February, Lamartine must have been condemned to a comparative
political inactivity. With the exception of a few friends, personally
devoted to him, he had no party in the Chamber. The career which he
had entered, as the people's Tribune, placed him, in a measure, in
_opposition_ to all existing parties; but it was even this singular
position of parliamentary impotence, which confirmed and strengthened
his reputation as an honest man, in contradistinction to a notoriously
corrupt legislature. His eloquence in the Chamber had no particular
direction; but it was the sword of justice, and was, as such, dreaded
by all parties. As a statesman his views were tempered by humanity,
and so little specific as to be almost anti-national. In his views as
regards the foreign policy of France he was alike opposed to Guizot
and Thiers; and, perhaps, to a large portion of the French people. He
wished the external policy of France governed by a general principle,
as the internal politics of the country, and admitted openly the
solidarity of interests of the different states of Europe. He thus
created for himself allies in Germany, in Italy, in Spain; but he
lacked powerful supporters at home; and became the most impracticable
man to carry out the aggressive views of the fallen Dynasty. Thiers
never considered him a rival; for he considered him incapable of ever
becoming the exponent of a leading popular passion: neither the
present nor the future seemed to present a chance for Lamartine's
accession to power. _L'homme positive_, as Thiers was pleased to call
himself at the tribune of the Chamber, almost commiserated the poet
statesman and orator.
Lamartine never affected, in his manner or in his mode of living, that
"republican simplicity" which is so often nothing but the frontispiece
of demagoguism. He despised to flatter the people, for whom he
cherished a generous sentiment, by vulgar appeal to their ignoble
prejudices. He gratified his tastes where they did not come in
conflict with morality or justice, and thus preserved his
individuality and his friends, in the midst of the swelling tide of
popular commotion and conflicting opinions. Guizot affected in his
_dehors_ that severity and simplicity of style, which won for him the
_soubriquet_ of "the Puritan;" bestowed by the sarcasm of the
Parisians, to punish his egotism, his craving ambition and his love of
power. While Guizot was penetrating the mysteries of European
diplomacy, under the guidance of Princess Lieven, Lamartine's hotel,
in the _Rue de l'Universite_ was the _reunion_ of science, literature,
wit, elegance and grace. His country-seat near Paris was as elegantly
furnished and artistically arranged as his palace in the Faubourg St.
Germain; and his weekly receptions in Paris were as brilliant as they
were attractive by the intelligence of those who had the honor to
frequent them. The _elite_ of the old nobility, the descendants of the
notabilities of the Empire, the historical remnants of the Gironde and
the Jacobins, the versatility of French genius in every department,
and distinguished strangers from all parts of the world were his
guests; excluded were only the men of mere accidental position--the
mob in politics, literature and the arts.
But the time for Lamartine had not yet come, though the demoralization
of the government, and the sordid impulses given by it to the
national legislature were fast preparing that anarchy of passions
which no government has the power to render uniform, though it may
compress it. The ministry in the session of 1845 was defeated by the
coalition; but the defection of Emil de Girardin saved it once more
from destruction. Meanwhile Duchatel, the Minister of the Interior,
had found means, by a gigantic system of internal improvement, (by a
large number of concessions for new rail-ways and canals,) to obtain
from the same Chamber a ministerial majority, which toward the close
of the session amounted to nearly eighty members. Under such auspices
the new elections were ushered in, and the result was an overwhelming
majority for the administration. The government was not to be shaken
in the Chambers, but its popular ascendancy had sunk to zero. The
opposition from being parliamentary had become organic. The
opposition, seeing all hopes of success vanish in the Chambers, now
embraced Lamartine's plan of agitating the people. They must either
fall into perfect insignificance or dare to attack the very basis of
the government. The party of Thiers and Odillon Barrot joined the
movement, and by that means gave it a practical direction; while
Lamartine, Marrast, Louis Blanc, and Ledru Rollin were operating on
the masses, Thiers and Odillon Barrot indoctrinated the National
Guards. While Thiers was willing to stake his life to dethrone Guizot,
the confederates of Lamartine aimed at an organic change of the
constitution.
