Chapter II (3)

His chapter on _Melancholy_ is one of the most interesting. Melancholy had only lately come into fashion, and he exerted himself to inquire into the source of this seductive sentiment, the sweetest and most cherished poison of the soul. He to some extent recognised the danger of it, for the word _voluptuous_ occurs several times under his pen: "I do not know," he wrote, "to what physical law the philosopher may attribute the sensations of melancholy. For my part I think that they are the most voluptuous impressions of the soul." That is very finely expressed and very true. Further on, apropos of people who try by artificial means to give themselves sensations of melancholy, he writes: "Our voluptuaries have artificial ruins erected in their gardens.... The tomb has supplied to the poetry of Young and Gessner pictures full of charm; therefore our voluptuaries have imitation tombs put up in their gardens." He is himself "a voluptuary" when he solaces his woes, by abandoning himself to the melancholy which bad weather creates in him. "It seems to me at such times that nature conforms to my situation like a tender friend. She is, besides, always so interesting under whatever aspect she reveals herself, that when it rains I seem to see a beautiful woman in tears, all the more beautiful the more she is distressed. In order to experience these sentiments, which I dare to call voluptuous, we must have no plans for going out, or paying visits, or hunting, or travelling, which always put us into a bad temper, because we are thwarted; ... to enjoy bad weather it is necessary that our soul should travel, our body stay quiet."

We have in these lines a great science of melancholy, given to us by a refined "voluptuary" who understands how to give to agreeable sensations their maximum of enjoyment. One is quite taken in to find directly after a series of pretentious articles in the manner of the day, in which Bernardin de Saint-Pierre explains the _pleasure of the grave_ by the sentiment of the immortality of the soul, and _the pleasure of decay_ by that of the infinity of time. I notice in it, however, an effort to interest the reader in the real and native gothic ruins, which might be called daring, at that time of mania for filling one's garden with Greek and Roman erections, imitation temples, imitation tombs, imitation columns, and imitation ruins, ornamented with allegorical emblems and sentimental inscriptions. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre did not oppose this classical bric-à-brac which pleased him only too well, but he possessed to a greater extent than his contemporaries the sense of the picturesque, which bore fruit in some romantic scenes like the description of the Château of Lillebonne.

The château is perched on a height commanding a valley. "The high walls which surround it are rounded off at the corners, and so covered with ivy that there are but few points from which one can mark their course. About the middle of their length, where I should think it would not be easy to penetrate, rise high battlemented towers, upon the tops of which grow big trees, having the appearance of a thick head of hair. Here and there through the carpet of ivy which covers their sides, are gothic windows, embrasures and gaps resembling mouths of caverns, through which one can see the stairs. The only birds to be seen flying round this desolate habitation are buzzards, which hover about in silence; and if occasionally the cry of a bird is heard, it is sure to be an owl whose nest is there.... When I remember at sight of this stronghold, that it was formerly inhabited by petty tyrants who from there used to plunder their unlucky vassals and even travellers, I seem to see the carcass of some great beast of prey." This conclusion is from a man who, in default of an historical sense, has at least an historical imagination.

_Love_ inspires him with a charming page on the expansion of every living thing during the love-season. The plant opens its flowers, the bird puts on his most beautiful plumage, the wild beasts fill the forests with their roaring, and the soul of the young man "receives its full expansion." His soul also opens its flowers and exhales its perfume of generosity, candour, heroism, and holy faith, and love adorns it with wondrous graces which take the form of "all the characteristics of virtue." It is a dazzling metamorphosis, and it is in some sort a disguise, for the virtues, which are only a transformation of love, run great danger of evaporating with the age of love, like the parade dress of certain birds in the Indies, which are only lent by nature during the pairing season. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre remarks that certainly young men have some modesty, and that "most of our old men have none at all, because they have lost the feeling of love." Honour to the sentiment which thus raises us above ourselves! It is a great thing to have felt certain things once in our lives.

Admiration is another of the moral laws by which nature, left to herself, governs the earth. The author adds to it the _pleasures of ignorance_, which he declares to be incomparable. Ignorance is the supreme blessing from Heaven, the masterpiece of nature, "the never-failing source of our pleasures." We owe to it the exquisite enjoyments of mystery. It takes away all our ills, and embellishes the good things of this life with illusion, upholds the poetry of the world against science. "It is science which has hurled the chaste Diana from her nocturnal chariot; has banished the wood-nymphs from our ancient forests and the sweet naiads from our fountains. Ignorance invited the gods to share in its joys, its sorrows, its hymeneal festivities, and its funeral rites: science sees nothing there but the elements. It has abandoned man to man, and thrown him upon the earth as into a desert." Every epoch which repudiates the supernatural will recognize itself in this _man abandoned to man_, and feeling that he is in a desert.

