Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

That the Reaction is thus identified with Ultramontanism, is a fact which its leading spirits would be the very last to deny. The necessity of religion to the prosperity of France is their fundamental principle; and religion being, in their minds, inseparable from Romanism, they will not see its defects; and their blind faith, like chloroform, makes them absolutely insensible to the sharp point of the weak spear with which Quinet pierces them. And it is but fair to suppose that Quinet and his colleagues are equally honest in considering Christianity and Ultramontanism synonymous. They see that the old religion of France has become, historically, a corrupt thing, and they propose a fresh Christianity in its place. Of one thing I am sure--they do not over-estimate the political importance of the Council of Trent. Let it be fairly traced in its connexions with kingdoms, with science, with letters, and with the conscience of nations, and it will be seen that Quinet is not far from correct, in taking it as the turning-point of the history of Europe. It produced Ultramontanism, or rather changed it from an abstraction into an organised system; and Ultramontanism, in its new shape, gave birth to the Jesuits. Christendom saw a new creed proposed as the bond of unity, and a new race of apostles propagating it with intrigue and with crime, and, in some places, with fire and sword. In proportion as the states of Europe incorporated Ultramontanism with their political institutions, they withered and perished. Old Romanism was one thing, and modern Ultramontanism another. Kingdoms that flourished while they were but Romanised, have perished since they became Tridentine.

Among English writers this distinction has not been generally made. Coleridge seems to have observed it, and has incidentally employed it in treating of another subject. But foreign literature is full of it, either tacitly implied or openly avowed, in different ways. Ultramontanism is, in Europe, a political and not merely a theological word,--its meaning results from its history. Before the Tridentine epoch, the national churches of Europe were still seven candle-sticks, in which glittered the seven stars of an essential personality and individual completeness. The "Church of Rome" still meant the Roman See, and, vast as were its usurpations over the national churches, it had neither reduced them to absolute unity in theology, nor absorbed their individuality into its own. The Roman Church, as we now understand it, was created by the Council of Trent, by a consolidation of national churches, and the quiet substitution of the creed of Pius IV. for the ancient creeds, as a test of unity. This fact explains the position of the Reformed before and after that extraordinary assembly. Till its final epoch, they had never fully settled their relations to the Papal See. The history of England is full of illustrations of this fact. Old Grostete of Lincoln spurned the authority of the Pope, but continued in all his functions as an English bishop till his death, in the thirteenth century. Wycliffe, in the fourteenth, was still more remarkable for resisting the papal pretensions, yet he died in the full exercise of his pastoral office, while elevating the host at Childermas. Henry VIII. himself had the benefit of masses for his pious soul at Notre Dame; and his friend Erasmus lived on easy terms with the Reformed, and yet never broke with the Vatican. Even the English prayer-book, under Elizabeth, was sanctioned by papal authority, with the proviso of her recognition of the supremacy, and for twelve years of her reign the popish party lived in communion with the Reformed Church of England. During all this period the dogmas of popes were fearlessly controverted by Cisalpine theologians, who still owned their supremacy in a qualified sense, and who boldly appealed to a future council against the decisions of the See of Rome. Ultramontanism had then, indeed, its home beyond the mountains, and when it came bellowing over its barrier, it was often met as "the Tinchel cows the game." But modern Ultramontanism is another thing. It is an organised system, swallowing up the nationalities of constituent churches, and giving them the absolute unity of an individual Roman church, in which Jesuitism is the circulating life-blood, and the Italian consistory the heart and head together. Such was the prodigy hatched during the seventeen years of Tridentine incubation. It appeared at the close of those interminable sessions, so different from all that had been anticipated, that it startled all Europe. It had quietly changed everything, and made Rome the sole church of Southern Europe. Quinet has not failed to present this fact very strongly. "That Council," says he, "had not, like its predecessors, its roots in all nations; it did not assemble about it the representatives of all Christendom. Its spirit was to give full sanction to the idea, which certain popes of the middle ages had established, of their pre-eminence over oecumenical assemblies. Thenceforward, what had been the effect of a particular genius, became _the very constitution of the church_. The great adroitness consisted _in making the change without anywhere speaking of it_. The church which was before tempered by assemblies convoked from all the earth, became an absolute monarchy. From that moment the ecclesiastical world is silent. The meeting of councils is closed, no more discussions, no more solemn deliberations; everything is regulated by bulls, letters, and ordinances. Popedom usurps all Christendom; the book of life is shut; for three centuries not one page has been added." One would think the school of the Reaction would feel the force of facts so efficiently urged, even in spite of their towering disgust at the purposes for which they are employed. In fact, their own maxims may be turned against them with great power, in this matter of Ultramontanism. De Maistre, in his argument for unwritten constitutions, speaks of the creeds of the church as furnishing no exception to his rule; for these, he argues, are not _codes of belief_, but they partake the nature of hymns--they have rhythmical beauty, they are chanted in solemn services, they are confessed to GOD upon the harp and organ. Now this is indeed true of those three ancient creeds which are still chanted in the service of the Church of England; but the creed of Pius IV., which is the distinguishing creed of the Roman church, is absolutely nothing else than a _code of belief_, and is the only creed in Christendom which lacks that rhythmical glory which he considers a test of truth! Even Quinet notices this liturgic impotence of the Ultramontane religion. "The Roman church," he says, "has lost in literature, together with the ideal of Christianity, the sentiment of her own poetry. What has become of the burning accents of Ambrose and Paulinus? Urban VIII. writes pagan verses to the Cavalier Berni;[3] and instead of _Stabat mater_ or _Salutaris hostia_, the princes of the church compose mythological sonnets, at the very moment when Luther is thundering _Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott_, that Te Deum of the Reformation."

