I don’t know an impression more curious than that which is formed in a
foreigner’s mind, who has been absent from this place for two or three
years, returns to it, and beholds the change which has taken place, in
the meantime, in French fashions and ways of thinking. Two years ago,
for instance, when I left the capital, I left the young gentlemen of
France with their hair brushed en toupet in front, and the toes of
their boots round; now the boot-toes are pointed, and the hair combed
flat, and, parted in the middle, falls in ringlets on the fashionable
shoulders; and, in like manner, with books as with boots, the fashion
has changed considerably, and it is not a little curious to contrast
the old modes with the new. Absurd as was the literary dandyism of
those days, it is not a whit less absurd now: only the manner is
changed, and our versatile Frenchmen have passed from one caricature to
another.
The revolution may be called a caricature of freedom, as the empire was
of glory; and what they borrow from foreigners undergoes the same
process. They take top-boots and mackintoshes from across the water,
and caricature our fashions; they read a little, very little,
Shakespeare, and caricature our poetry: and while in David’s time art
and religion were only a caricature of Heathenism, now, on the
contrary, these two commodities are imported from Germany; and
distorted caricatures originally, are still farther distorted on
passing the frontier.
I trust in heaven that German art and religion will take no hold in our
country (where there is a fund of roast-beef that will expel any such
humbug in the end); but these sprightly Frenchmen have relished the
mystical doctrines mightily; and having watched the Germans, with their
sanctified looks, and quaint imitations of the old times, and
mysterious transcendental talk, are aping many of their fashions; as
well and solemnly as they can: not very solemnly, God wot; for I think
one should always prepare to grin when a Frenchman looks particularly
grave, being sure that there is something false and ridiculous lurking
under the owl-like solemnity.
When last in Paris, we were in the midst of what was called a Catholic
reaction. Artists talked of faith in poems and pictures; churches were
built here and there; old missals were copied and purchased; and
numberless portraits of saints, with as much gilding about them as ever
was used in the fifteenth century, appeared in churches, ladies’
boudoirs, and picture-shops. One or two fashionable preachers rose, and
were eagerly followed; the very youth of the schools gave up their
pipes and billiards for some time, and flocked in crowds to Notre Dame,
to sit under the feet of Lacordaire. I went to visit the Church of
Notre Dame de Lorette yesterday, which was finished in the heat of this
Catholic rage, and was not a little struck by the similarity of the
place to the worship celebrated in it, and the admirable manner in
which the architect has caused his work to express the public feeling
of the moment. It is a pretty little bijou of a church: it is supported
by sham marble pillars; it has a gaudy ceiling of blue and gold, which
will look very well for some time; and is filled with gaudy pictures
and carvings, in the very pink of the mode. The congregation did not
offer a bad illustration of the present state of Catholic reaction. Two
or three stray people were at prayers; there was no service; a few
countrymen and idlers were staring about at the pictures; and the
Swiss, the paid guardian of the place, was comfortably and
appropriately asleep on his bench at the door. I am inclined to think
the famous reaction is over: the students have taken to their Sunday
pipes and billiards again; and one or two cafés have been established,
within the last year, that are ten times handsomer than Notre Dame de
Lorette.
However, if the immortal Görres and the German mystics have had their
day, there is the immortal Göthe, and the Pantheists; and I incline to
think that the fashion has set very strongly in their favor. Voltaire
and the Encyclopaedians are voted, now, barbares, and there is no term
of reprobation strong enough for heartless Humes and Helvetiuses, who
lived but to destroy, and who only thought to doubt. Wretched as
Voltaire’s sneers and puns are, I think there is something more manly
and earnest even in them, than in the present muddy French
transcendentalism. Pantheism is the word now; one and all have begun to
éprouver the besoin of a religious sentiment; and we are deluged with a
host of gods accordingly. Monsieur de Balzac feels himself to be
inspired; Victor Hugo is a god; Madame Sand is a god; that tawdry man
of genius, Jules Janin, who writes theatrical reviews for the Débats,
has divine intimations; and there is scarce a beggarly, beardless
scribbler of poems and prose, but tells you, in his preface, of the
sainteté of the sacerdoce littéraire; or a dirty student, sucking
tobacco and beer, and reeling home with a grisette from the chaumière,
who is not convinced of the necessity of a new “Messianism,” and will
hiccup, to such as will listen, chapters of his own drunken Apocalypse.