It would have been best to stop there, glorifying ignorance on poetical grounds only. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre spoilt everything by insisting on the misdeeds of science. He wished to profit by the occasion to crush his enemies the Academicians, men with systems, who never appeared to take his theories seriously, and he gravely affirms that ignorance is the only preservative against the errors into which the "so-called human sciences" plunge us. When one knows nothing, one is sure to know no nonsense. Let it be said in passing that the scientific works of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre confirm this maxim; for if he had not learnt geometry, he would not have said such absurd things as we shall see presently, and which covered him with ridicule in the eyes of the scholars of his day. But he did not think of himself in celebrating the advantages of perfect ignorance; in such a case one never does think of oneself.

After the preceding, one does not expect study to hold a great place in the plan of education which crowns the _Études de la Nature_, the object of which is to expel all evil sentiments from the hearts of the French people. To begin with, Saint-Pierre abolishes learning from the education of women, of whom he only purposes to make housekeepers and mistresses. Love is their only end upon earth, the sole reason of their existence, and experience has proved that learning does not help them in this: "Those who have been learned, have almost all been unhappy in love, from Sappho to Christina, Queen of Sweden." It is not with theology and philosophy that they gain a man's affection, it is by all their feminine seductions, and it is with cookery that they keep it. "A man does not like to find a rival or an instructor in his wife." A husband likes good pastry when he is well, and good herb-tea when he is ill. He likes his coffee to be good, preserves in which "the juice is as clear as the flash of a ruby," flowers preserved in sugar which "display more brilliant colours than the amethyst in the rocks of Golconda." He likes his dining-room to be well lighted, the fishing expedition well organized. Look at Cleopatra: it was with her talents as mistress of the house that she subjugated Antony, and made him forget "the virtuous Octavia, who was as beautiful as the Queen of Egypt, but who as a Roman dame had neglected all the homely womanly arts, to occupy herself with affairs of state." Let us beware of turning our daughters into Octavias. They are to have no books; the best are of no use to them. No theatres. Give them a dancing master, a singing master, let them learn needlework and the science of housekeeping; nothing more is necessary to a young girl in the interest of her own happiness. It is thus that united families are prepared, where contentment engenders goodness and makes virtue easy.[21]

Boys are to leave classical studies alone, as they only delay at a dead loss their entry into life. Seven years of humanities, two of philosophy, three of theology; twelve years of weariness, ambition, and self-conceit.... "I ask if, after going through that, a schoolboy, following the denominations of these same studies, is more human, more philosophical, and believes more in God than a good peasant who does not know how to read? Of what use is it all to most men?" A boy ought to have finished his studies and begun a trade at sixteen. Up to then he is to study according to a programme which has made good its way in the world since, and for which Bernardin de Saint-Pierre merits a second time the title of pioneer. These boys were to learn nothing but useful things--arithmetic, geometry, physics, mechanics, agriculture, the art of making bread and weaving cloth, how to build a house and decorate it. A very careful civil education. It is generally forgotten that Bernardin de Saint-Pierre is the inventor of school-drill. It was one of his favourite ideas; he even wished the little school-boys to undertake the grand manoeuvres.

"During the summer, when the harvest is gathered in, towards the beginning of September, I should take them into the country in battalions, divided under several flags. I should give them a picture of war. I should let them sleep on the grass in the shadow of the woods, where they should prepare their food themselves, and learn to defend and attack a post, swim a river, exercise themselves in the use of firearms, and at the same time in manoeuvres taken from the tactics of the Greeks, who are our superiors in almost everything."

A little Greek and Latin they might learn during their last years at school, but taught "by use," without grammar; lessons learnt by heart, or written exercises; a little law, something of politics, some ideas upon the history of religion; but no abstract speculations or researches, even in science.