Was Lamartine a conspirator? may here be asked. We answer most
readily, no! Lamartine is what himself says of Robespierre, "a man of
general ideas;" but not a man of a positive system; and hence,
incapable of devising a plan for attaining a specific political
object. His opposition to Louis Philippe's government was general; but
it rested on a noble basis, and was free from individual passions. He
may have been willing to batter it, but he did not intend its
demolition. The Republic of France was proclaimed in the streets,
partly as the consequence of the king's cowardice. Lamartine accepted
its first office, because he had to choose between it and anarchy, and
he has thus far nobly discharged his trust. If he is not a statesman
of consummate ability, who would devise means of extricating his
country from a difficult and perilous situation, he will not easily
plunge it into danger; if he be not versed in the intrigues of
cabinets, his straight forward course commands their respect, and the
confidence of the French people. This is not the time for Europe to
give birth to new ideas--the old Revolution has done that
sufficiently--but the period has arrived for elaborating them, with a
view to a new and lasting organization of society. The present
revolution in Europe need not forcibly overthrow any established
political creed; for there is no established political conviction in
Europe. The people have arrived at a period of universal political
scepticism, which, like scepticism in religion, always prepares the
soil for the reception of the seed of a new faith. The great work of
the revolution is done, if the people will but seize and perpetuate
its consequences. Such, at least, are the views of Lamartine, and with
him of a majority of European writers, as expressed in the literature
of the day.
The history of the Girondists contains Lamartine's political faith. It
is not without its poetry and its Utopian visions; but it is full of
thought and valuable reflections, and breathes throughout the loftiest
and most noble sentiments. Lamartine, in that history, becomes the
panegyrist and the censor of the French Revolution. He vindicates with
a powerful hand the ideas which it evolved; while he castigates, and
depicts with poetic melancholy its mournful errors and its tragic
character. He makes Vergniaud, the chief of the Girondists, say before
his execution--"In grafting the tree, my friend, we have killed it. It
was too old. Robespierrie cuts it. Will he be more successful than
ourselves? No. This soil is too unsteady to nourish the roots of civil
liberty; this people is too childish to handle its laws without
wounding itself. It will come back to its kings as children come back
to their rattle. We made a mistake in our births, in being born and
dying for the liberty of the world. We imagined that we were in Rome,
and we were in Paris. But revolutions are like those crises which, in
a single night, turn men's hair gray. They ripen the people fast. The
blood in our veins is warm enough to fecundate the soil of the
Republic. Let us not take with us the future, and let us bequeath to
the people our hope in return for the death which it gives us."[12]
It is impossible that Lamartine should not have felt as a poet what he
expressed as a historian, and his character is too sincere to prevent
him from acting out his conviction. In describing the death of the
founders of the first French Republic, Lamartine employs the whole
pathos of his poetic inspiration.
"They (the Girondists) possessed three virtues which in the eyes of
posterity atone for many faults. They worshiped liberty; they founded
the Republic--this precautions truth of future governments;--at last,
they died, because they refused blood to the people. Their time has
condemned them to death, the future has judged them to glory and
pardon. They died because they did not allow Liberty to soil itself,
and posterity will yet engrave on their memory the inscription which
Vergniaud, their oracle, has, with his own hand, engraved on the wall
of his dungeon: 'Rather death than crime!' '_Potius mori quam
foedari!_'"
[Footnote 12: This and the following versions of Lamartine are our
own; for we have not as yet had time to look into the published
translation. We mention this to prevent our own mistakes, if we should
have committed any, from being charged to the American translator of
the work.]
Lamartine is visibly inclined in favor of the Girondists--the founders
of the Republic; but his sense of justice does not permit him to
condemn the Jacobins without vindicating their memory from that
crushing judgment which their contemporaries pronounced upon them. He
thus describes, in a few masterly strokes, the character of
Robespierre:
"Robespierre's refusal of the supreme power was sincere in the
motives which he alleged. But there were other motives which caused
him to reject the sole government. These motives he did not yet avow.
The fact is that he had arrived at the end of his thoughts, and that
himself did not know what form was best suited to revolutionary
institutions. More a man of ideas than of action, Robespierre had the
sentiment of the Revolution rather than the political formula. The
soul of the institutions of the future was in his dreams, but he
lacked the mechanism of a popular government. His theories, all taken
from books, were brilliant and vague as perspectives, and cloudy as
the far distance. He contemplated them daily; he was dazzled by them;
but he never touched them with the firm and precise hand of practice.