Surely, the negatives of the old days were far less dangerous than the
assertions of the present; and you may fancy what a religion that must
be, which has such high priests.
There is no reason to trouble the reader with details of the lives of
many of these prophets and expounders of new revelations. Madame Sand,
for instance, I do not know personally, and can only speak of her from
report. True or false, the history, at any rate, is not very edifying;
and so may be passed over: but, as a certain great philosopher told us,
in very humble and simple words, that we are not to expect to gather
grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles, we may, at least, demand, in
all persons assuming the character of moralist or philosopher—order,
soberness, and regularity of life; for we are apt to distrust the
intellect that we fancy can be swayed by circumstance or passion; and
we know how circumstance and passion WILL sway the intellect: how
mortified vanity will form excuses for itself; and how temper turns
angrily upon conscience, that reproves it. How often have we called our
judge our enemy, because he has given sentence against us!—How often
have we called the right wrong, because the right condemns us! And in
the lives of many of the bitter foes of the Christian doctrine, can we
find no personal reason for their hostility? The men in Athens said it
was out of regard for religion that they murdered Socrates; but we have
had time, since then, to reconsider the verdict; and Socrates’
character is pretty pure now, in spite of the sentence and the jury of
those days.
The Parisian philosophers will attempt to explain to you the changes
through which Madame Sand’s mind has passed,—the initiatory trials,
labors, and sufferings which she has had to go through,—before she
reached her present happy state of mental illumination. She teaches her
wisdom in parables, that are, mostly, a couple of volumes long; and
began, first, by an eloquent attack on marriage, in the charming novel
of “Indiana.” “Pity,” cried she, “for the poor woman who, united to a
being whose brute force makes him her superior, should venture to break
the bondage which is imposed on her, and allow her heart to be free.”
In support of this claim of pity, she writes two volumes of the most
exquisite prose. What a tender, suffering creature is Indiana; how
little her husband appreciates that gentleness which he is crushing by
his tyranny and brutal scorn; how natural it is that, in the absence of
his sympathy, she, poor clinging confiding creature, should seek
elsewhere for shelter; how cautious should we be, to call criminal—to
visit with too heavy a censure—an act which is one of the natural
impulses of a tender heart, that seeks but for a worthy object of love.
But why attempt to tell the tale of beautiful Indiana? Madame Sand has
written it so well, that not the hardest-hearted husband in Christendom
can fail to be touched by her sorrows, though he may refuse to listen
to her argument. Let us grant, for argument’s sake, that the laws of
marriage, especially the French laws of marriage, press very cruelly
upon unfortunate women.
But if one wants to have a question of this, or any nature, honestly
argued, it is, better, surely, to apply to an indifferent person for an
umpire. For instance, the stealing of pocket-handkerchiefs or
snuff-boxes may or may not be vicious; but if we, who have not the wit,
or will not take the trouble to decide the question ourselves, want to
hear the real rights of the matter, we should not, surely, apply to a
pickpocket to know what he thought on the point. It might naturally be
presumed that he would be rather a prejudiced person—particularly as
his reasoning, if successful, might get him OUT OF GAOL. This is a
homely illustration, no doubt; all we would urge by it is, that Madame
Sand having, according to the French newspapers, had a stern husband,
and also having, according to the newspapers, sought “sympathy”
elsewhere, her arguments may be considered to be somewhat partial, and
received with some little caution.
And tell us who have been the social reformers?—the haters, that is, of
the present system, according to which we live, love, marry, have
children, educate them, and endow them—ARE THEY PURE THEMSELVES? I do
believe not one; and directly a man begins to quarrel with the world
and its ways, and to lift up, as he calls it, the voice of his despair,
and preach passionately to mankind about this tyranny of faith,
customs, laws; if we examine what the personal character of the
preacher is, we begin pretty clearly to understand the value of the
doctrine. Any one can see why Rousseau should be such a whimpering
reformer, and Byron such a free and easy misanthropist, and why our
accomplished Madame Sand, who has a genius and eloquence inferior to
neither, should take the present condition of mankind (French-kind) so
much to heart, and labor so hotly to set it right.
