Chapter XVII: Book VI: 427 (4)

The primitive colonists, it is true, their minds steeped in religious controversy, carried the passion for disputation into the very heart of the forests; but it was necessary for them first to shoulder their axes and march to the conquest of the desert: their sole pulpit, in the intervals between their labours, was the elm they were engaged in squaring. The Americans have not passed through the ages of other nations: they left their childhood and their youth in Europe; the artless words of the cradle were unknown to them; they enjoyed the delights of home only through the medium of their regrets for a native land which they had never seen, and of which they mourned the eternal absence and the charm they had heard of from others.

The new continent has no classical literature, nor romantic literature, nor Indian literature: for the classical, the Americans have no models; for the romantic, no middle-ages; I for the Indian, the Americans despise the savages and loathe the sight of the woods as of a prison to which they were once condemned.

And thus it comes that literature as a thing apart, literature properly so-called, does not exist in America; what one finds is applied literature, answering to the different needs of society: the literature of workmen, merchants, sailors, farmers. Americans succeed in mechanics and science, because science has its material side. Franklin[523] and Fulton[524] took possession of lightning and steam for the benefit of mankind. It fell to America to endow the world with the discovery, thanks to which no continent can henceforward escape the mariner's search.

Poetry and imagination, the portion of a very small number of idlers, are regarded in the United States as puerilities appertaining to the first and to the last age of life. The Americans have had no childhood and have as yet had no old age.

[Sidenote: The American presidents.]

Hence it follows that men engaged upon serious studies have necessarily been obliged to take part in the affairs of their country in order to become acquainted with them, and in the same way they inevitably found themselves actors in their revolution. But one melancholy fact must be observed, which is the prompt degeneration of talent, from the first men, who figured in the American troubles, down to the men of these latter days; and yet those men all touch. The old presidents of the Republic have a religious, simple, lofty, calm character, of which we find no trace in the blood-stained tumults of our own Republic and Empire. The solitude with which the Americans were surrounded reacted upon their nature; they achieved their liberty in silence.

General Washington's farewell address[525] to the people of the United States might have been uttered by the gravest characters of antiquity:

"How far in the discharge of my official duties," says the
General, "I have been guided by the principles which have
been delineated, the public records and other evidence of my
conduct must witness to you, and to the world. To myself,
the assurance of my own conscience is, that I have at least
believed myself to be guided by them....

"Though, in reviewing the incidents of my Administration, I
am unconscious of intentional error--I am nevertheless too
sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may
have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently
beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which
they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope that my
country will never cease to view them with indulgence; and
that, after forty-five years of my life dedicated to its
service, with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent
abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon
be to the mansions of rest."

Jefferson[526] in his house at Monticello, wrote, after the death of one of his two children:

"The loss which I have experienced is a really great one.
Others may lose of that which they possess in abundance,
but I, of my whole portion, have now to deplore the loss of
one-half. The declining years of my life are now held up by
the slender thread of one human life. Perhaps I am destined
to see the last tie of a father's affection broken!"

Philosophy, which is rarely touching, is here touching in the highest degree. And this is not the idle grief of a man who had played no part in life. Jefferson died on the 4th of July 1826, in the eighty-fourth year of his age, and the fifty-fourth year of the independence of his country. His remains lie covered with a stone, having for sole epitaph the words:

THOMAS JEFFERSON,

AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

Pericles and Demosthenes pronounced the funeral oration of the young Greeks who had fallen for a people that disappeared soon after themselves: in 1817, Brackenridge[527] celebrated the death of the young Americans whose blood gave birth to a nation.

We have a national gallery of portraits of distinguished Americans, in four volumes octavo, and what is more singular, a biography containing the lives of over one hundred of the principal Indian chiefs. Logan[528], the Virginian chief, uttered these words before Lord Dunmore[529]:

"Colonel Cresap[530], the last spring, in cold blood and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature that called on me for revenge. I have sought it; I have killed many.... Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one."

Without loving nature, the Americans have applied themselves to the study of natural history. Townsend[531] set out from Philadelphia and traversed on foot the regions separating the Atlantic from the Pacific Ocean, jotting down numerous observations in his journal. Thomas Say[532], who travelled in Florida and in the Rocky Mountains, has published a work on American entomology. Wilson[533], a weaver who became an author, has left some rather finished pictures.

[Sidenote: American literature.]

To turn to literature proper, although it does not amount to much, there are, nevertheless, a few writers to be mentioned among the novelists and poets. Brown[534], the son of a Quaker, is the author of _Wieland_, which is the source and model of the novels of the new school. Unlike his fellow-countrymen:

"I prefer," said Brown, "roaming in the forests to thrashing corn."

Wieland, the hero of the novel, is a Puritan whom Heaven has commanded to kill his wife:

"'I have brought thee hither,' says he to her, 'to fulfil a divine command. I am appointed thy destroyer, and destroy thee I must.'

"Saying this, I seized her wrists. She shrieked aloud, and endeavoured to free herself from my grasp....