One did not expect to meet so utilitarian a Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. In a hundred years we have not got beyond him, and yet we know whether our generation prides itself upon its contempt of the schools or not. The wonder is that he found means to retain his Louis XVI. sentimentalism in spite of this overflow of practical ideas. He corrected with one stroke of his pen the dryness of his programme. Everything which was to be taught in his _Écoles de la Patrie_--orthography, ethics, arithmetic, baking--all, without exception, were to be "put into verse and set to music." Out of school-hours the pupils were to be commanded by "the sound of flutes, hautbois, and bagpipes." Here we find ourselves again in the land of Utopia, and we recognise our Bernardin.

The schemes of political and social reforms which fill the last two volumes of the _Études de la Nature_ are full of this curious mixture of a practical mind with a romantic imagination. Saint-Pierre is a democrat, and rather an advanced one for the day for which he was writing. He works with all his might to disturb the existing state of things, and the end is always simply a dream. You have the impression that in his regenerated state the most serious questions would be "put into verse and set to music," like the course of geometry in his model school. He asks for the suppression of large estates and great capitalists, monopolies, privileged companies, the rights of taxation. He proposes several means of putting down the nobility, whose existence would not fail in the long run to bring about the downfall and ruin of the State. He demands energetically the confiscation of the property of the clergy for the good of the poor. He wishes to replace hospitals with home nursing, by which the families of the sick persons would benefit; to ameliorate prison regime and madhouses, to secure pensions to aged workmen, and to construct in Paris edifices large enough to admit of fêtes for the people being held there. All at once he interrupts himself in these grave subjects to describe an _Elysium_ of his invention, which will be like the visible epitome of the happy metamorphosis of France.

His Elysium is situated at Neuilly, in the island of the Grande-yatte, enlarged by the small arm of the Seine and a bit of the shore. It is encumbered with all that the eighteenth century could invent in the way of symbols, allegories, emblems, touching combinations, and instructive conjunctions. There are nothing but obelisques, peristyles, tombs, pyramids, temples, urns, altars, trophies, busts, bas-reliefs, medallions, statues, domes, columns and colonnades, epitaphs, mottoes, maxims, complicated bowers, and "enchanted groves." There is not an object of art in it which has not a moral signification; not a pebble or blade of grass which does not give the passer-by a lesson in virtue or gratitude. Thus, for example, upon a rock placed in the midst of a tuft of strawberry-plants from Chili, one reads these words:--

"_I was unknown in Europe; but in such a year, such a one, born in such a place, transplanted me from the high mountains of Chili; and now I bear flowers and fruit in the pleasant climate of France._"

Under a bas-relief of coloured marble, representing small children eating, drinking, and enjoying themselves, one would read this inscription:--

"_We were exposed in the streets, to the dogs, to hunger and cold; such a one, from such a place, lodged us, clothed us, and gave us the milk refused to us by our mothers._"

At the foot of a statue, in white marble, of a young and beautiful woman, seated, and wiping her eyes with symptoms of sadness and joy:--

"_I was hateful in the sight of Heaven and before men; but, touched with repentance, I appeased Heaven with my tears; and I have repaired the evil which I did to men, by serving the sorrowful._"

Not far from this repentant Magdalen, whose marble face expresses, according to the æsthetics of the day, at one and the same time joy and sadness, some statues are erected to good housewives "who shall re-establish order in an untidy house," to widows who have not re-married on account of their children, and to women "who shall have attained to the most illustrious position through the very modesty of their virtues." Further on are the busts of inventors of useful instruments, ornamented with the objects which they have invented: "the representation of a stocking-frame and that of a silk-throwing mill." As for the inventor of gunpowder, if he is ever discovered, there is no place for him in the Elysium.

Further away still, a magnificent tomb, surrounded with tobacco-plants, is consecrated to Nicot, who imported tobacco into Europe. A tuft of Lucern-grass, from Media, "surrounds with its tendrils the monument dedicated to the memory of the unknown husbandman who was the first to sow seed on our stony hills, and to present to us pasturage which renews itself four times a year on spots which were barren." And so on for all travellers who have brought into the country useful or agreeable plants. Seeing an urn in the midst of a nasturtium bed, a pedestal among the potatoes, the people would think of their benefactors, and their hearts would be softened. They would leave the island Grande-yatte better men; easy, too, as to their future, for this sublime spot would make the fortune of Paris. This Elysium would attract a crowd of rich foreigners, anxious to "deserve well" of France, so as to obtain the honour of being buried in the pantheon of virtuous men.