No wonder France was reluctant to acknowledge a Council which had thus imposed a new creed on Christendom, and which dictated a new organisation to the ancient churches of Southern Europe. While other nations subscribed with artful evasions, she hesitated and submitted, but gave no formal assent. Rome had come over the Alps to absorb her, and she was loth to yield her birthright. She stood long in what Schlegel calls "a disguised half-schism," struggling against dissolution, the last lump to melt away in the Tridentine element. But where now is the church which St Louis left to France, strong in her anti-papal bulwarks? Where now are those bulwarks, the labour of his life, and the chief glory of a name which even Rome has canonised? As for Spain, Ultramontanism was riveted upon her by the Inquisition, and she is twice dead. One sees no more the churches of Western Christendom, fortified by Pragmatic Sanctions, and treated with as younger sisters, even by domineering Rome! They have disappeared; and the only light that lingers in their places is the sad sepulchral flame that owes its existence to decay.

Such is Ultramontanism. Follow its history, in connexion with political events in France, and you cannot fail to charge it with all the responsibility of French infidelity, and, consequently, of the present lamentable condition of the nation. Thrice has the spirit of France been in deadly collision with it--in the fire, in the wind, and in the earthquake. Its first antagonists were the Huguenots, and over them it triumphed by the persecutions of Louis XIV., following up the policy of Catherine de Medicis. It was next confronted by Jansenism under Louis XV., and that it overcame by intrigue and by ridicule. Under Louis XVI. it was obliged to meet the atheism of the Encyclopædists, which it had itself produced, and which terribly visited upon its head its own infernal inventions. To overwhelm the Port-Royalists, it had resorted to low caricatures and epigrams, and to philosophical satires upon their piety. Voltaire took from these the hint of his first warfare against Christianity. This was first a joke and a song, and then _Ca Ira_ and _A la lanterne_; first the popguns of wit, then the open battery of _Ecrasez l'infâme_, and then the exploding mine of revolution. It merely reversed the stratagems of Ultramontanism, which began in massacre, and finished its triumphs with a jest; and both together have stamped the nation with its indelible character of half tiger and half monkey. The origin of such an issue of infamy cannot be concealed. France owes it all to her conduct in the crisis of the Reformation. Had the Gallic Church, under Henry of Navarre, fully copied the example of England, or had she even carried out her own instincts, repudiating the Council of Trent, and falling back upon the Pragmatic Sanction for a full defence of her independence, how different would have been her history, and that of the monarchy to which she would have proved a lasting support! Let the difference between Henri Quatre and Louis Quatorze, between Sully and Richelieu, illustrate the reply. Or it may be imagined, by comparing the campaigns of Cevennes with the peaceful mission of Fenelon to the Huguenots of Saintonge. Where now both church and state appear the mere materials of ambition to such as Mazarin and Dubois, or where even the purer genius of such as Bossuet and Massillon is exhibited in humiliating and disgraceful associations, the places of history might have been adorned by such bright spirits as were immured at Port-Royal, or such virtue as sketched the ideal kingdom of _Télémaque_, and rendered illustrious a life of uncomplaining sorrow in the pastoral chair of Cambray. Where the court can boast one Bourdaloue, there would have been, beside him, not a few like Pascal; and in the rural parishes there would have been many such as Arnauld and Nicole, training in simple piety and loyal worth the successive generations of a contented people. As for the palace, it would never have been haunted by the dark spirit of Jesuitism, which has so often hid itself in the robes of royalty, and reigned in the sovereign's name; and the people would have known it only as a fearful thing beyond the Pyrenees, whose ear was always in the confessional, and whose hand was ever upon the secret wires of the terrible Inquisition. The capital would have been a citadel of law, and the kingdom still a Christian state. Its history might have lacked a "Grand Monarque," and certainly a Napoleon; but then there would have been no _dragonnades_, and possibly no Dubarrydom; no _Encyclopædie_, and no _Ca Ira_! The bell of St Germain l'Auxerrois would have retained its bloody memory as the tocsin of St Bartholomew's massacre, but it would never have sounded its second peal of infamy as the signal for storming the Tuileries, and for opening those successive vials of avenging woe, in which France is expiating her follies and her crimes.