"'Wieland.... Am I not thy wife? And wouldst thou kill me? Thou wilt not; oh!... Spare me-spare-help, help--'

"Till her breath was stopped she shrieked for help-for mercy."

*

Wieland strangles his wife, and experiences unspeakable delights by the side of her dead corpse. The horror of our modern inventions is here surpassed. Brown had trained his mind by reading _Caleb Williams_[535], and in _Wieland_ he copied a scene from _Othello._

At the present day, the American novelists Cooper[536] and Washington Irving[537] are obliged to take refuge in Europe to find chronicles and a public. The language of the great English writers has been "creolized," "provincialized," "barbarized," without gaining anything in energy in the midst of a virgin nature; it has become necessary to draw up catalogues of American expressions.

As to the American poets, their language has charm, but they rarely rise above the common-place. Still, the _Ode to the Evening Breeze_, the _Sunrise on the Mount_, the _Torrent_, and some other poems, deserve a passing glance. Halleck[538] has sung the death of Bozzaris, and George Hill[539] has wandered among the Ruins of Athens:

Alas! for her, the beautiful, but lone,
Dethroned queen[540]!...

And again:

There sits the queen of temples[541]--grey and lone.
She, like the last of an imperial line,
Has seen her sister structures, one by one,
To time their gods and worshippers resign[542].

It pleases me, a traveller on the shores of Hellas and Atlantis, to hear the independent voice of a land unknown to antiquity lamenting the lost liberty of the old world.

[Sidenote: American politics.]

But will America preserve her form of government? Will the States not become divided? Has not a representative of Virginia already maintained the theory of ancient liberty with slaves, the result of paganism, against a representative of Massachusetts, defending the cause of modern liberty without slaves, as Christianity made it? Are not the Northern and Southern States opposed in mind and interests? Will not the Western States, so far removed from the Atlantic, wish to have a separate government? On the one hand, is the federal bond sufficiently powerful to maintain the union, and to compel each State to draw closer to it? On the other hand, if the presidential power be increased, will not despotism come with the guards and privileges of the dictator?

The isolation of the United States has permitted them to spring into being and to increase: it is doubtful whether they would have been able to exist and grow in Europe. Federal Switzerland subsists in our midst; but why? Because she is small, poor, cantoned in the bosom of the mountains, a nursery of soldiers for kings, a goal for travellers.

Separated from the old world, the population of the United States still inhabits the solitude: its deserts have been its liberty; but already the conditions of its existence are altering.

The existence of the democracies of Mexico, Columbia, Peru, Chile, Buenos Ayres, always troubled as they are, constitute a danger. When the United States had nothing near them except the colonies of a Transatlantic kingdom, no serious war was probable; now, are there not rivalries to be dreaded? Let men on both sides have recourse to arms, let the military spirit seize upon the children of Washington, and a great captain may rise to the throne: glory loves crowns.

I have said that the Northern, Southern, and Western States were divided in interests; that is common knowledge: if these States break up the union, will they be reduced by force of arms? In that case, what a leaven of hatred will be spread through the social body! Will the dissenting States maintain their independence? In that case, what discords will not break out among those emancipated States! Those republics across the sea, once uncoupled, would no longer form aught save feeble units without weight in the social balance, where they would be successively subjugated by one of their number (I leave on one side the serious question of alliances and foreign intervention). Kentucky, peopled as it is with a race of men bred in the open air, harder and more soldier-like, would seem destined to become the conquering State. In this State devouring the others, the power of one would soon rise upon the ruins of the power of all.

I have spoken of the danger of war; I must point out the dangers of a long peace. Since their emancipation, the United States have, with the exception of a few months, enjoyed the most profound tranquillity; while Europe was shaken with a hundred battles, the United States tilled their fields in safety. Hence we find an overflowing population and riches, with all the drawbacks of a superabundance of riches and population. If hostilities came unexpectedly upon an unwarlike people, would it be able to offer resistance? Would its fortunes and habits consent to sacrifices? How could it give up the bland usages, the comfort, the indolent well-being of life? China and India, asleep in their muslin draperies, have constantly endured the foreign yoke. That which is best suited to the complexion of a free society is a state of peace moderated by war, and a state of war tempered with peace. The Americans have already worn the olive-crown too long continuously: the tree that provides it is not a native of their shores.

The commercial spirit is beginning to take possession of them; self-interest is becoming their national vice. Already the speculations of the banks of the different States clash with one another, and bankruptcies threaten the fortunes of the community. So long as liberty produces gold, an industrial republic does wonders; but when the gold is acquired or exhausted, it loses its love of independence, which is not based upon a moral sentiment, but arises from the thirst for gain and the passion for trade.

Moreover, it is difficult to create a mother-country among States which have nothing in common in religion or interests, which, issuing from various sources and at various times, live on a different soil and under a different sun. What connection is there between a Frenchman of Louisiana, a Spaniard of Florida, a German of New York, an Englishman of New England, Virginia, Carolina, Georgia, who are all reckoned as Americans? One is thoughtless and a duelist; the next a Catholic, lazy and haughty; the other a Lutheran, a husbandman, with no slaves; another, an Anglican and a planter, with negroes; yet another, a Puritan and a merchant: how many centuries will be needed to make these elements homogeneous?