In the eyes of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre this enormous toy-fair was nothing less than "the re-establishment of one of the laws of nature most important to a nation--I would say an inexhaustible perspective of the Infinite." In the same way the reforms which have just been expounded all have for their object "the application of the laws of nature to the evils of society," and for a result the cure of these ills by the return of the "harmonious laws of nature" and the "natural affections." Unhappily for France, Saint-Pierre was not the only man who knew what he meant when he talked this jargon, without sense to us. In 1784 there was a large number of persons who imagined that there was something in it, and that, in fact, nothing was simpler than to return to the "harmonious laws of nature." The _Études de la Nature_ corresponded with a widely-diffused current of ideas, and that adds to their interest. They help to represent to us the condition of many minds at the beginning of the Revolution. At that time they thought to overthrow everything to the sound of the bagpipes, and they believed in the panacea of Elysiums.

We have sketched the general plan of the work; it now remains to point out some of the ideas "by the way," which are its chief riches. The author strongly suspected that he was never more interesting than when he gave loose rein to his pen, and he never refused himself a digression or fancy. "Descriptions, conjectures, insight, views, objections, doubts, and even my errors," he says in his "Plan of Work," "I collected them all." He did well; for it is when he wanders from the point and forgets his system that he is original and interesting.

In Art he could not disabuse his mind of the mania for moral effect; he does not even spare the landscape. "If one wishes to find a great deal of interest in a smiling and agreeable landscape, one must be able to see it through a great triumphal arch, ruined by time. On the contrary, a town full of Etruscan and Egyptian monuments looks much more antique when one sees it from under a green and flowery bower."

He is, however, much more realistic, and consequently more modern, than his description of his Elysium would lead one to suppose. He deserves to be pardoned his philosophical landscapes, because he was the first to say that there is nothing ugly in nature, one only needs to know how to look at it. Man disfigures it by his works, but that which he has not touched always retains its beauty. "The ugliest objects are agreeable when they are in the place where Nature put them." A crab or a monkey which appears to you hideous in a natural history collection, ceases to be so when you see it on the shore or in a virgin forest; they then form an integral part of the general beauty of the landscape.

The same with people. A fig for conventional types and mythological costumes! copy nature. Make real shoe-blacks with their blacking-boxes; real nuns with their mob-caps; real kitchens with the real milk-jug and saucepan. Make your great men look like other people, instead of representing them "like angel trumpeters at the day of judgment, hair flying, eyes wild, the muscles of the face convulsed, and their draperies floating about in the wind." "Those are," say the painters and sculptors, "expressions of genius. But men of genius and great men are not fools.... The coins of Virgil, Plato, Scipio, Epaminondas, and even of Alexander, represent them with a calm, tranquil air." Show us a real Cleopatra, not "an academical face without expression, a Sabine in stature, looking robust and full of health, her large eyes cast up to heaven, wearing around her big and massive arms a serpent coiled about them like a bracelet. No, make her as Plutarch shows her to us: 'Small, vivacious, sprightly, running about the streets of Alexandria at night disguised as a market-woman, and, concealed amongst some goods, being carried on Apollodore's shoulders to go and see Julius Cæsar.'"

In ethics Bernardin de Saint-Pierre warmly combats the theory of the influence of climate, race, soil, temperament and food upon the vicious or virtuous tendencies of men. It seemed to him absurd to say, like Montesquieu, that the mountain is republican, and the plain monarchic; that cold makes us conquerors, and heat slaves. That is only "a philosophical opinion ... refuted by all historical evidence."

He attacked with the same ardour the theory of heredity which has become so widespread in our day. "I myself ask where one has ever seen inclination to vice or virtue communicated through the blood?" History proves that that too is only "a philosophical opinion," and it is a good thing that it is so, for man would no longer be at liberty to choose between good and evil if these different doctrines were true.

It is curious to see the partisans of free-will preoccupying themselves, more than a hundred years ago, with the theory of heredity. It is a proof that ideas float about a long time in the air in the germ-stage before they come to maturity and are adopted into the general advance of thought. It would be as absurd to pretend that Bernardin de Saint-Pierre had actually conceived the physiological law, whose consequences make him so indignant as to attribute the discoveries of Darwin to his grandfather Erasmus. It is none the less true that his generation had glimmering ideas of a number of questions which have become common-places in the second half of the nineteenth century.