After “Indiana” (which, we presume, contains the lady’s notions upon
wives and husbands) came “Valentine,” which may be said to exhibit her
doctrine, in regard of young men and maidens, to whom the author would
accord, as we fancy, the same tender license. “Valentine” was followed
by “Lelia,” a wonderful book indeed, gorgeous in eloquence, and rich in
magnificent poetry: a regular topsyturvyfication of morality, a
thieves’ and prostitutes’ apotheosis. This book has received some late
enlargements and emendations by the writer; it contains her notions on
morals, which, as we have said, are so peculiar, that, alas! they only
can be mentioned here, not particularized: but of “Spiridion” we may
write a few pages, as it is her religious manifesto.
In this work, the lady asserts her pantheistical doctrine, and openly
attacks the received Christian creed. She declares it to be useless
now, and unfitted to the exigencies and the degree of culture of the
actual world; and, though it would be hardly worth while to combat her
opinions in due form, it is, at least, worth while to notice them, not
merely from the extraordinary eloquence and genius of the woman
herself, but because they express the opinions of a great number of
people besides: for she not only produces her own thoughts, but
imitates those of others very eagerly; and one finds in her writings so
much similarity with others, or, in others, so much resemblance to her,
that the book before us may pass for the expression of the sentiments
of a certain French party.
“Dieu est mort,” says another writer of the same class, and of great
genius too.—“Dieu est mort,” writes Mr. Henry Heine, speaking of the
Christian God; and he adds, in a daring figure of
speech;—“N’entendez-vous pas sonner la Clochette?—on porte les
sacremens à un Dieu qui se meurt!” Another of the pantheist poetical
philosophers, Mr. Edgar Quinet, has a poem, in which Christ and the
Virgin Mary are made to die similarly, and the former is classed with
Prometheus. This book of “Spiridion” is a continuation of the theme,
and perhaps you will listen to some of the author’s expositions of it.
It must be confessed that the controversialists of the present day have
an eminent advantage over their predecessors in the days of folios; it
required some learning then to write a book, and some time, at
least—for the very labor of writing out a thousand such vast pages
would demand a considerable period. But now, in the age of duodecimos,
the system is reformed altogether: a male or female controversialist
draws upon his imagination, and not his learning; makes a story instead
of an argument, and, in the course of 150 pages (where the preacher has
it all his own way) will prove or disprove you anything. And, to our
shame be it said, we Protestants have set the example of this kind of
proselytism—those detestable mixtures of truth, lies, false sentiment,
false reasoning, bad grammar, correct and genuine philanthropy and
piety—I mean our religious tracts, which any woman or man, be he ever
so silly, can take upon himself to write, and sell for a penny, as if
religious instruction were the easiest thing in the world. We, I say,
have set the example in this kind of composition, and all the sects of
the earth will, doubtless, speedily follow it. I can point you out
blasphemies in famous pious tracts that are as dreadful as those above
mentioned; but this is no place for such discussions, and we had better
return to Madame Sand. As Mrs. Sherwood expounds, by means of many
touching histories and anecdotes of little boys and girls, her notions
of church history, church catechism, church doctrine;—as the author of
“Father Clement, a Roman Catholic Story,” demolishes the stately
structure of eighteen centuries, the mighty and beautiful Roman
Catholic faith, in whose bosom repose so many saints and sages,—by the
means of a three-and-sixpenny duodecimo volume, which tumbles over the
vast fabric, as David’s pebble-stone did Goliath;—as, again, the Roman
Catholic author of “Geraldine” falls foul of Luther and Calvin, and
drowns the awful echoes of their tremendous protest by the sounds of
her little half-crown trumpet: in like manner, by means of pretty
sentimental tales, and cheap apologues, Mrs. Sand proclaims HER
truth—that we need a new Messiah, and that the Christian religion is no
more! O awful, awful name of God! Light unbearable! Mystery
unfathomable! Vastness immeasurable!—Who are these who come forward to
explain the mystery, and gaze unblinking into the depths of the light,
and measure the immeasurable vastness to a hair? O name, that God’s
people of old did fear to utter! O light, that God’s prophet would have
perished had he seen! Who are these that are now so familiar with
it?—Women, truly; for the most part weak women—weak in intellect, weak
mayhap in spelling and grammar, but marvellously strong in
faith:—women, who step down to the people with stately step and voice
of authority, and deliver their twopenny tablets, as if there were some
Divine authority for the wretched nonsense recorded there!