A chrysogenous[543] aristocracy is ready to appear with the love of distinctions and the passion for titles. Men think that a general level prevails in the United States: that is a complete mistake. There are sets in their society which despise one another and refuse to mix; there are houses in which the arrogance of the master exceeds that of a German prince with sixteen quarterings. These plebeian nobles aspire to form a caste in the face of the progress in enlightenment which made them equal and free. Some of them speak of nothing but their ancestors, proud barons, bastards apparently and companions of William the Bastard. They display the knightly blazons of the Old World, enriched with the serpents, lizards, and parrots of the New. A Gascon younger son, landing on the republican shores with nothing but his nobility and his umbrella, becomes a person of consideration on the steam-boats, if he will only take care to call himself "marquis."

[Sidenote: American manners.]

The enormous inequality of fortunes threatens still more seriously to kill the spirit of equality. There are Americans with incomes of one or two millions a year; and already the Yankees of high society are no longer able to live as Franklin did: the true "gentleman," disgusted with his new country, goes to Europe in search of the old; one meets him at the inns, making "tours" in Italy like the English, tours marked by extravagance or spleen. These ramblers from Carolina or Virginia buy ruined abbeys in France, and lay out English gardens with American trees at Melun. Naples sends its singers and perfumers to New York, Paris its fashions and dancers, London its grooms and prize-fighters: exotic delights which do not add to the gaiety of the Union. There they amuse themselves by jumping into the Falls of Niagara, amid the applause of fifty thousand planters, semi-savages whose merriment is with difficulty aroused by the sight of death.

And what is so extraordinary is that, at the very time when the inequality of fortunes is extending and an aristocracy is springing into being, the great levelling movement outside obliges the industrial or landed proprietors to hide their luxury, to dissimulate their wealth, for fear of being knocked on the head by their neighbours. These refuse to recognize the executive power; they dismiss the local authorities whom they have chosen at will, and elect others in their stead. This in no way disturbs order; practical democracy is observed, while the laws laid down by the same democracy in theory are laughed at. The family spirit scarcely exists; so soon as the child is fit to work, he has to fly with his own wings, like the newly-fledged bird. Out of these generations emancipated in a premature orphanage, and out of the emigrants arriving from Europe, are formed nomadic companies which clear the land, dig canals, and carry their trade in every direction without becoming attached to the soil; they run up houses in the desert in which the transient owner will live scarce a few days.

A cold and hard egotism reigns in the towns; piastres and dollars, bank-notes and silver, the rise and fall of stocks, these form the sole subject of conversation: one imagines one's self on 'Change or in the counting-house of a large shop. The newspapers, huge in dimensions, are filled with business articles or scurrilous gossip. Could the Americans be unconsciously submitting to the law of a climate in which vegetable nature seems to have benefited at the expense of living nature, a law combated by some distinguished minds, and yet not put entirely out of court by its refutation? It might be worth while to inquire whether the American has not been too soon used up in philosophic liberty, as the Russian has been in civilized despotism.

To sum up, the United States give the idea of a colony, not of a parent country; they have no past, their manners owe their existence to the laws. These citizens of the New World took rank among the nations at the moment when political ideas were entering upon an upward phase: this explains why they change with such extraordinary rapidity. A permanent form of society seems to become impracticable in their case, thanks, on the one hand, to the extreme weariness of individuals; on the other, to the impossibility of remaining in one spot, the necessity for movement, by which they are dominated: for one is never very firmly fixed where the household gods are wandering gods. Placed on the ocean road, at the head of progressive opinions as new as his country, the American seems to have received from Columbus a mission to discover fresh worlds rather than to create them.

*

On returning to Philadelphia from the desert, as I have already said, having hurriedly written on the road "what I have just related," like the old man in La Fontaine, I did not find the remittances I expected: this was the commencement of the pecuniary difficulties in which I have been plunged ever since. Fortune and I conceived a mutual dislike at first sight. According to Herodotus, certain Indian ants used to heap together piles of gold; according to Athenæus, the sun gave Hercules a golden ship in which to accost the island of Erythia, the home of the Hesperides: ant though I be, I have not the honour to belong to the great Indian family; and navigator though I be, I have never crossed the sea, save in a wooden bark. It was a vessel of this kind which brought me back to Europe from America. The captain gave me my passage on credit. On the 10th of December 1791, I embarked with several of my fellow-countrymen who were returning to France, like myself, for various reasons. The ship's destination was the Havre.

[Sidenote: I return to Europe.]

A westerly gale caught us at the mouth of the Delaware and drove us right across the Atlantic in seventeen days. Often, scudding under bare poles, we were scarcely able to bring to. The sun did not appear a single time. The vessel, steering by a dead reckoning, flew before the waves. I crossed the ocean among shadows; never had it looked to me so sad. I myself, sadder still, was returning deceived, after my first step taken in life:

"Palaces are not built upon the sea," says the Persian poet Feryd-Eddyn[544].