He forgot that Liberty herself requires the protection of a strong
power, and that this power must have a head to conceive, and hands to
execute. He believed that the words Liberty, Equality, Disinterestedness,
Devotion, Virtue, incessantly repeated, were themselves a government.
He took philosophy for politics, and became indignant at his false
calculations. He attributed continually his deceptions to the
conspiracies of aristocrats and demagogues. He thought that in
extinguishing from society the aristocrats and demagogues, he would be
able to suppress the vices of humanity, and the obstacles to the work
of liberal institutions. His notion of the people was an illusion, not
a reality. He became irritated to find the people often so weak, so
cowardly, so cruel, so ignorant, so changeable, so unworthy the rank
which nature has assigned them. He became irritated and soured, and
challenged the scaffold to extricate him from his difficulties. Then,
indignant at the excesses of the scaffold, he returned to words of
justice and humanity. Then once more he seized upon the scaffold,
invoked virtue and suscitated death. Floating sometimes on clouds,
sometimes in human gore, he despaired of mankind and became frightened
at himself. 'Death, and nothing but death!' he cried, in conversation
with his intimate friends, 'and the villains charge it upon me. What
memory shall I leave behind me if this goes on? Life is a burthen to
me!'"
Once, says Lamartine, the truth became manifest. He (Robespierre)
exclaimed, with a gesture of despair, "_No, I was not made to govern,
I was made to combat the enemies of the people!_"
These meditations on the character of Robespierre, show sufficiently
that Lamartine, though he may not as yet have taken a positive
direction in politics, has at least, from his vague poetical
conceptions, returned to a sound state of political criticism, the
inevitable precursor of sound theories. His views on the execution of
the royal family are severe but just.
"Had the French nation a right to judge Louis XVI. as a legal
tribunal?" demands Lamartine. "No! Because the judge ought to be
impartial and disinterested--and the nation was neither the one nor
the other. In this terrible but inevitable combat, in which, under the
name of revolution, royalty and liberty were engaged for emancipating
or enslaving the citizen, Louis XVI. personified the throne, the
nation personified liberty. This was not their fault, it was their
nature. All attempts at a mutual understanding were in vain. Their
natures warred against each other in spite of their inclination toward
peace. Between these two adversaries, the king and the people, of whom
the one, by instinct, was prompted to retain, the other to wrest from
its antagonist the rights of the nation, there was no tribunal but
combat, no judge but victory. We do not mean to say that there was not
above the parties a moral of the case, and acts which judge even
victory itself. This justice never perishes in the eclipse of the law,
and the ruin of empires; but it has no tribunal before which it can
legally summon the accused; it is the justice of state, the justice
which has neither regularly appointed judges, nor written laws, but
which pronounces its sentences in men's consciences, and whose code is
equity."
"Louis XVI. could not be judged in politics or equity, but by a
process of state. Had the nation a right to judge him thus? As well
might we demand whether she had a right to fight and conquer, in other
words, as well might we ask whether despotism is inviolable--whether
liberty is a revolt--whether there is no justice here below but for
kings--whether there is, for the people, no other right than to serve
and obey? The mere doubt is an act of impiety toward the people."
So far the political philosophy of Lamartine, the legal argument
against the king, strikes us as less logical and just. We may agree
with him in principle, but we cannot assent to the abstract justice of
his conclusions.
"The nation," says the head of the present provisional government of
France, "possessing within itself the inalienable sovereignty which
rests in reason, in the right and the will of each citizen, the
aggregate of which constitutes the people, possesses certainly the
faculty of modifying the exterior form of its sovereignty, to level
its aristocracy, to dispossess its church of its property, to lower or
even to suppress the throne, and to govern themselves through their
proper magistrates. But as the nation had a right to combat and
emancipate itself, she also had a right to watch over and consolidate
the fruits of its victories. If, then, Louis XVI., a king too recently
dispossessed of sovereign power--a king in whose eyes all restitution
of power to the people was tantamount to a forfeiture--a king ill
satisfied with what little of government remained in his hands,
aspiring to reconquer the part he had lost--torn in one direction by a
usurping assembly, and in another by a restless queen or humble
nobility, and a clergy which made Heaven to intervene in his cause, by
implacable emigrants, by his brothers running all over Europe to drum
up enemies to the Revolution; if, in one word, Louis XVI., KING,
appeared to the nation a living conspiracy against her liberty; if the
nation suspected him of regretting in his soul too much the loss of
supreme power--of causing the new constitution to stumble, in order to
profit by its fall--of conducting liberty into snares to rejoice in
anarchy--of disarming the country because he secretly wished it to be
defeated--then the nation had a right to make him descend from the
throne, and to call him to her bar, and to depose him in the name of
her own dictatorship, and for her own safety. If the nation had not
possessed this right, the right to betray the people with impunity,
would, in the new constitution, have been one of the prerogatives of
the crown."
