hours of the day, and all the seasons of the year; a morning of spring and a morning of autumn; a night bespangled with stars, and a night covered with clouds; meadows enamelled with flowers, forests hoary with snow; fields gilded by the tints of autumn; then alone you will have a just conception of the universe. While

you are gazing on that sun which is plunging under the vault of the west, another observer admires him emerging from the gilded gates of the east. By what unconceivable magic does that aged star, which is sinking fatigued and burning in the shades of the evening, reappear at the same instant fresh and humid with the rosy dew of the morning? At every instant of the day the glorious orb is at once rising resplendent at noonday, and setting in the west; or rather our senses deceive us, and there is, properly speaking, no east, or south, or west, in the world. Every thing reduces itself to one single point, from whence the King of Day sends forth at once a triple light in one single substance. The bright splendour is perhaps that which nature can present that is most beautiful; for while it gives us an idea of the perpetual magnificence and resistless power of God, it exhibits, at the same time, a shining image of the glorious Trinity."

Human eloquence probably cannot, in description, go beyond this inimitable passage; but it is equalled in the pictures left us by the same author of two scenes in the New World.

"One evening, when it was a profound calm, we were sailing through those lovely seas which bathe the coast of Virginia, -all the sails were furled-I was occupied below when I heard the bell which called the mariners upon deck to prayers

I hastened to join my orisons to those of the rest of the crew. The officers were on the forecastle, with the passengers; the priest, with his prayer-book in his hand, stood a little in advance; the sailors were scattered here and there on the deck; we were all above, with our faces turned towards the prow of the vessel, which looked to the west.

"The globe of the sun, ready to plunge into the waves, appeared between the ropes of the vessel in the midst of boundless space. You would have imagined, from the balancing of the poop, that the glorious luminary changed at every in

stant its horizon. A few light clouds were scattered without order in the east, where the moon was slowly ascending; all the rest of the sky was unclouded. Towards the north, forming a glorious triangle with the star of day and that of night, a glittering cloud arose from the sea, resplendent with the colours of the prism, like a crystal pile supporting the vault of heaven.

"He is much to be pitied who could have witnessed this scene, without feeling the beauty of God. Tears involuntarily flowed from my eyes, when my companions, taking off their hats, began to sing, in their hoarse strains, the simple hymn of Our Lady of Succour. How touching was that prayer of men, who, on a fragile plank, in the midst of the ocean, contemplated the sun setting in the midst of the waves! How that simple invocation of the mariners to the mother of woes, went to the heart! The consciousness of our littleness in the sight of Infinity our chants prolonged afar over the waves-night approaching with its sable wings a whole crew of a vessel filled with admiration and a holy fear-God bending over the abyss, with one hand retaining the sun at the gates of the west, with the other raising the moon in the east, and yet lending an attentive ear to the voice of prayer ascending from a speck in the immensity-all combined to form an assemblage which cannot be described, and of which the human heart could hardly bear the weight.

"The scene at land was not less ravishing. One evening I had lost my way in a forest, at a short distance from the Falls of Niagara. Soon the day expired around me, and I tasted, in all its solitude, the lovely spectacle of a night in the deserts of the New World.

"An hour after sunset the moon showed itself above the branches, on the opposite side of the horizon. An embalmed breeze, which the Queen of Night seemed to bring with her from the East, preceded her with its freshening gales. The solitary star ascended by degrees in the heavens; sometimes she followed peaceably her azure course, sometimes she reposed on the groups of clouds, which resembled the summits of lofty mountains covered with snow. These clouds, opening and closing their sails, now spread themselves out in transparent zones of white satin, now dispersed into light bubbles of foam, or formed in the heavens bars of white so dazzling and sweet, that you could almost believe you felt their snowy surface.

"The scene on the earth was of equal beauty; the declining day, and the light

ness.