I felt a vague heaviness of heart, as at the approach of a great misfortune. Turning my eyes over the waves, I asked them to tell me my destiny, or else I used to write, more inconvenienced by their motion than troubled by their threats.

So far from calming, the tempest increased the nearer we came to Europe; but it blew steadily: the uniformity of its raging produced a sort of furious lull in the wan sky and leaden sea. The captain, having no means of taking the altitude, was uneasy; he climbed into the shrouds and scanned each point of the horizon through a telescope. A look-out was placed on the bowsprit, another in the main-top-mast cross-trees. The sea became choppy, and the colour of the water changed, signs that we were approaching land: what land? The Breton sailors have a proverb, "Who sees Belle-Isle sees his isle; who sees Groie sees his joy; who sees Ouessant's shore sees his gore."

I had spent two nights in walking the deck, to the hissing of the waves in the dark, the moaning of the wind in the rigging, and the constant dashing of the sea which swept the decks: the waves rioted all around us. Tired with the shocks and jerks of the vessel, I went below early on the third night. The weather was terrible; my hammock creaked and rocked with the blows of the sea, which, breaking over the vessel, threatened to dislocate her very planks. Soon I heard men running from one end of the deck to the other, and coils of rope falling: I experienced the motion which one feels when a vessel is put about. The hatch of the steerage ladder was thrown open; a frightened voice called for the captain: that voice, in the middle of the night and the tempest, sounded tremendous. I listened; I thought I heard sailors discussing the lie of a coast. I tumbled out of my hammock; a sea drove in the quarter-deck, flooded the captain's room, knocked over and rolled pell-mell tables, mattresses, chests, furniture, and arms; I made my way on deck half-drowned.

When I put my head out of the steerage, a splendid sight met my eyes. The ship had tried to put about; but, failing in this attempt she had become embayed under the stress of the wind. By the light of the moon, her horns broken by the clouds, from beneath which she emerged only to be hidden by them again, we discovered on either side of the ship, through a yellow fog, a coast bristling with rocks. The sea threw up waves like mountains in the channel in which we found ourselves engulfed: now they scattered into foam and spray; again they presented merely an oily and vitreous surface, mottled with black, coppery, or greenish stains, according to the colour of the bottom over which they roared. During two or three minutes, the moaning of the abyss and that of the wind would be confused; the next moment, one distinguished the ripple of the currents, the hissing on the reefs, the voice of the distant surge. From the hold of the ship issued sounds which made the hearts of the stoutest sailors beat faster. The stem of the vessel cut through the thick mass of waves with a hideous crash, and, at the helm, torrents of water flowed away eddying as from the mouth of a sluice. Amid all this uproar, nothing was so alarming as a certain dull, murmuring sound, like that of a vase filling.

Lighted by a ship's lantern and held down by weights, harbour-books, charts, and log-books lay spread out upon a hen-coop. A gust of wind had put out the binnacle-lamp. Every one was at variance about the land. We had entered the Channel without noticing it; the vessel, staggering under each wave, was drifting between the islands of Guernsey and Alderney. Our shipwreck appeared inevitable, and the passengers put up their valuables to save them.

The crew included some French seamen; one of them, in the absence of a chaplain, raised the hymn to "Our Lady of Succour," the first thing I had learnt as a child; I repeated it in sight of the coast of Brittany, almost under my mother's eyes. The American Protestant sailors joined in chorus in the song of their French Catholic mates: danger teaches men their weakness and unites their prayers. All, passengers and sailors, were on deck, one clinging to the rigging, another to the sides, another to the capstan, others to the bills of the anchors, in order not to be swept away by the sea or thrown overboard by the heaving of the ship. The captain shouted, "An axe! an axe!" to cut away the masts; and the rudder, of which the tiller had been forsaken, swung from side to side with a harsh sound.

[Sidenote: And I am nearly shipwrecked.]

One experiment remained to be tried: the lead marked only four fathoms on a sand-bank which crossed the channel; it was just possible that the swell might enable us to clear this bank and carry us into deep water; but who would dare to seize the helm and charge himself with the common safety? One false turn of the tiller, and we were lost.

One of those men who spring from events and who are the spontaneous children of danger was found: a New York sailor took the post deserted by the steersman. I seem still to see him in his shirt and canvas trousers, his bare feet, his tangled streaming hair, holding the tiller in his powerful grasp, while, with turned head, he looked over the stern at the sea which was to save or sink us. See that great wave coming, embracing the whole width of the channel, rolling high without breaking, as it were a sea invading the billows of another sea: large white birds go before with a calm flight, like the birds of death. The ship touched and struck; there was a complete silence; every face turned pale. The swell came: at the moment when it touched us, the sailor put down the helm; the vessel, just ready to fall on her side, turned her stern, and the swell, which seemed about to swallow us, lifted her. The lead was heaved; it registered twenty-seven fathoms. A cheer rose to the sky, and we added a shout of "Long live the King!" God did not hear it for Louis XVI.; it benefited none save ourselves.