Bossuet, in his funeral oration upon Queen Henrietta, unhappily for his own cause, has challenged a comparison between the histories of France and England, which, if he were living in our days, he would hardly renew with pleasure. The Anglican Reformation was rashly charged by him with all the responsibility of the Great Rebellion; but facts have proved that revolutions are by no means confined to anti-papal countries, while history may be safely appealed to by Englishmen, in deciding as to the kind of religion which has best encountered the excesses of rebellion, and most effectually cured the disease. The Anglican Church survived the Great Rebellion, with fidelity to itself: the Gallic Church perished in the Revolution. Before the vainglorious taunt of Bossuet had passed from the memory of living men, all those causes were at work in France, which bred the whirlwind of infidelity, and which insured a revolution, not of fanaticism, but of atheism. The real power of the two churches, in moulding the character of a people, and retaining the loyalty of its noblest intellect, became, then, singularly apparent. In France, it was superstition to believe in GOD. In France, philosophers were afraid to own a great First Cause. In France, noblemen were ashamed to confess a conscience. In France, bishops and cardinals were foremost in apostasy, and claimed their sacerdotal rank only to become the high-priests of atheistic orgies. It is needless to cite, in comparison, the conduct of parallel classes during the Great Rebellion in England; while, at the very moment in which these things were transacting, the brightest genius in her Imperial Parliament could proclaim himself not only a believer, but a crusader for Christianity. It was a noble answer to the ghost of poor Bossuet, when such a man as Burke, addressing a gentleman of France, declared the adhesion of England to her Reformed religion to be not the result of indifference but of zeal; when he proudly contrasted the intelligent faith of his countrymen with the fanatical impiety of the French; and when, with a dignity to which sarcasm has seldom attained, he reminded a nation of atheists, that there was a people, every whit its peer, which still exulted in the Christian name, and among whom religion, so far from being relegated to provinces, and the firesides of peasants, still sat in the first rank of the legislature, and "reared its mitred front" in the very face of the throne. The withering rebuke of such a boast must be measured by the standard of the time when it was given. In Paris, the mitre had just been made the ornament of an ass, which bore in mockery, upon its back, the vessels of the holy sacrament, and dragged a Bible at its tail.

Thus the colossal genius of Burke stood before the world, in that war of elements, trampling the irreligion of France beneath his feet, like the Archangel thrusting Satan to his bottomless abyss. The spectacle was not lost. It was that beautiful and sublime exhibition of moral grandeur that quickened the noblest minds in Europe to imitative virtue, and produced the school of the Reaction. It was rather the spirit of British faith, and law, and loyalty, personified in him. The same spirit had been felt in France before: it had moulded the genius of Montesquieu, abstractly; but Burke was its mighty concrete, and he wrote himself like a photograph upon kindred intellect throughout the world. Before his day, the character of English liberty had been laboriously studied and mechanically learned; but he, as its living representative and embodiment, made himself the procreant author of an intellectual family. I fear you will regard this as a theory of my own, but I would not have ventured to say this on my mere surmise. One whose religion identifies him with Ultramontanism has made the acknowledgment before me. I refer to the English editor and translator of Schlegel's _Philosophy of History_. According to him, Schlegel at Vienna, and Goerres at Munich, were "the supreme oracles of _that illustrious school of liberal conservatives_, which numbered, besides those eminent Germans, a Baron von Haller in Switzerland, a Viscount de Bonald in France, a Count Henri de Merode in Belgium, and a Count de Maistre in Piedmont."[4] From the writings of these great men, in a greater or less degree, he augurs the future political regeneration of Europe; and yet, strongly warped as he is away from England, and towards Rome, as the source of all moral and national good, he does not conceal the fact that this splendid school of the Reaction was "founded by our great Burke." My hopes from the writings of these men are not so sanguine: but, so far as they are true to their original, they have been already of great service. They may hereafter be made still more powerful for good; and if, at the same time, the rising school of Conservatism, which begins to make itself felt in America, shall impart its wholesome influences to an off-shoot of England, so vast already, and of such grand importance to the future, then, and not till then, will be duly estimated the real greatness of those splendid services which Burke was created to perform, not for his country only, but for the human race.

Perhaps it could hardly have been otherwise; but it must always be deplored that the Conservatism of England was reproduced on the Continent in connexion with the Christianity of Ultramontanism. The conservatism of de Stael and of Chateaubriand, though repudiated by the _réactionnaires_, is indeed worthy of honourable mention, as their characters will ever be of all admiration; yet it must be owned to be deficient in force, and by no means executive. It was the Conservatism of impulse--the Conservatism of genius, but not the Conservatism of profound philosophy and energetic benevolence. The spirit that breathes in the _Génie du Christianisme_ is always beautiful, and often devout, yet it has been justly censured, as recommending less the truth than the beauty of the religion of Jesus Christ; and though it doubtless did something to reproduce the religious sentiment, it seems to have effected nothing in behalf of religious principle. Its author would have fulfilled a nobler mission had he taught his countrymen, in sober prose, their radical defects in morality, and their absolute lack of a conscience. The Conservatives of the Reaction have at least attempted greater things. They have bluntly told the French nation that they must reform; they have set themselves to produce again the believing spirit: their mistake has been, that they have confounded faith with superstition, and taken the cause of the Jesuits into the cause of their country and their God. Nothing could have been more fatal. It arms against them such characters as Michelet,[5] with his _Priests, Women, and Families_, and makes even Quinet formidable with his lectures on "the Jesuits and Ultramontanism." Yet it must be urged in their behalf, that they have been pardonably foolish, for they drew their error with their mother's milk; and when even faith was ridiculed as credulity, it was an extravagance almost virtuous to rush into superstition. Such is the dilemma of a good man in Continental Europe: his choice lies between the extremes of corrupt faith and philosophic unbelief. This was the misfortune of poor Frederick Schlegel; and, disgusted with the hollow rationalism of Germany, he became a Papist, in order to profess himself a Christian. The mistake was magnanimously made. We cannot but admire the man who eats the book of Roman infallibility, in his hunger for the bread of everlasting life. Even Chateaubriand must claim our sympathies on this ground. Our feelings are with such errorists--our convictions of truth remain unaltered; and we cannot but lament the fatality which has thus attended European Conservatism like its shadow, and exposed it to successful assaults from its foes. I have shown how they use their opportunity. And no wonder, when this substitution of Ultramontanism for Christianity has involved de Maistre in an elaborate defence of the Inquisition--debased the Conservatism of de Bonald to slavish absolutism;[6] and when true to its deadening influence upon the conscience, it implicated von Haller in the infamous perjury which, though committed under the sanction of a Romish bishop, led to his ignominious expulsion from the sovereign council at Berne. Chateaubriand has not escaped an infection from the same atmosphere. It taints his writings. In such a work as the _Génie du Christianisme_, denounced as it is by the Ultramontanists generally, there is much that is not wholesome. The eloquent champion of faith wields the glaive as stoutly for fables as for eternal verities. The poet makes beauty drag decay in her train, and ties a dead corpse to the wings of immortality. Truth itself, in his apology, though brought out in grand relief, is sculptured on a sepulchre full of dead men's bones; and, unhappily, while we draw near to examine the perfection of his ideal, we find ourselves repelled by a lurking scent of putrefaction.