This is a pretty fair specimen of revolutionary reasoning; but it is
rather a definition of Democracy, as Lamartine understands it, than a
constitutional argument in favor of the decapitation of "_Louis
Capet_." Lamartine is, indeed, a "Conservative Democrat," that is,
ready to immolate the king to preserve the rights of the people; but
he does not distinguish in his mind a justifiable act from a righteous
one. But it is a peculiarity of the French mind to identify itself so
completely with the object of its reflection, that it is impossible
for a French mind to be impartial, or as they will have it, not to be
an enthusiast. The French are partisans even in science; the Academy
itself has its factions.
We have thus quoted the most important political opinions expressed in
his "Girondists," because these are his _latest_ political
convictions, and he has subscribed to them his name. We look upon this
his last work, as a public confession of his faith--as a declaration
of the principles which will guide him in the administration of the
new government. Lamartine has been indoctrinated with the spirit of
revolution; but it is not the spirit of his youth or early manhood.
Liberty in his hands becomes something poetical--perhaps a lyric
poem--but we respectfully doubt his capacity to give her a practical
organization, and a real existence. High moral precepts and sublime
theories may momentarily elevate a people to the height of a noble
devotion; but laws and institutions are made for ordinary men, and
must be adapted to their circumstances. Herein consists the specific
talent of the statesman, and his capacity to govern. Government is not
an ideal abstraction--a blessing showered from a given height on the
abiding masses, or a scourge applied to mortify their passions; it is
something natural and spontaneous, originating in and coeval with the
people, and must be adapted to their situation, their moral and
intellectual progress, and to their national peculiarities. It
consists of details as well as of general forms, and requires labor
and industry as well as genius. The majority of the people must not
only yield the laws a ready submission, but they must find, or at
least believe, it their interest to do so, or the government becomes
coercion. The great problem of Europe is to discover the laws of
labor, not to invent them, for without this question being practically
settled in some feasible manner, all fine spun theories will not
suffice to preserve the government.
Lamartine closes his history of the Girondists with the following
sublime though mystic reflection: "A nation ought, no doubt, to weep
her dead, and not to console itself in regard to a single life that
has been unjustly and odiously sacrificed; but it ought not to regret
its blood when it was shed to reveal eternal truths. God has put this
price on the germination and maturation of all His designs in regard
to man. Ideas vegetate in human blood; revolutions descend from the
scaffold. All religions become divine through martyrdom. Let us, then,
pardon each other, sons of combatants and victims. Let us become
reconciled over their graves to take up the work which they have left
undone. Crime has lost every thing in introducing itself into the
ranks of the republic. To do battle is not to immolate. Let us take
away the crime from the cause of the people, as a weapon which has
pierced their hands and changed liberty into despotism. Let us not
seek to justify the scaffold with the cause of our country, and
proscriptions by the cause of liberty. Let us not pardon the spirit of
our age by the sophism of revolutionary energy, let humanity preserve
its heart; it is the safest and most infallible of its principles, and
_let us resign ourselves to the condition of human things_. The
history of the Revolution is glorious and sad as the day after the
victory, or the eve of another combat. But if this history is full of
mourning, it is also full of faith. It resembles the antique drama
where, while the narrator recites his story, the chorus of the people
shouts the glory, weeps for the victims and raises a hymn of
consolation and hope to God."
All this is very beautiful, but it does not increase our stock of
historical information. It teaches the people resignation, instead of
pointing to their errors, and the errors of those who claimed to be
their deliverers. Lamartme has made an apotheosis of the Revolution,
instead of treating it as the unavoidable consequence of
misgovernment. To an English or American reader the allusion to "the
blood sacrifice," which is necessary in politics as in religion, would
border on impiety; with the French it is probably a proof of religious
faith. Lamartine, in his views and conceptions, in his mode of
thinking and philosophizing, is much more nearly allied to the German
than to the English schools; only that, instead of a philosophical
system, carried through with a rigorous and unsparing logic, he
indulges in philosophical reveries. As a statesman Lamartine lacks
speciality, and for this reason we think that his administration will
be a short one.