Although clear of the two islands, we were not out of danger; we were unable to run up above the coast of Granville. At last the ebbing tide carried us out, and we doubled Cape La Hougue. I experienced no agitation during the semi-shipwreck and felt no delight at being saved. Better to give up possession of one's life while young than to be evicted from it by time.

The next day we entered the Havre. The whole population had come out to see us. Our top-masts were broken, our boats carried away, our quarter-deck cut down, and we shipped water at every pitch of the vessel. I landed on the jetty. On the 2nd of January 1792, I once more trod my native soil, which was soon again to slip from under ray feet I brought with me no Esquimaux from the Polar regions, but two savages of an unknown species: Chactas and Atala.

[427] This book was written in London between April and September 1822, and revised December 1846.--T.

[428] The 5th of April was the date of Chateaubriand's arrival in London. He landed at Dover from the French packet Antigone, on the evening of the 4th (_Moniteur_, 11 April 1822).--B.

[429] This should read the Ship Inn, also known as Wright's Hotel.--T.

[430] Baron A. Billing, _attaché_ to the French Embassy in London (1822), and afterwards _chargé d'affaires_ at Naples (1834).--B.

[431] The Comte Georges de Caraman, son of the Duc de Caraman, Ambassador to Vienna.--B.

[432] Marie Louis Jean André Charles Demartin du Tyrac, Comte de Marcellus (1795-1865). While secretary of embassy in 1820, he discovered the Venus of Milo, now at the Louvre. He was _chargé d'affaires_ in London during Chateaubriand's absence at the Congress of Verona, and was appointed Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in the Polignac Ministry. Marcellus was the author of, among other works, a valuable volume on the subject of these Memoirs, entitled, _Chateaubriand et son temps._--B.

[433] François Adolphe Comte de Bourqueney (1799-1869). Here signed upon Chateaubriand's dismissal in 1824. In 1840 he was again secretary of embassy in London, _chargé d'affaires_ in 1841, Ambassador to Constantinople in 1844, and Ambassador to Vienna under the Second Empire. Louis-Philippe created him a baron (1842), and Napoleon III. a count (1859).--B.

[434]

"Ah, my Lord, how your Lordship's life,
In which such honours now are rife,
Differs from those happy days!"
--T.

[435] The Duc Decazes was French Ambassador in London from 17 February 1820 to 9 February 1822.--B.

[436] George IV. (1762-1850) came to the throne in 1820, after being Prince Regent since 1811.--T.

[437] Robert Banks Jenkinson, second Earl of Liverpool (1770-1828), Prime Minister from 1812 to 1827.--T.

[438] Chateaubriand refers to the statue of James II., not Charles II., which stood until recent years in Whitehall Gardens, behind Whitehall, and was entirely hidden from view by the United Service Institute. This very beautiful statue has now been placed in a more conspicuous position in a garden standing back from the Whitehall pavement, beside Gwydyr House.--T.

[439] Marie Antoinette was guillotined 16 October 1793; 21 January was the date of the execution of Louis XVI.--T.

[440] Robert Stewart, second Marquess of Londonderry, K.G. (1769-1822), Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the Liverpool Ministry. He bore the title of Viscount Castlereagh until the death of his father in 1821. He cut his throat on the 13th of August of this same year 1822.--T.

[441] Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington, K.G. (1769-1852) became Premier in 1828.--T.

[442] George Canning (1770-1827) became Foreign Secretary upon the suicide of Castlereagh.--T.

[443] Sarah Child Villiers, Countess of Jersey (1787-1867), was Lady Sarah Fane, eldest daughter of the tenth Earl of Westmorland, and grand-daughter of Robert Child the banker, whose fortune she inherited. She married George Villiers, fourth Earl of Jersey, who assumed the additional surname of Child in 1812, and became one of the reigning queens of London society.--T.

[444] Henry Brougham, first Lord Brougham and Vaux (1778-1868), had lately made his name as counsel for Queen Caroline at her trial (1820). He became Lord Chancellor and a peer in 1834.--T.

[445] Priscilla Barbara Elizabeth Lady Gwydyr (1761-1828) _née_ Bertie, widow of the first Lord Gwydyr, and Baroness Willoughby de Eresby in her own right.--T.

[446] Louisa Murray, Countess of Mansfield (_d._ 1843), was the Honourable Louisa Cathcart, daughter of the ninth Baron Cathcart, and became Countess of Mansfield in her own right. In 1776 she married her cousin David, seventh Viscount Stormont and second Earl of Mansfield. He died in 1793, and in 1797 she married the Honourable Fulke Greville, retaining her title as Countess of Mansfield.--T.

[447] Almack's, the ball-room in King Street, St. James's, retained its vogue from 1765 to 1840. Lady Mansfield was one of the lady patronesses of Almack's.--T.

[448] Julie Récamier (1777-1849), _née_ Bernard, wife of Récamier the banker. A woman of great beauty and charm; she was painted by David and Gérard, and sat to Canova for his bust of Beatrix. Chateaubriand became and remained until his death the most intimate and assiduous of her friends.--T.

[449] Captain James Cook (1728-1779). His discoveries were still fresh in the public mind in 1792.--T.