The career of de Maistre is, in epitome, that of his school. Disgusted with Jacobinism, and naturally delighting in paradox, it seemed to afford him relief to avow himself a papist, in an age of atheism. He was not only the author of the reactionary movement, but his character was itself the product of Reaction. Driven with his king to Sardinia, in 1792, by the invasion of Piedmont, his philosophical contempt for the revolutionists was exhibited in his _Considerations sur la France_, from which, in a former letter, I have made so long a quotation. In this work--in some respects his best--his Ultramontanism is far from extravagant: and not only his religious principles as they were then, but also the effect which everything English was then producing on his mind, is clearly seen in a comment upon the English Church, which, as it passed his review, and was printed again in 1817 with no retractation, must be regarded as somewhat extraordinary. "If ever Christians reunite," says he, "as all things make it their interest to do, it would seem that the movement must take rise in the Church of England. Calvinism was French work, and consequently an exaggerated production. We are pushed too far away by the sectarians of so unsubstantial a religion, and there is no mean by which they may comprehend us: but the Church of England, which touches us with one hand, touches with the other a class whom we cannot reach; and although, in a certain point of view, she may thus appear the butt of two parties, (as being herself rebellious, though preaching authority,) yet in other respects _she is most precious_, and may be considered as one of those chemical _intermèdes_, which are capable of producing a union between elements dissociable in themselves." He seldom shows such moderation; for the Greek and Anglican churches he specially hates. In 1804 he was sent ambassador to St Petersburg; and there he resided till 1817, fulfilling his diplomatic duties with that zeal for his master, and that devotion to conservative interests, which are the spirit of his writings. There he published, in 1814, the pithy _Essai sur le principe générateur des Constitutions_, in which he reduced to an abstract form the doctrines of his former treatise on France. His style is peculiarly relishable, sometimes even sportive; but its main maxims are laid down with a dictatorial dignity and sternness, which associate the tractate, in the minds of many, with the writings of Montesquieu. This essay, so little known in England, has found an able translator and editor in America, who commends it to his countrymen as an antidote to those interpretations which are put upon our constitutional law by the political disciples of Rousseau. I commend the simple fact to your consideration, as a sign of the more earnest tone of thinking, on such matters, which is beginning to be felt among us. The fault of the essay is its practical part, or those applications into which his growing Ultramontanism diverted his sound theories. His principles are often capable of being turned upon himself, as I have noticed in the matter of creeds. His genius also found a congenial amusement in translating Plutarch's _Delays of Divine Justice_, which he accompanied with learned notes, illustrating the influence of Christianity upon a heathen mind. On his return from St Petersburg in 1817, appeared his violent Ultramontane work, _Du Pape_, in which he most ingeniously, but very sophistically, uses in support of the papacy an elaborate argument, drawn from the good which an overruling Providence has accomplished, by the very usurpations and tyrannies of the Roman See. As if this were not enough, however, he closes his life and labours with another work, the _Soirées de St Petersbourg_, in which, with bewitching eloquence, he expends all his powers of varied learning, and pointed sarcasm, and splendid sophistry, upon questions which have but the one point of turning everything to the account of his grand theory of church and state. Thus, from first to last, he identifies his political and moral philosophy with religious dogmas essentially ruinous to liberty, and which, during three centuries, have wasted every kingdom in which they have gained ascendency. To the direct purpose of uprooting the little that remained of Gallicanism, he devoted a treatise, which accompanies his work _Du Pape_, and of which the first book is entitled, _De l'Esprit d'opposition nourri en France contre le Saint-Siège_. Its points may be stated in a simple sentence from the works of his coadjutor, Frederick Schlegel, who, in a few words, gives the theory which has been the great mistake of the Reaction. "The disguised half-schism of the Gallican church," says he,--"_not less fatal in its historical effects than the open schism of the Greeks_--has contributed very materially towards the decline of religion in France, down to the period of the Restoration."[7] He illustrates it by the disputes of Louis XIV. with the court of Rome, but forgets to say anything of his extermination of the Huguenots. In one sense, however, he is right. It was precisely the _half_-schism to which the mischief is attributable. This half-way work it was that enabled Louis XIV. to assert the Gallican theory against a semi-Protestant pope, for the very purpose of fostering genuine Ultramontanism and favouring the Jesuits; while under another pontiff he could repudiate Gallicanism, and force the clergy to retract what he had forced them to adopt! The schism of England was doubtless "an open schism," in the opinion of Schlegel, and if so, it should have been followed, on his theory, by worse effects; but Schlegel lives too long after the days of Bossuet to bring her example into view. The natural appeal would have been to that example, as its history is cotemporary; but he adroitly diverts attention from so instructive a parallel, and cunningly drags in "the open schism _of the Greeks_!" Thus, against a bristling front of facts, he drives his theory that France has not been Romish enough, and lends all his energies to render her less Gallican and more Tridentine. Were he now alive, he might see reason to amend his doctrine in the condition of Rome itself! But the condition of France is quite as conclusive. Since the Restoration, the French Church has been growing more and more Ultramontane, and the people are worse and worse. Gallicanism is extinct, but results are all against the Reactionary theory. France has no more a la Vendée; there will be no more Chouans; the present Church is incapable of reviving such things. It makes the infidels. I know there is less show of rampant atheism just now than formerly; but if there is less of paroxysm, there is less of life. France dies of a chronic atheism. The Abbé Bonnetat, writing in 1845 on _The Religious and Moral Wants of the French Population_, expresses nothing but contempt for the alleged improvement in religious feeling. According to him, almost a tenth of the male population, in any given district, not only do not believe in GOD, but glory in their unbelief. Half of all the rest make no secret of their infidelity as to the immortality of the soul; and their wives are equally sceptical, to the curse of their children's children! "The residue believe," says the Abbé, "only in the sense of not denying. They affirm nothing, but, as compared with the others, they lack the science of misbelief." To go on with his melancholy picture, the divine and salutary institution of the Lord's day no longer effects its purpose. In towns, the working classes and tradespeople scarcely ever enter the churches. In the rural districts, a tenth of the people never go to church at all; and of the rest, one half may hear a mass on the five great festivals, while the other half, though more frequent in attendance, are very irregular. One Sunday they perform the duty perfunctorily; the next they work in the fields; the next they stay at home, amuse themselves, and forget religion as part of "dull care." The young folk, in many places, receive their first and last communion at twelve or fourteen, and that is the end of their conformity. A worse feature yet in the domestic manners, resulting from this state of religion, is the fact that girls and boys are brought up very much in the same way, and are thrown promiscuously together, spending their evenings where they choose. Parents have ceased to ask their children--_Why were you not at church? Were you at vespers? Were you at mass?_ and in fact are the first to corrupt their offspring, by their brutal irreligion, and coarse language, and shameless behaviour.[8]