With a little good will we find even in the _Études de la Nature_ a kind of embryo of Hegel's theory of Contradictions. Contraries produce agreement, said Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. "I look upon this great truth as the key to the whole of philosophy. It has been as fruitful in discoveries as this other maxim: 'Nothing has been made in vain.'" He adds: "Every truth, except the truths of fact, is the result of two contrary ideas.... If men paid attention to this law, it would put an end to most of their mistakes and their disputes; for one may say that everything being compensated by contraries, every man who affirms a simple proposition is only half right, because the contrary proposition exists equally in nature."

We have already said that he had not been happy in the field of science. It would be doing him a service to pass over in silence this part of his work, but his shade would not forgive us. He attached an enormous importance to it, and only attributed to the spirit of routine and professional jealousy the obstinacy of the learned men in taking no notice of his two chief discoveries--the origin of tides, and the elongation of the poles. We will explain them briefly. It is picturesque science if ever anything was.

The poles, says Saint-Pierre, are covered with an immense cupola of ice, "according to the experience of sailors, and also of common sense. The cupola of the north pole is about two thousand leagues in diameter, and twenty-five in height. It is covered with icicles, which are about ten leagues high. The cupola of the south pole is larger still. Each one melts alternately during half the year, according as each hemisphere is in summer or winter. The two poles are thus 'the sources of the sea, as the snow mountains are the sources of the principal rivers.' From the sides of the poles escape currents which produce the great movements of the ocean. This granted, the flow of these currents takes its course to the middle channel of the Atlantic ocean, drawn towards the line by the diminution of waters which the sun evaporates there continually. Two contrary currents or collateral eddies are thus produced, which are in fact the tides."

Now imagine the terrestrial globe capped at the two poles with these formidable glaciers, beside which Mont Blanc is only a mole-hill. The globe is necessarily oval in form. "In truth some celebrated academicians have laid down as a principle that the earth is flattened at the poles."[22] According to them "the curve of the earth is more sudden towards the equator in the sense north and south, because the degrees are there smaller; and the earth, on the contrary, is flatter towards the poles because the degrees are larger there."

Note that it is not only "celebrated academicians," but all the astronomers, all the geographers, every one having some notions of geometry, who conclude, from the increase in length of the degrees of the equator, that the earth is flat at the poles. But from these same measurements, of which he does not dispute the accuracy, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre draws an absolutely contrary conclusion. Here is an abridgment of his demonstration. "If one placed a degree of the meridian of the polar circle upon a degree of the same meridian at the equator, the first degree would exceed the second according to the experiments of the academicians. Consequently if one placed the whole arc of the meridian which crowns the polar circle, and which is forty-seven degrees, upon an arc forty-seven degrees of the same meridian near the equator, it would produce a considerable enlargement there, because its degrees are larger.... As the degrees of the polar curve are, on the contrary, larger than those of an arc of the circle, the entire curve must be as extensive as an arc of the circle; now it cannot be more extensive than by supposing it more enlarged and circumscribed at this arc; consequently the polar curve forms an elongated ellipsis."

If there happens to be amongst my readers a graduate of science, the defects of this reasoning must be obvious to him. Saint-Pierre implicitly believes that the two verticals whose angle forms a degree meet in the centre of the earth, which would be true if the earth was a perfect sphere, but which is not so at all if it is flat at the poles, as all the world admits it to be, or if it is elongated, as he maintains. He was apparently unaware that the curve of a contour at a certain point is defined according to the radius of the circle of curvature at that point, and that the curve is greater than the radius, and consequently the degree of the circle of curvature is smaller. The smallness of the degrees at the equator is, then, a proof that the curve is larger there, or, what comes to the same thing, that the earth is flat at the poles. His strange mistake proves that his scientific equipment was limited to the most elementary knowledge of geometry, which makes his audacity in continually going to war against "the celebrated academicians," against Newton, and every scholar whose works thwarted his poetical ideas about the universe, very characteristic. It is the indication of a strong dash of infatuation, to which is joined an equally large dash of obstinacy. He never admits that he might have been mistaken. He fought all his life for his theory about the tides and his elongation of the poles. He judged of men by their manner of speaking of it, or being silent; it was for him the touchstone of character no less than of the intelligence. Whosoever expressed an objection to it was an ignoramus or a fool, if he was not malicious. Whosoever said nothing was a vulgar pedant, an abject flatterer, one of those servile creatures who "only flatter accredited systems by which one gains pensions." (Letter to Duval, December 23, 1785.) All the French scholars had the misfortune to place themselves in one of these positions, and many sharp words were the consequence.