[450] Chateaubriand met François Tulloch in 1826, after writing this portion of his Memoirs. He does not tell us much about him even in the _Essai sur les Révolutions_, where he speaks of Tulloch at some length. It would appear, according to Chateaubriand, that he was the son of an English father and a Scotch mother, and that he did not eventually take orders, but remained in the world and married.--T.

[451] VIR., _Æ._ I. 164. The correct quotation runs: _Æquora tuta silent._--T.

[452] The Azores were known to the Carthaginians, but fell out of the map until rediscovered in 1431.--T.

[453] GEN. i. 10.--T.

[454] Agostino Pantaleone Giustiniani (1470-1531), Bishop of Nebbis in Corsica, and author of the _Psalterium hebraicum, græcum, arabicum, chaldaicum, cum tribus latinis interpretationibus et glossis_, the first work of its kind published. Giustiniani was drowned in crossing from Genoa to Corsica.--T.

[455] Ps. XVIII.--T.

[456] _Ibid._ 6.--T.

[457] Luiz de Camoëns (1517 or 1525-1579), author of the _Lusiad_ which treats of the exploits of Vasco da Gama, spent many years in India and in exile in Macao, where he wrote his principal poem. On his return from banishment, he was wrecked off the coast of Cochin China, where he is said to have lost all he possessed, except the manuscript of the _Lusiad._--T.

[458] Guillaume le Breton (_circa_ 1165-_circa_ 1220), the historian of Philip Augustus. The quotation is from his chronicle entitled, _Philippidos libri duodecime, sive Gesta Philippi Augusti, versibus heroïcis descripta._--T.

[459] Ps. CVII. 27.--T.

[460]

"Burning with immortal ardour, 'Tis to God my hopes are turned."--T.

[461] TASSO, _Gerusalemme Liberata_, XV. 27.--B.

[462] Jacques Cartier (1494--_circa_ 1554), the discoverer of Newfoundland and of the greater part of Canada.--T.

[463] _Génie du Christianisme_, Part I. book V. chap. 12: _Deux perspectives de la Nature._--B.

[464] William Penn (1644-1718), the Quaker. He commuted a claim upon the Crown for a grant of land in North America, where he founded the colony of Pennsylvania (1682), laying out Philadelphia as the capital.--T.

[465] Bonaparte died 5 May 1821.--T.

[466] Alonso d'Ercilla y Zuffiga (_circa_ 1525-_circa_ 1600), a famous Spanish poet and warrior. He began life as a page to Philip II., whom he accompanied in his travels to France, Italy, Germany, and England. In 1547 he joined the Chilean expedition, covered himself with glory in the campaign against the Araucanians, and celebrated his own exploits in the _Araucana_, an epic poem of very great merit.--T.

[467] Michel de Castelnau, Sieur de La Mauvissière (_circa_ 1520-1592), was five times Ambassador to England under Charles IX. and Henry III. His Memoirs run from 1559 to 1570.--T.

[468] CORNEILLE, _Attila_, Act I. scene I.:

"Ils ne sont pas venus, nos deux rois; qu'on leur die
Qu'ils se font trop attendre, et qu'Attila s'ennuie."

"Our two kings have not come; go out to them and say
That Attila is wearied, and brooks not such delay."--T.

[469] These measurements have since been rectified as being too high in both cases.--_Author's Note_ (Geneva, 1832).

[470] George Vancouver (1750-1798) accompanied Cook in his second and third voyages round the world, and subsequently served under Rodney. He was despatched on the expedition in question in 1790--T.

[471] This appears to be an error for Lake Athabasca, on which Fort Chippeway is situated, and which communicates by means of the Slave River with Great Slave Lake and the Mackenzie River.--T.

[472] Chateaubriand, in a footnote to the _Itinéraire_, confesses his mistake in searching for the stone lion which, according to Herodotus, marks the tomb of Leonidas and his companions, at Sparta instead of at Thermopylæ.--B.

[473] Sir Charles Asgill (1760-1823), an English general serving under Cornwallis. He was taken prisoner by the insurgents and picked out by lot to be shot by way of reprisals. He was saved through the intervention of the French Government, and an act of the American Congress revoked the sentence of death. Asgill visited Versailles to thank Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, who had actively interceded on his behalf. The episode furnished a subject for a number of popular novels and plays.--B.

[474] Jean Baptiste Donatien de Viveur, Comte de Rochambeau (1725-1807), was sent to America with 6000 men to assist the insurgents and contributed towards effecting the capitulation of Cornwallis in 1781. He returned to France when peace was declared, became Governor of Picardy and Artois, and was created a Marshal of France in 1791, and given the command of the Northern Army. He vainly endeavoured to restore discipline and resigned his command in 1792. He was condemned to death by Robespierre, but made his escape.--T.

[475] JOB, XXXIX. 19-25.--T.

[476] The Abbé Paul François Velly (1709-1759) wrote the first seven or eight volumes of the History of France in thirty volumes known as the _Histoire de Velly, Villaret et Garnier._ These first eight volumes which cover the period to the reign of Philip the Fair, are the weakest of the whole compilation, especially the two first, which embrace the history of the Frankish kings.--T.