Such is the moral picture of France. The Abbé has brightened his mass of shadow with here and there a reflection of light, but there is no mistaking his work for a Claude Lorraine. France is in a moral eclipse, and her portrait presents, of necessity, the _chiaro 'scuro_ of a Rembrandt. One needs no more than these confessions of a French ecclesiastic to account for her false and fickle notions of liberty, and for her interminable _émeutes_ and revolutions. Yet if Quinet has not wholly invented his assertions, the Conservatism of France is pledged to prescribe as remedies the same old poison from which the disease results. It would take the Christianity of the nation, at its last gasp, and dose it anew with Ultramontanism. They have adopted the sound principle, that Christianity moulds a people to enlightened notions of liberty, but they seem not to know that it does this by acting directly upon the conscience; and hence their political system is spoiled by their fatal substitution, for pure Christianity, of that spurious religion whose great defect is precisely this, that it does not undertake to cleanse and cure the conscience, but only to subject it, mechanically, to irrational authority. Montesquieu, in asserting the importance of Christianity, without question failed to detect this essential defect in Popery, but he instinctively taught his countrymen, by memorable example, to eschew Ultramontanism. In the closing scene of a life which, with all its blemishes, was a great life, and, in comparison with his times, a good one, he accepted with reverence the ministrations of his parish priest, but repulsed from his deathbed, with aversion and disgust, the officious and intrusive Jesuits.[9] De Maistre is more devout than Montesquieu, but he is less jealous of liberty, and his ideas of "what a people ought to will" are limited, if not illiberal. His more moderate ally, Ballanche, has not unjustly characterised him as "not, like Providence, merciful, but, like destiny, inexorable." It is impossible that a Conservatism, of which such is the sovereign genius, should achieve anything for the restoration of such a country as France. I have, indeed, predicted the restoration of the Bourbons, according to de Maistre's principles, by the sheer tenacity of life which belongs to a hereditary claim, and by which it outlasts all other pretensions. But I cannot think that either he or his disciples have done much to bring it about; and still less do I imagine that their system, as a system, can give permanence to the monarchy or prosperity to the state. On the contrary, let Mons. Berryer, or the Comte de Montalembert, attempt the settlement of the kingdom on the theory of the _réactionnaires_, and they will speedily bring it to that full stop which Heaven at last adjudges to princes as well as to people, "who show themselves untutored by calamity, and rebels to experience." They will, at best, prolong the era of revolutions to some indefinite epoch of futurity, and consign the nation to a fever, which will return periodically, like a tertian, and wear it out by shakings.