With regard to the spelling and grammar, our Parisian Pythoness stands,
in the goodly fellowship, remarkable. Her style is a noble, and, as far
as a foreigner can judge, a strange tongue, beautifully rich and pure.
She has a very exuberant imagination, and, with it, a very chaste style
of expression. She never scarcely indulges in declamation, as other
modern prophets do, and yet her sentences are exquisitely melodious and
full. She seldom runs a thought to death (after the manner of some
prophets, who, when they catch a little one, toy with it until they
kill it), but she leaves you at the end of one of her brief, rich,
melancholy sentences, with plenty of food for future cogitation. I
can’t express to you the charm of them; they seem to me like the sound
of country bells—provoking I don’t know what vein of musing and
meditation, and falling sweetly and sadly on the ear.
This wonderful power of language must have been felt by most people who
read Madame Sand’s first books, “Valentine” and “Indiana”: in
“Spiridion” it is greater, I think, than ever; and for those who are
not afraid of the matter of the novel, the manner will be found most
delightful. The author’s intention, I presume, is to describe, in a
parable, her notions of the downfall of the Catholic church; and,
indeed, of the whole Christian scheme: she places her hero in a
monastery in Italy, where, among the characters about him, and the
events which occur, the particular tenets of Madame Dudevant’s doctrine
are not inaptly laid down. Innocent, faithful, tender-hearted, a young
monk, by name Angel, finds himself, when he has pronounced his vows, an
object of aversion and hatred to the godly men whose lives he so much
respects, and whose love he would make any sacrifice to win. After
enduring much, he flings himself at the feet of his confessor, and begs
for his sympathy and counsel; but the confessor spurns him away, and
accuses him, fiercely, of some unknown and terrible crime—bids him
never return to the confessional until contrition has touched his
heart, and the stains which sully his spirit are, by sincere
repentance, washed away.
“Thus speaking,” says Angel, “Father Hegesippus tore away his robe,
which I was holding in my supplicating hands. In a sort of wildness I
still grasped it tighter; he pushed me fiercely from him, and I fell
with my face towards the ground. He quitted me, closing violently after
him the door of the sacristy, in which this scene had passed. I was
left alone in the darkness. Either from the violence of my fall, or the
excess of my grief, a vein had burst in my throat, and a haemorrhage
ensued. I had not the force to rise; I felt my senses rapidly sinking,
and, presently, I lay stretched on the pavement, unconscious, and
bathed in my blood.”
[Now the wonderful part of the story begins.]
“I know not how much time I passed in this way. As I came to myself I
felt an agreeable coolness. It seemed as if some harmonious air was
playing round about me, stirring gently in my hair, and drying the
drops of perspiration on my brow. It seemed to approach, and then again
to withdraw, breathing now softly and sweetly in the distance, and now
returning, as if to give me strength and courage to rise.
“I would not, however, do so as yet; for I felt myself, as I lay, under
the influence of a pleasure quite new to me; and listened, in a kind of
peaceful aberration, to the gentle murmurs of the summer wind, as it
breathed on me through the closed window-blinds above me. Then I
fancied I heard a voice that spoke to me from the end of the sacristy:
it whispered so low that I could not catch the words. I remained
motionless, and gave it my whole attention. At last I heard,
distinctly, the following sentence:—‘Spirit of Truth, raise up these
victims of ignorance and imposture.’ ‘Father Hegesippus,’ said I, in a
weak voice, ‘is that you who are returning to me?’ But no one answered.