With respect to character, energy, and courage, Lamartine has few
equals. He has not risen to power by those crafty combinations which
destroy a man's moral greatness in giving him distinction. "Greatness"
was, indeed, "thrust upon him," and thus far he has nobly and
courageously sustained it. He neither courted power, nor declined it.
When it was offered, he did not shrink from assuming the
responsibility of accepting it. He has no vulgar ambition to gratify,
no insults to revenge, no devotion to reward. He stands untrammeled
and uncommitted to any faction whatever. He may not be able to solve
the social problem of the age; but will, in that case, surrender his
command untarnished as he received it, and serve once more in the
ranks.
SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT.
BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
[When the wind abated and the vessels were near enough,
the admiral was seen constantly sitting in the stern,
with a book in his hand. On the 9th of September he was
seen for the last time, and was heard by the people of
the Hind to say, "We are as near Heaven by sea as by
land." In the following night the lights of the ship
suddenly disappeared. The people in the other vessel
kept a good look out for him during the remainder of
the voyage. On the 22d of September they arrived,
through much tempest and peril; at Falmouth. But
nothing more was seen or heard of the admiral.
_Belknap's American Biography_, I. 203.]
Southward with his fleet of ice
Sailed the Corsair Death;
Wild and fast, blew the blast,
And the east-wind was his breath.
His lordly ships of ice
Glistened in the sun;
On each side, like pennons wide,
Flashing crystal streamlets run.
His sails of white sea-mist
Dripped with silver rain;
But where he passed there were cast
Leaden shadows o'er the main.
Eastward from Campobello
Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed;
Three days or more seaward he bore,
Then, alas! the land wind failed.
Alas! the land wind failed,
And ice-cold grew the night;
And nevermore, on sea or shore,
Should Sir Humphrey see the light.
He sat upon the deck,
The book was in his hand;
"Do not fear! Heaven is as near,"
He said "by water as by land!"
In the first watch of the night,
Without a signal's sound,
Out of the sea, mysteriously,
The fleet of Death rose all around.
The moon and the evening star
Were hanging in the shrouds;
Every mast, as it passed,
Seemed to rake the passing clouds.
They grappled with their prize,
At midnight black and cold!
As of a rock was the shock;
Heavily the ground-swell rolled.
Southward through day and dark,
They drift in close embrace;
With mist and rain to the Spanish main;
Yet there seems no change of place.
Southward, forever southward,
They drift through dark and day;
And like a dream, in the Gulf-Stream,
Sinking vanish all away.
THE NIGHT.
The day, the bitter day, divides us, sweet--
Tears from our souls the wings with which we soar
To Heaven. All things are cruel. We may meet
Only by stealth, to sigh--and all is o'er:
We part--the world is dark again, and fleet;
The phantoms of despair and doubt once more
Pursue our hearts and look into our eyes,
Till Memory grows dismayed, and sweet Hope dies.
But the still night, with all its fiery stars,
And sleep, within her world of dreams apart--
These, these are ours! Then no rude tumult mars
Thy image in the fountain of my heart--
Then the faint soul her prison-gate unbars
And springs to life and thee, no more to part,
Till cruel day our rapture disenchants,
And stills with waking each fond bosom's pants. M. E. T.
THE BOB-O-LINK.
BY GEORGE S. BURLEIGH.
Merrily sings the fluttering Bob-o-link,
Whose trilling song above the meadow floats;
The eager air speeds tremulous to drink
The bubbling sweetness of the liquid notes,
Whose silver cadences arise and sink,
Shift, glide and shiver, like the trembling motes
In the full gush of sunset. One might think
Some potent charm had turned the auroral flame
Of the night-kindling north to melody,
That in one gurgling rush of sweetness came
Mocking the ear, as once it mocked the eye,
With varying beauties twinkling fitfully;
Low hovering in the air, his song he sings
As if he shook it from his trembling wings.
MY AUNT POLLY.
BY MRS. E. C. KINNEY.