It will be well, then, if the imperial farce that must precede "the _legitimate_ drama" shall prove somewhat protracted. The Legitimists, meantime, may become convinced of the blunder of the Reaction, and resolve upon a wiser and more sound conservatism. De Maistre hazards some predictions in his works, on which he stakes the soundness of his theories, and for which he challenges derision and contempt to his doctrines, if they fail. The position of _Pio Nono_, from the very outset of his career, has stultified those theories already; and if he remains permanently where he now is, it will be to good-breeding alone that de Maistre will owe his preservation from the contempt he has invoked, by staking his reputation on the conservative character of that very court of Rome, from which the democratic wildfire, that has inflamed all Europe, has proceeded! In any conceivable settlement of the Roman States, the Pontiff will hardly be to Europe what he has been during the former years of this century; and if he is to sink to a mere patriarchal primate, the grand dream of ultramontanism is dissipated.[10] It is to be hoped, then, that the restoration may be deferred till the Legitimists have been effectually taught the grand fallacy of ultramontane conservatism; and that Henry V. will ascend the throne, cured of the hereditary plague of his immediate ancestors, and willing to revert, for his example, to his great name-sake, Henri Quatre. He will need another Sully to restore France to a sound mind. His cause demands a minister who will not trust it to the tide of impulse on which it will come in, but who will labour with prudence and with foresight, to gain an anchorage before the ebb. Give but a minister to the restoration capable of that kind of patient and practical forecast, which sent Peter to the dock-yards; and let him begin with the parochial schools, to mould a new race of Frenchmen under the influences of true religion; and let him have the seventeen years which Louis Philippe wasted on steam-ships and bastions, and Montpensier marriages; and then, if it be "men that constitute a state," there is yet a future of hope for France. And forgive me for adding, Basil, that if England shall reverse this policy, and make the national schools the sources of disaffection to the national religion--then may she expect to see her Oxford and Cambridge degraded to such seats of sedition as "the College of France," and their ingenuous youth converted from gownsmen into blousemen, under such _savans_ as Quinet. Remember, too, in connexion with what I have written, that Ireland is the most ultramontane of all nations under heaven, and you will be able to estimate the value of government measures for its relief! May God open the eyes of all who seek the prosperity of the British empire to the primary importance of a wholesome national religion, retaining its hold on the national heart, and moulding the national conscience to the grand political wisdom of the proverb--"My son, fear the Lord and the king, and meddle not with them that are given to change." Yours,

ERNEST.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] _Ultramontanism; or the Roman Church and Modern Society._ By E. QUINET, of the College of France. Translated from the French. Third edition, with the author's approbation, by C. COCKS, B.L. London: John Chapman. 1845.

[3] He surely means _Bernini_, and is a _ninny_ for not saying so. But Mr Cocks' translation says _Berni_--p. 144.

[4] _Literary Life of Frederick von Schlegel._ By James Burton Robertson, Esq.

[5] See _Blackwood_ for August 1845.

[6] Mr Robertson says of de Bonald, "As long as this great writer deals in general propositions, he seldom errs; but when he comes to apply his principles to practice, then the political prejudices in which he was bred lead him sometimes into exaggerations and errors." For "political prejudices" substitute _Ultramontanism_, and Mr Robertson has characterised the whole school of the Reaction.

[7] _Philosophy of History._

[8] _De l'Etat et des besoins Religieux et Moraux des Populations en France_: par M. L'ABBÉ J. BONNETAT. Paris. 1845.

[9] See _Blackwood_, October 1845.

[10] "Le Souverain Pontife est la base nécessaire, unique, et exclusive du Christianisme.... Si les évènements contrarient ce que j'avance, j'appelle sur ma mémoire le mépris et les risées de la postérité."--_Du Pape_, chap. v. p. 268.

MADAME D'ARBOUVILLE'S "VILLAGE DOCTOR."

The readers of _Blackwood_ can hardly have forgotten a charming French tale, of which an abridged translation appeared, under the title of "_An Unpublished French Novel_," in the number of the Magazine for December 1847. In the brief notice prefixed to it, we mentioned the existence of a companion story by the same authoress, which had obtained wider circulation than its fellow, through arbitrary transfer to the pages of a French periodical; and which, on that account, although of more convenient length than the _Histoire Hollandaise_, we abstained from reproducing. Having thus drawn attention to one of the most pleasing tales we in any language are acquainted with, we fully expected speedily to meet with it in an English version. Not having done so, our vivid recollection of the great merits of "_Le Médecin du Village_" now induces us to revoke our first decision--the more readily that we have repeatedly been solicited to give the English public an opportunity of appreciating a tale unprocurable in the form in which it was originally printed, and which few persons in this country are likely to have read in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. The exquisite delineation of the erring, but meekly penitent Annunciata, and of the long-suffering and enthusiastically pious Christine, may well inspire a wish to become acquainted with other productions of the same delicate and graceful pen. The simple story of the _Village Doctor_ will not disappoint expectation. We ourselves, deeply sensible of the fascinations of the Countess d'Arbouville's style, consider it her happiest effort; and although we once hinted a doubt of the probability of its crowning incident, we forget to play the critic when under the influence of her touching pathos and delightful diction. In our present capacity of translators we feel but too strongly the impossibility of rendering the artless elegance of her style, which flows on, smooth, fresh, and sparkling, like a summer streamlet over golden sands. And, with all her apparent simplicity, Madame d'Arbouville is a cunning artist, playing with skilful hand upon the chords of the heart, which vibrate at her lightest touch. The effects she produces are the more striking because seemingly unsought. But her merits will be better exhibited by this second specimen of her writings than by any praise we could lavish; and we therefore proceed, without further preamble, to the narrative of Eva Meredith's sorrows, as given by her humble friend,

THE VILLAGE DOCTOR.

"What is that?" exclaimed several persons assembled in the dining-room of the château of Burcy.