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of the moon, descended into the intervals of the trees, and spread a faint gleam even in the profoundest part of the darkThe river which flowed at my feet, alternately lost itself in the woods, and reappeared brilliant with the constellations of night which reposed on its bosom. In a savanna on the other side of the river, the moonbeams slept without movement on the verdant turf. few birches, agitated by the breeze, and dispersed here and there, formed isles of floating shadow on that motionless sea of light. All would have been in profound repose, but for the fall of a few leaves, the breath of a transient breeze, and the moaning of the owl; while, in the distance, at intervals the deep roar of Niagara was heard, which, prolonged from desert to desert in the calm of the night, expired at length in the endless solitude of the forest.

"The grandeur, the surpassing melancholy of that scene, can be expressed by no human tongue-the finest nights of Europe can give no conception of it. In vain, amidst our cultivated fields, does the imagination seek to expand-it meets on all sides the habitations of men; but in those savage regions the soul loves to shroud itself in the ocean of forests, to hang over the gulf of cataracts, to meditate on the shores of lakes and rivers, and feel itself alone as it were with God.

Præsentiorem conspicimus Deum,
Fera per juga, clivosque præruptos,
Sonantes inter aquas nemorumque noctem.'"

We doubt if any passages ever were written of more thrilling descriptive eloquence than these; hereafter we shall contrast them with some of the finest of Lamartine, which have equalled but not exceeded them. But now mark the different style with which Madame de Staël treats the heart-stirring monuments of Roman greatness.

"At this moment St Peter arose to their view; the greatest edifice which man has ever raised, for the Pyramids themselves are of less considerable elevation. I would perhaps have done better, said Corinne, to have taken you to the most beautiful of our edifices last; but that is not my system. I am convinced that, to render one alive to the charm of the fine arts, we should commence with those objects which awaken a lively and profound admiration. When once that sentiment has been experienced, a new sphere of ideas is awakened, which renders us susceptible of the impression produced by beauties of an inferior order; they revive, though in a lesser degree,

the first impression which has been received. All these gradations in produeing emotion are contrary to my opinion; you do not arrive at the sublime by successive steps; infinite degrees separate it from the beautiful.

"Oswald experienced an extraordinary emotion on arriving in front of the façade of St Peter's. It was the first occasion on which a work of human hands produced on him the effects of one of the marvels of nature. It is the only effort of human industry which has the grandeur which characterizes the immediate works of the Creator. Corinne rejoiced in the astonishment of Oswald. I have chosen,' said she, a day when the sun was shining in all its eclat to behold this monument. I reserve for you a more secret, religious enjoyment, to contemplate it by the light of the moon; but at this moment it was necessary to obtain your presence at the most brilliant of our fêtes, the genius of man decorated by the magnificence of nature.

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"The Place of St Peter is surrounded by columns, which appear light at a distance, but massy when seen near. The earth, which rises gently to the gate of the church, adds to the effect it produces. An obelisk of eighty feet in height, which appears as nothing in presence of the cupola of St Peter's, is in the middle of the place. The form of obelisks has something in it which is singularly pleasing to the imagination; their summit loses itself in the clouds, and seems even to elevate to the Heavens a great thought of man. That monument, which was brought from Egypt to adorn the baths of Caracalla, and which Sextus V. subsequently transported to the foot of the Temple of St Peter; that contemporary of so many ages which have sought in vain to decay its solid frame, inspires respect; man feels himself so fleeting, that he always experiences emotion in presence of that which has passed unchanged through many ages. At a little distance, on each side of the obelisk, are two fountains, the waters of which perpetually are projected up and fall down in cascades through the air. That murmur of waters, which is usually heard only in the field, produces in such a situation a new sensation; but one in harmony with that which arises from the aspect of so majestic a temple.

"Painting or sculpture, imitating in general the human figure, or some object in external nature, awaken in our minds distinct and positive ideas; but a beautiful monument of architecture has not any determinate expression, and the spectator is seized, on contemplating it, with that reverie, without any definite object, which

leads the thoughts so far off. The sound of the waters adds to these vague and profound impressions; it is uniform, as the edifice is regular.