I lifted myself on my hands and knees, I listened again, but I heard
nothing. I got up completely, and looked about me: I had fallen so near
to the only door in this little room, that none, after the departure of
the confessor, could have entered it without passing over me; besides,
the door was shut, and only opened from the inside by a strong lock of
the ancient shape. I touched it, and assured myself that it was closed.
I was seized with terror, and, for some moments, did not dare to move.
Leaning against the door, I looked round, and endeavored to see into
the gloom in which the angles of the room were enveloped. A pale light,
which came from an upper window, half closed, was seen to be trembling
in the midst of the apartment. The wind beat the shutter to and fro,
and enlarged or diminished the space through which the light issued.
The objects which were in this half light—the praying-desk, surmounted
by its skull—a few books lying on the benches—a surplice hanging
against the wall—seemed to move with the shadow of the foliage that the
air agitated behind the window. When I thought I was alone, I felt
ashamed of my former timidity; I made the sign of the cross, and was
about to move forward in order to open the shutter altogether, but a
deep sigh came from the praying-desk, and kept me nailed to my place.
And yet I saw the desk distinctly enough to be sure that no person was
near it. Then I had an idea which gave me courage. Some person, I
thought, is behind the shutter, and has been saying his prayers outside
without thinking of me. But who would be so bold as to express such
wishes and utter such a prayer as I had just heard?
“Curiosity, the only passion and amusement permitted in a cloister, now
entirely possessed me, and I advanced towards the window. But I had not
made a step when a black shadow, as it seemed to me, detaching itself
from the praying-desk, traversed the room, directing itself towards the
window, and passed swiftly by me. The movement was so rapid that I had
not time to avoid what seemed a body advancing towards me, and my
fright was so great that I thought I should faint a second time. But I
felt nothing, and, as if the shadow had passed through me, I saw it
suddenly disappear to my left.
“I rushed to the window, I pushed back the blind with precipitation,
and looked round the sacristy: I was there, entirely alone. I looked
into the garden—it was deserted, and the mid-day wind was wandering
among the flowers. I took courage, I examined all the corners of the
room; I looked behind the praying-desk, which was very large, and I
shook all the sacerdotal vestments which were hanging on the walls,
everything was in its natural condition, and could give me no
explanation of what had just occurred. The sight of all the blood I had
lost led me to fancy that my brain had, probably, been weakened by the
haemorrhage, and that I had been a prey to some delusion. I retired to
my cell, and remained shut up there until the next day.”
I don’t know whether the reader has been as much struck with the above
mysterious scene as the writer has; but the fancy of it strikes me as
very fine; and the natural SUPERNATURALNESS is kept up in the best
style. The shutter swaying to and fro, the fitful LIGHT APPEARING over
the furniture of the room, and giving it an air of strange motion—the
awful shadow which passed through the body of the timid young
novice—are surely very finely painted. “I rushed to the shutter, and
flung it back: there was no one in the sacristy. I looked into the
garden; it was deserted, and the mid-day wind was roaming among the
flowers.” The dreariness is wonderfully described: only the poor pale
boy looking eagerly out from the window of the sacristy, and the hot
mid-day wind walking in the solitary garden. How skilfully is each of
these little strokes dashed in, and how well do all together combine to
make a picture! But we must have a little more about Spiridion’s
wonderful visitant.