The Countess of Moncar had just inherited, from a distant and slightly regretted relation, an ancient château which she had never seen, although it was at barely fifteen leagues from her habitual summer residence. One of the most elegant, and almost one of the prettiest women in Paris, Madame de Moncar was but moderately attached to the country. Quitting the capital at the end of June, to return thither early in October, she usually took with her some of the companions of her winter gaieties, and a few young men, selected amongst her most assiduous partners. Madame de Moncar was married to a man much older than herself, who did not always protect her by his presence. Without abusing the great liberty she enjoyed, she was gracefully coquettish, elegantly frivolous, pleased with trifles--with a compliment, an amiable word, an hour's triumph--loving a ball for the pleasure of adorning herself, fond of admiration, and not sorry to inspire love. When some grave old aunt ventured a sage remonstrance--"_Mon Dieu!_" she replied; "do let me laugh and take life gaily. It is far less dangerous than to listen in solitude to the beating of one's heart. For my part, I do not know if I even have a heart!" She spoke the truth, and really was uncertain upon that point. Desirous to remain so, she thought it prudent to leave herself no time for reflection.

One fine morning in September, the countess and her guests set out for the unknown château, intending to pass the day there. A cross road, reputed practicable, was to reduce the journey to twelve leagues. The cross road proved execrable: the travellers lost their way in the forest; a carriage broke down; in short, it was not till mid-day that the party, much fatigued, and but moderately gratified by the picturesque beauties of the scenery, reached the château of Burcy, whose aspect was scarcely such as to console them for the annoyances of the journey. It was a large sombre building with dingy walls. In its front a garden, then out of cultivation, descended from terrace to terrace; for the château, built upon the slope of a wooded hill, had no level ground in its vicinity. On all sides it was hemmed in by mountains, the trees upon which sprang up amidst rocks, and had a dark and gloomy foliage that saddened the eyesight. Man's neglect added to the natural wild disorder of the scene. Madame de Moncar stood motionless and disconcerted upon the threshold of her newly-acquired mansion.

"This is very unlike a party of pleasure," said she; "I could weep at sight of this dismal abode. Nevertheless here are noble trees, lofty rocks, a roaring cataract; doubtless, there is a certain beauty in all that; but it is of too grave an order for my humour," added she with a smile. "Let us go in and view the interior."

The hungry guests, eager to see if the cook, who had been sent forward upon the previous day, as an advanced guard, had safely arrived, willingly assented. Having obtained the agreeable certainty that an abundant breakfast would soon be upon the table, they rambled through the château. The old-fashioned furniture with tattered coverings, the arm-chairs with three legs, the tottering tables, the discordant sounds of a piano, which for a good score of years had not felt a finger, afforded abundant food for jest and merriment. Gaiety returned. Instead of grumbling at the inconveniences of this uncomfortable mansion, it was agreed to laugh at everything. Moreover, for these young and idle persons, the expedition was a sort of event, an almost perilous campaign, whose originality appealed to the imagination. A faggot was lighted beneath the wide chimney of the drawing-room; but clouds of smoke were the result, and the company took refuge in the pleasure grounds. The aspect of the gardens was strange enough; the stone-benches were covered with moss, the walls of the terraces, crumbling in many places, left space between their ill-joined stones for the growth of numerous wild plants, which sprung out erect and lofty, or trailed with flexible grace towards the earth. The walks were overgrown and obliterated by grass; the parterres, reserved for garden flowers, were invaded by wild ones, which grow wherever the heavens afford a drop of water and a ray of sun; the insipid bearbine enveloped and stifled in its envious embrace the beauteous rose of Provence; the blackberry mingled its acrid fruits with the red clusters of the currant-bush; ferns, wild mint with its faint perfume, thistles with their thorny crowns, grew beside a few forgotten lilies. When the company entered the enclosure, numbers of the smaller animals, alarmed at the unaccustomed intrusion, darted into the long grass, and the startled birds flew chirping from branch to branch. Silence, for many years the undisturbed tenant of this peaceful spot, fled at the sound of human voices and of joyous laughter. The solitude was appreciated by none--none grew pensive under its influence; it was recklessly broken and profaned. The conversation ran upon the gay evenings of the past season, and was interspersed with amiable allusions, expressive looks, covert compliments, with all the thousand nothings, in short, resorted to by persons desirous to please each other, but who have not yet acquired the right to be serious.

The steward, after long search for a breakfast-bell along the dilapidated walls of the château, at last made up his mind to shout from the steps that the meal was ready--the half-smile with which he accompanied the announcement, proving that, like his betters, he resigned himself for one day to a deviation from his habits of etiquette and propriety. Soon a merry party surrounded the board. The gloom of the château, its desert site and uncheery aspect, were all forgotten; the conversation was general and well sustained; the health of the lady of the castle--the fairy whose presence converted the crazy old edifice into an enchanted palace, was drunk by all present. Suddenly all eyes were turned to the windows of the dining-room.

"What is that?" exclaimed several of the guests.

A small carriage of green wicker-work, with great wheels as high as the body of the vehicle, passed before the windows, and stopped at the door. It was drawn by a gray horse, short and punchy, whose eyes seemed in danger from the shafts, which, from their point of junction with the carriage, sloped obliquely upwards. The hood of the little cabriolet was brought forward, concealing its contents, with the exception of two arms covered with the sleeves of a blue _blouse_, and of a whip which fluttered about the ears of the gray horse.

"_Mon Dieu!_" exclaimed Madame de Moncar, "I forgot to tell you I was obliged to invite the village doctor to our breakfast. The old man was formerly of some service to my uncle's family, and I have seen him once or twice. Be not alarmed at the addition to our party: he is very taciturn. After a few civil words, we may forget his presence; besides, I do not suppose he will remain very long."