[477] Khilpérick or Chilperic I. (_d._ 584), King of Soissons, later King of the Franks, youngest son of Clotaire I., King of the Franks.--T.

[478] _Cf._ Plutarch's Life of Phocion.--B.

[479] _Odyssey_, VII.--B.

[480] Louis Joseph Marquis de Montcalm (1712-1759), entrusted with the defense of Canada against the English in 1756.--T.

[481] John Campbell, fourth Earl of Loudon (1705-1782), Governor-General of Virginia and Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in America (1756), but recalled in 1757.--T.

[482] Sir Robert Abercromby (1740-1827), younger brother of the more famous Sir Ralph Abercromby. He had distinguished himself, as a volunteer, by his gallantry at the battle of Ticonderoga in 1758, after which he was appointed an ensign, and was present at the Battle of Niagara and the capture of Montreal.--T.

[483] General James Wolfe (1727-1759), although only thirty-two years of age at the time of his glorious death, had been present at the battles of Dettingen, Fontenoy, Falkirk, and Culloden, and served in the expedition against Rochefort.--T.

[484] Giovanni Paisiello (1741-1816), composer of a number of operas, most of which were written during his long residence at St Petersburg, and of some meritorious sacred music.--T.

[485] Domenico Cimarosa (1754-1801), composer of over 120 grand and comic operas, of which the _Matrimonio segreto_ is the best known.--T.

[486] _Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem_, Book II.--B.

[487] _Essai sur les révolutions_: Book I. Part ii. chap. 23.--B.

[488] _Atala_: Epilogue.--B.

[489] HOR., _Od._ I. 7.--T.

[490] Isaac Jogues (1607-1646), a Jesuit priest placed at the head of the Canadian Mission in 1636. He suffered martyrdom at the hands of the Mohawks ten years later.--B.

[491] Jerome Lallemant (1593-1673), also a Jesuit father, preached the Gospel to the savages of Canada for nearly forty years. He died at Quebec as Superior-General of the Canadian Mission.--B.

[492] Florio's MONTAIGNE, I. 30: _Of the Caniballes._--T.

[493] _Ibid._--T.

[494] St Clement of Alexandria (_d._ 217) does not figure in the Roman Calendar. The work in question, the Στρωματεὶς, is a medley or patchwork of philosophical maxims and Christian thoughts set down at random, without order or connection, as the title implies.--T.

[495] She appears in the _Natches_, which was published in 1826, four years after the above was written.--B.

[496] Samuel Champlain (_circa_ 1570-1635) explored a part of Canada, in 1608 founded the city of Quebec, and in 1620 became governor of the province. He was attacked by the English in 1627, and obliged to capitulate; in 1629 Canada was restored to France and Champlain resumed his command, which he retained until his death.--T.

[497] Armand Louis de Delondarce, Baron de La Hontan (_circa_ 1667-1715) served in Canada in 1703 and was subsequently the King of France's lieutenant in Newfoundland; he was accused of peculation and fled to Portugal and thence to Denmark. In 1705 he published his _Voyages dans l'Amérique septentrionale._--T.

[498] Marc Lescarbot (_circa_--_circa_ 1630) served in Florida under Admiral Coligny. He annotated an edition of Champlain's Voyages.--T.

[499] Père Joseph François Lafitau (1670-1740), a Jesuit priest of the Canadian Mission, author of the _Mœurs des sauvages américains comparées aux mœurs des premiers temps_ (1723), &c.--T.

[500] Père Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix (1682-1761), another Jesuit, author of the _Histoire de la Nouvelle-France._ (1744)--T.

[501] Thomas Douglas, fifth Earl of Selkirk (1771-1820). This tract of land covered forty-five million acres, and comprised large portions of what are now Manitoba and Minnesota.--T.

[502] The date of the defeat of the Hudson's Bay Company by the North-West Company and their half-breed allies was 10 June 1815.--T.

[503] The French name for New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.--T.

[504] The original thirteen United States, in the order of their ratification of the National Constitution, were Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island. The eleven others, completing the twenty-four existing at the time at which Chateaubriand was writing, were Vermont (detached from New York, 1791), Tennessee (detached from North Carolina, 1796), Kentucky (detached from Virginia, 1796), Ohio (created, 1802), Louisiana (purchased from France in 1803 and raised into a State in 1812), Indiana (created, 1816), Mississippi (separated from Georgia, 1817), Illinois (created, 1818), Alabama (detached from Georgia, 1819), Maine (detached from Massachusetts, 1820), and Missouri (detached from Louisiana, 1821).--T.

[505] The western portion of Louisiana was ceded to Spain in 1763, but restored to the French in 1800. In 1803 Bonaparte, despairing of being able to hold it against the English, sold it to the United States for 80,000,000 francs.--T.

[506] Charles I., King of France and Emperor of the West (742-814), known as Charlemagne, had been dead for more than six centuries when this experiment was made.--T.

[507] Lord François Nathaniel Conyngham (1797-1876), second son of the first Marquess Conyngham, and first groom of the Bedchamber and Master of the Robes to George IV. He succeeded to the Marquisate in 1832.--T.