'Eternal movement and eternal repose'

are thus brought to combine with each other. It is here, in an especial manner, that Time is without power; it never dries up those sparkling streams; it never shakes those immovable pillars. The waters, which spring up in fan-like luxuriance from these fountains, are so light and so vapoury, that, in a fine day, the rays of the sun produce little rainbows of the most beautiful colour.

"Stop a moment here, said Corinne to Lord Nelvil, as he stood under the portico of the church; pause before drawing aside the curtain which covers the entrance of the Temple. Does not your heart beat at the threshold of that sanctuary? Do you not feel, on entering it, the emotion consequent on a solemn event? At these words Corinne herself drew aside the curtain, and held it so as to let Lord Nelvil enter. Her attitude was so beautiful in doing so, that for a moment it withdrew the eyes of her lover even from the majestic interior of the Temple. But as he advanced, its greatness burst upon his mind, and the impression which he received under its lofty arches was so profound, that the sentiment of love was for a time effaced. He walked slowly beside Corinne ; both were silent. Every thing enjoined contemplation; the slightest sound resounded so far, that no word appeared worthy of being repeated in those eternal mansions. Prayer alone, the voice of misfortune was heard at

intervals in their vast vaults. And, when under those stupendous domes, you hear

from afar the voice of an old man, whose trembling steps totter along those beautiful marbles, watered with so many tears,

you feel that man is rendered more digni

fied by that very infirmity of his nature which exposes his divine spirit to so many kinds of suffering, and that Christianity, the worship of grief, contains the true secret of man's sojourn upon earth.

"Corinne interrupted the reverie of Oswald, and said to him, You have seen the Gothic churches of England and Germany, and must have observed that they are distinguished by a much more sombre character than this cathedral. There is something mystical in the Catholicism of these Northern people; ours speaks to the imagination by exterior objects. Michael Angelo said, on beholding the cupola of the Pantheon, "I will place it in the air;" and, in truth, St Peter's is a temple raised on the base

ment of a church. There is a certain alliance of the ancient worship with Christianity in the effect which the interior of that church produces: I often go to walk here alone, in order to restore to my mind the tranquillity it may have lost. The sight of such a monument is like a continual and fixed music, awaiting you to pour its balm into your mind, whenever you approach it; and certainly, among the many titles of this nation to glory, we must number the patience, courage, and disinterestedness of the chiefs of the church, who consecrated, during an hundred and fifty years, such vast treasures and boundless labour to the prosecution of a work, of which none of them could hope to enjoy the fruits.'"-Corinne, vol. i. c. 3.

In this magnificent passage, the words underlined are an obvious blemish. The idea of Oswald turning aside at the entrance of St Peter's from the gaze of the matchless interior of the temple, a spectacle unique in the world, to feast his eye by admiration of his inamorata, is more than we, in the frigid latitudes of the north, can altogether understand. But Madame de Staël was a woman, and a Frenchwoman; and apparently she could not resist the opportunity of signalizing the triumph of her sex, by portraying the superiority of female beauty to the grandest and most imposing object that the hands of man have ever reared. Abstracting from this feminine weakness, the passage is one of almost uniform beauty, and well illustrates the peculiar descriptive style of the author; not painting objects, but touching the chords which cause emotions to vibrate. She has unconsciously characterized her own style, as compared with that of Chateaubriand, in describing the different characters of the cathedrals of the North and South." There is something mystical in the Catholicism of the Northern people; ours speaks to the imagination by exterior objects."

As another specimen of Madame de Staël's descriptive powers, take her Picture of the Appian Way, with its long lines of tombs on either side, on the southern quarter of Rome.

"She conducted Lord Nelvil beyond the gates of the city, on the ancient traces of the Appian Way. These traces are marked in the middle of the Campagna of Rome by tombs, on the right and left

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