At this moment the dining-room door opened, and Dr Barnaby entered. He was a little old man, feeble and insignificant-looking, of calm and gentle countenance. His gray hairs were collected into a cue, according to a bygone fashion; a dash of powder whitened his temples, and extended to his furrowed brow. He wore a black coat, and steel buckles to his breeches. Over one arm hung a riding-coat of puce-coloured taffety. In the opposite hand he carried his hat and a thick cane. His whole appearance proved that he had taken unusual pains with his toilet; but his black stockings and coat were stained with mud, as if the poor old man had fallen into a ditch. He paused at the door, astonished at the presence of so many persons. For an instant, a tinge of embarrassment appeared upon his face; but recovering himself, he silently saluted the company. The strange manner of his entrance gave the guests a violent inclination to laugh, which they repressed more or less successfully. Madame de Moncar alone, in her character of mistress of the house, and incapable of failing in politeness, perfectly preserved her gravity.

"Dear me, doctor! have you had an overturn?" was her first inquiry.

Before replying, Dr Barnaby glanced at all these young people in the midst of whom he found himself, and, simple and artless though his physiognomy was, he could not but guess the cause of their hilarity. He replied quietly:

"I have not been overturned. A poor carter fell under the wheels of his vehicle; I was passing, and I helped him up." And the doctor took possession of a chair left vacant for him at the table. Unfolding his napkin, he passed a corner through the buttonhole of his coat, and spread out the rest over his waistcoat and knees. At these preparations, smiles hovered upon the lips of many of the guests, and a whisper or two broke the silence; but this time the doctor did not raise his eyes. Perhaps he observed nothing.

"Is there much sickness in the village?" inquired Madame de Moncar, whilst they were helping the new comer.

"Yes, madam, a good deal."

"This is an unhealthy neighbourhood?"

"No, madam."

"But the sickness. What causes it?"

"The heat of the sun in harvest time, and the cold and wet of winter."

One of the guests, affecting great gravity, joined in the conversation.

"So that in this healthy district, sir, people are ill all the year round?"

The doctor raised his little gray eyes to the speaker's face, looked at him, hesitated, and seemed either to check or to seek a reply. Madame de Moncar kindly came to his relief.

"I know," she said, "that you are here the guardian genius of all who suffer."

"Oh, you are too good," replied the old man, apparently much engrossed with the slice of pasty upon his plate. Then the gay party left Dr Barnaby to himself, and the conversation flowed in its previous channel. If any notice was taken of the peaceable old man, it was in the form of some slight sarcasm, which, mingled with other discourse, would pass, it was thought, unperceived by its object. Not that these young men and women were generally otherwise than polite and kind-hearted; but upon that day the journey, the breakfast, the merriment and slight excitement that had attended all the events of the morning, had brought on a sort of heedless gaiety and communicative mockery, which rendered them pitiless to the victim whom chance had thrown in their way. The doctor continued quietly to eat, without looking up, or uttering a word, or seeming to hear one; they voted him deaf and dumb, and he was no restraint upon the conversation.

When the guests rose from table, Dr Barnaby took a step or two backwards, and allowed each man to select the lady he wished to take into the drawing-room. One of Madame de Moncar's friends remaining without a cavalier, the village doctor timidly advanced, and offered her his hand--not his arm. His fingers scarcely touched hers as he proceeded, his body slightly bent in sign of respect, with measured steps towards the drawing-room. Fresh smiles greeted his entrance, but not a cloud appeared upon the placid countenance of the old man, who was now voted blind, as well as deaf and dumb. Quitting his companion, Dr Barnaby selected the smallest, humblest-looking chair in the room, placed it in a corner, at some distance from everybody else, put his stick between his knees, crossed his hands upon the knob, and rested his chin upon his hands. In this meditative attitude he remained silent, and from time to time his eyes closed, as if a gentle slumber, which he neither invoked nor repelled, were stealing over him.

"Madame de Moncar!" cried one of the guests, "I presume it is not your intention to inhabit this ruin in a desert?"

"Certainly I have no such project. But here are lofty trees and wild woods. M. de Moncar may very likely be tempted to pass a few weeks here in the shooting season."

"In that case you must pull down and rebuild; clear, alter, and improve!"

"Let us make a plan!" cried the young countess. "Let us mark out the future garden of my domains."

It was decreed that this party of pleasure should be unsuccessful. At that moment a heavy cloud burst, and a close fine rain began to fall. Impossible to leave the house.

"How very vexatious!" cried Madame de Moncar. "What shall we do with ourselves? The horses require several hours' rest. It will evidently be a wet afternoon. For a week to come, the grass, which overgrows everything, will not be dry enough to walk upon; all the strings of the piano are broken; there is not a book within ten leagues. This room is wretchedly dismal. What can we do with ourselves?"

The party, lately so joyous, was gradually losing its gaiety. The blithe laugh and arch whisper were succeeded by dull silence. The guests sauntered to the windows and examined the sky, but the sky remained dark and cloud-laden. Their hopes of a walk were completely blighted. They established themselves as comfortably as they could upon the old chairs and settees, and tried to revive the conversation; but there are thoughts which, like flowers, require a little sun, and which will not flourish under a bleak sky. All these young heads appeared to droop, oppressed by the storm, like the poplars in the garden, which bowed their tops at the will of the wind. A tedious hour dragged by.

The lady of the castle, a little disheartened by the failure of her party of pleasure, leaned languidly upon a window-sill, and gazed vaguely at the prospect without.

"There," said she--"yonder, upon the hill, is a white cottage that must come down: it hides the view."