Bernardin is not the first nor the last writer who has mistaken his real vocation. His was neither science, nor philosophy, nor teaching. It was the love of the fields, the profound feeling and passion for this living and changing spectacle which we call a landscape. The design of his work impelled him to abandon himself to his adoration. He lost himself in it, and the result was a book which, when it appeared, was unique. From end to end it is nothing but descriptions; of the tropics, of Russia, of the Island of Malta, of Normandy, and of the environs of Paris. His travels had taught him to observe. The hurricane in the Indian Ocean, and the aurora borealis of Finland had made him more sensitive than ever to the sweetness of French scenery, to the charm of a bit of meadow, or a hedge in flower. He is, besides, much more sure of himself than in the beginning, much more capable of depicting whatever struck his fancy. His powers did not betray him any more as they had done in the _Voyage to the Isle of France_. There is an end of general descriptions and abstract epithets; at the first glance we are made to distinguish the characteristic of each tree, each tuft of grass, the colour of every stone, and of merging those particular and manifold impressions in a general impression. Here, for example, is a scene in Normandy, taken from the first _étude_, into which enter only "localities, animals, and vegetables of the commonest kind in our climate." It has all the air of having been destined by the author to instruct those persons who do not admire anything less than the Bay of Naples. In any case it was a revelation in the way of a landscape, taken no matter whence, and of the colours which the French language even then offered to its painters in prose and verse.

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre supposes himself to be upon "the most barren spot, a rock at the mouth of a river," and to be at liberty to ornament it with plants suitable to such a soil. These plants spring to life under his pen, and one sees them overrun this miserable corner of earth until its bareness disappears under a glorious mantle of vegetation in all sorts of brilliant and soft tints. "That on the side towards the sea the waves shall cover with foam, its rocks clad with wrack, fucus, and seaweed of all colours and all forms--green, brown, purple, in tufts and garlands, as I have seen it in Normandy, on crags of marl, detached from its cliffs by the sea; then on the side towards the river one shall see on the yellow sand, fine turf mixed with clover, and here and there some tufts of marine wormwood. Let us plant there some willows, not like those of our meadows, but with their natural growth--let us not forget the harmony of the different ages--that we may have some of these willows smooth and succulent, shooting their young branches into the air, and others very old, whose drooping branches form cavernous bowers; let us add to these their auxiliary plants, such as green mosses and golden-tinted lichens, which variegate their grey bark, and a few of those convolvuli called lady's smocks, which like to climb round the trunk and adorn the branches that have no apparent flowers with their heart-shaped leaves and bell-shaped flowers, white as snow. Let us also place there the animal life natural to the willow and its plants--the flies, beetles, and other insects, with the winged creatures who do battle with them, such as the aquatic dragon-flies, gleaming like burnished steel, who catch them in the air, the water-wagtails who, with their tails cocked, pursue them to earth, and the kingfishers who lie in wait for them at the water's edge."

Here we have the rock quite covered with a thousand different tints, and yet remark that Saint-Pierre has only given us one kind of tree. Let us finish the picture. "Contrast with the willow the alder, which like it grows on the banks of rivers, and which by its form, resembling a turret, its broad leaves, its dusky green colour, its fleshy roots, like cords running along the banks and binding up the soil, differs in every way from the thick mass, the light-green foliage, grey underneath, and the taproots of the willow; add to this the plants of different ages which cling to the alder, like so many odalisques of greenery, with their parasites, such as the maidenhair fern, shining out like a star on its humid trunk, the long hart's-tongue fern hanging down from its branches, and the other accessories of insects, birds, and even quadrupeds, which probably contrast in form, in colour, in manner and instincts with those of the willow."

The picture is now complete as regards form and colour, but how much is wanting to it still! First of all the _flash of light_. We light up our rock with the "first flush of dawn," and we see at the same time strong shadows and transparent ones thrown upon the grass, and dark and silvery green shades flung upon the blue of the heavens, and reflected in the water. Now we will put life into it. "Let us imagine here what neither painting nor poetry can render--the odour of the herbs, even that of the sea, the trembling of the leaves, the humming of the insects, the morning song of the birds, the rumbling, hollow murmurs, alternated with the silence of the billows which break on the shore, and the repetitions that the echoes make of all these sounds in the distance, as they lose themselves in the sea and seem like the voices of the nereids." Now it is finished, and if you do not breathe the salt air, do not feel yourself surrounded by the universal life, before this medley of changing colours and variable forms, this rustling, murmuring, roaring, it must be that the feeling for nature is not awakened in you--you are before Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's day, and the nineteenth century has passed in vain for you.