[508] Elizabeth Marchioness Conyngham (1769-1861), _née_ Dennison, married in 1794 to the third Lord Conyngham, Lord Steward of the Household to George IV., and created successively Viscount Conyngham, Earl of Conyngham, and Marquess Conyngham by that monarch. She was George IV.'s mistress, and presented a complete contrast to Mila in other respects than age alone.--T.

[509] William Bartram (1739-1823), an American traveller and naturalist, author of _Travels through North and South Carolina, East and West Florida, the Cherokee country_, &c.--T.

[510] The ruins of Mitla and Palenque in Mexico prove today that the New World rivals the Old in antiquity.--_Author's Note_ (Paris, 1834).

[511] _Arbor tristis_, the nyctanthes or night-jasmine.--T.

[512] I have quoted it in my Travels.--_Author's Note_ (Geneva, 1832). The story of _Tabamica_ is told in the _Voyage en Amérique_, where it is called the Song of the Pale-face.--B.

[513] The Spanish capital of Florida.--T.

[514] I omit a quotation from Camoëns.--T.

[515] I omit a quotation from Ronsard.--T.

[516] Mary Stuart (1542-1 £87), Queen of Scots, was married in 1558 to the Dauphin of France, who in 1559 became king, with the title of Francis II. She was left a widow eighteen months after marriage, in the seventeenth year of her age.--T.

[517] François II., King of France (1544-1560).--T.

[518] _Cf._ ROUSSEAU, _La Nouvelle Héloïse._--T.

[519]

"Like a young bee which among the roses toils,
My muse returned to me all laden with rich spoils."--T.

[520] Louis XVI. was arrested at Varennes on the 22nd of June 1791.--T.

[521] VIR., _Æn._, I. 302-303.--B.

[522] These predictions have been verified with wonderful accuracy. According to the census of 1 June 1880, the population of the United States on that day amounted to 50,445,336 inhabitants.--B.

[523] Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), discoverer of the identity of lightning and electricity.--T.

[524] Robert Fulton (1765-1815), one of the first to apply steam to the propulsion of vessels; he built a steamboat to navigate the Hudson River in 1807; it made five miles an hour.--T.

[525] Issued 17 September 1796, before his retirement from his second presidency.--T.

[526] Thomas Jefferson (1743-1816), third President of the United States, 1801-1805, and again, 1805-1809. Jefferson died at Monticello, Virginia, on the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1826. John Adams, the second President of the United States, died at Quincy, Massachusetts, on the same day.--T.

[527] Henry M. Brackenridge (1786-1871), author of, among other works, the _History of the late War between the United States and Great Britain._ Baltimore, 1817.--T.

[528] Tah-Gah-Jute (_circa_ 1725-1780), a famous Cayuga chief, named John Logan, after James Logan, secretary of Pennsylvania. The famous speech was not spoken in person, but sent by an interpreter in October 1774. Logan was eventually shot by an Indian through a misunderstanding.--T.

[529] John Murray, fourth Earl of Dunmore (1732-1809), Governor of Virginia at the outbreak of the American Revolution.--T.

[530] Captain Michael Cresap (1742-1775). His memory was attacked by Thomas Jefferson, and vindicated by his son-in-law, J. J. Jacob.--T.

[531] John K. Townsend (1809-1861), author of _Narrative of a Journey across the Rocky Mountains and a Visit to the Sandwich Islands, Chile_, &c., 1833-37 (1839).--T.

[532] Thomas Say (1787-1834), author of an _American Entomology_ (1824) and an _American Conchiliology_ (1830).--B.

[533] Alexander Wilson (1766-1813), a Scotsman by birth, emigrated at an early age to America. He was by turns a weaver, a schoolmaster, and a pedlar. He applied himself to the study of birds, and eventually published his _American Ornithology_ in seven volumes, containing the finished illustrations referred to by Chateaubriand.--T.

[534] Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810), author of several novels, of which _Wieland_ was the most popular.--B.

[535] _Caleb Williams_, by William Godwin (1756-1836), father of Mary Wollstonecraft, Shelley's second wife, appeared in 1794, one year before the publication of _Wieland._--T.

[536] James Fenimore Cooper (1780-1851), probably the most popular of American novelists.--T.

[537] Washington Irving (1783-1859). He was American Minister in Madrid for a short period (1842).--T.

[538] Fitz-Greene Halleck (1795-1867), author of _Marco Bozuaris._ The curious will find a criticism of his work in Poe's _Literati of New York._--T.

[539] George Hill (_b._ 1796), author of the _Ruins of Athens_, and a few shorter poems.--T.

[540] _Ruins of Athens_, II.--T.

[541] The Parthenon.--T.

[542] _Ruins of Athens_, XVII.--T.

[543] Chateaubriand coins the word _chrysogène_ to express the idea of being born in wealth: I have ventured to retain it.--T.

[544] Feryd-Eddyn-Atthar (_circa_ 1226--_circa_ 1280), author of the _Pend-Nâmek_, or Book of Counsels.--T.

END OF VOL. I