Perhaps we see better still the indefatigable activity of nature in the _Jardin abandonné_. It is a French garden, with straight, trimmed walks, symmetrical flower-beds, regular fountains, and mythological statues. A country house stands in the midst of it. The hand of man has been withdrawn from this place, once so well cared for, and it becomes what the general life of earth chooses to make of it. It is soon done. "The ponds become swamps; the hedges of yoke-elm look ragged; all the arbours are choked up, and all the avenues overgrown. The vegetation natural to the soil declares war against the foreign vegetation; the starry thistles, and the vigorous mullein choke the English turf with their large leaves; thick masses of coarse grass and clover crowd round the judas trees; dog rose-briers climb upon them with their thorny brambles, as though they were going to take them by assault; tufts of nettles take possession of the naiad's urn, and forests of reeds the Vulcan's forges; greenish patches of moss cover the faces of the Venuses, without respect for their beauty. Even the trees besiege the house; wild cherry trees, elms, and maples rise to the roof, thrusting their long taproots into its raised parapet, finally taking command of its proud cupolas." In the eyes of a passer-by this is merely a ruin; in Bernardin's it is the re-establishment of order and beauty. Man appears to him nowhere so mischievous as when he alters the landscape.

His descriptions of foreign countries had a very great success and a great influence. As his first book was not much read, it is through the second that he has been the father of exoticism in French literature. Chateaubriand found his path prepared when he wrote _Atala_. Another had already revealed the virgin forest, dazzled the eyes with tropical colouring, and amused the mind with strange types and costumes. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre carried the taste for exoticism to childishness, as we do in our day, and he it was who invented exhibitions of savages and semi-savages. He dreamed of drawing to Paris Indians with their canoes, caravans of Arabs mounted on camels and bullocks, Laplanders in their reindeer sledges, Africans and Asiatics. "What a delight for us," he said, "to take part in their joy, to see their dances in our public squares, and to hear the drums of the Tartars, and the ivory horns of the negroes, resounding around the statues of our kings."

To sum up, the _Études de la Nature_ is a beautiful prose poem upon a bad philosophical thesis. In Bernardin de Saint-Pierre Providence had a compromising advocate, which happens, however, pretty often. Not content with dragging the final causes into everything, he gave them such a royal following of false ideas and scientific errors, that the reading of his book becomes in places irksome. In order to find pleasure in it to-day we must follow his advice, throw away reason and give ourselves up entirely to feeling. In such a case it is impossible not to be touched with this effort to recall man to the thought of the Infinite, or not to let oneself be seduced by the charm of the advocate. As soon as we have given up disputing with the author on fundamental grounds, we are filled with pleasure at his sincere enthusiasm, the wealth of his sensations and their quite modern subtilty. He is himself as though intoxicated by the vividness of his impressions. By the strength of his love for nature he confounds it with the Divinity, and adores the works instead of the Author of them. He speaks of nature with a tenderness which communicates itself to his writing and wins over his reader. He wished to re-open the door to Providence, he re-opened it to the great god Pan; a result which was not worth the other, no doubt, but which has had immense consequences in our century.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] Introduction to _l'Arcadie_.

[19] That is Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's account of the conversation. In reality, Rousseau had not visited le Forez. He had been tempted to go there, but was dissuaded from his project by "a landlady" whom he consulted as to the route he should follow, and whose description prevented him from going to seek Dianas and Sylvanders amongst a population of blacksmiths. (_The Confessions_, year 1732.)

[20] Literary Correspondence, April, 1785.

[21] Bernardin de Saint-Pierre had developed his ideas upon the education of women, long before the publication of the _Études de la Nature_, in a speech delivered in 1777, without success, at an academical meeting in the country. Some of the details given here are borrowed from this _Discours sur l'Education des femmes_.

[22] The celebrated academician to whom allusion is made in this passage is Pierre Bouguer, who took part in the scientific expedition sent to the equator in 1736 to determine the shape of the earth. The quotation which follows is taken from his _Traité de la Navigation_,