“As I entered into the garden, I stepped a little on one side, to make
way for a person whom I saw before me. He was a young man of surprising
beauty, and attired in a foreign costume. Although dressed in the large
black robe which the superiors of our order wear, he had, underneath, a
short jacket of fine cloth, fastened round the waist by a leathern
belt, and a buckle of silver, after the manner of the old German
students. Like them, he wore, instead of the sandals of our monks,
short tight boots; and over the collar of his shirt, which fell on his
shoulders, and was as white as snow, hung, in rich golden curls, the
most beautiful hair I ever saw. He was tall, and his elegant posture
seemed to reveal to me that he was in the habit of commanding. With
much respect, and yet uncertain, I half saluted him. He did not return
my salute; but he smiled on me with so benevolent an air, and at the
same time, his eyes severe and blue, looked towards me with an
expression of such compassionate tenderness, that his features have
never since then passed away from my recollection. I stopped, hoping he
would speak to me, and persuading myself, from the majesty of his
aspect, that he had the power to protect me; but the monk, who was
walking behind me, and who did not seem to remark him in the least,
forced him brutally to step aside from the walk, and pushed me so
rudely as almost to cause me to fall. Not wishing to engage in a
quarrel with this coarse monk, I moved away; but, after having taken a
few steps in the garden, I looked back, and saw the unknown still
gazing on me with looks of the tenderest solicitude. The sun shone full
upon him, and made his hair look radiant. He sighed, and lifted his
fine eyes to heaven, as if to invoke its justice in my favor, and to
call it to bear witness to my misery; he turned slowly towards the
sanctuary, entered into the quire, and was lost, presently, in the
shade. I longed to return, spite of the monk, to follow this noble
stranger, and to tell him my afflictions; but who was he, that I
imagined he would listen to them, and cause them to cease? I felt, even
while his softness drew me towards him, that he still inspired me with
a kind of fear; for I saw in his physiognomy as much austerity as
sweetness.”
Who was he?—we shall see that. He was somebody very mysterious indeed;
but our author has taken care, after the manner of her sex, to make a
very pretty fellow of him, and to dress him in the most becoming
costumes possible.
The individual in tight boots and a rolling collar, with the copious
golden locks, and the solemn blue eyes, who had just gazed on
Spiridion, and inspired him with such a feeling of tender awe, is a
much more important personage than the reader might suppose at first
sight. This beautiful, mysterious, dandy ghost, whose costume, with a
true woman’s coquetry, Madame Dudevant has so rejoiced to describe—is
her religious type, a mystical representation of Faith struggling up
towards Truth, through superstition, doubt, fear, reason,—in tight
inexpressibles, with “a belt such as is worn by the old German
students.” You will pardon me for treating such an awful person as this
somewhat lightly; but there is always, I think, such a dash of the
ridiculous in the French sublime, that the critic should try and do
justice to both, or he may fail in giving a fair account of either.
This character of Hebronius, the type of Mrs. Sand’s convictions—if
convictions they may be called—or, at least, the allegory under which
her doubts are represented, is, in parts, very finely drawn; contains
many passages of truth, very deep and touching, by the side of others
so entirely absurd and unreasonable, that the reader’s feelings are
continually swaying between admiration and something very like
contempt—always in a kind of wonder at the strange mixture before him.
But let us hear Madame Sand:—
“Peter Hebronius,” says our author, “was not originally so named. His
real name was Samuel. He was a Jew, and born in a little village in the
neighborhood of Innsprück. His family, which possessed a considerable
fortune, left him, in his early youth, completely free to his own
pursuits. From infancy he had shown that these were serious. He loved
to be alone and passed his days, and sometimes his nights, wandering
among the mountains and valleys in the neighborhood of his birthplace.
He would often sit by the brink of torrents, listening to the voice of
their waters, and endeavoring to penetrate the meaning which Nature had
hidden in those sounds. As he advanced in years, his inquiries became
more curious and more grave. It was necessary that he should receive a
solid education, and his parents sent him to study in the German
universities. Luther had been dead only a century, and his words and
his memory still lived in the enthusiasm of his disciples. The new
faith was strengthening the conquests it had made; the Reformers were
as ardent as in the first days, but their ardor was more enlightened
and more measured. Proselytism was still carried on with zeal, and new
converts were made every day. In listening to the morality and to the
dogmas which Lutheranism had taken from Catholicism, Samuel was filled
with admiration. His bold and sincere spirit instantly compared the
doctrines which were now submitted to him, with those in the belief of
which he had been bred; and, enlightened by the comparison, was not
slow to acknowledge the inferiority of Judaism. He said to himself,
that a religion made for a single people, to the exclusion of all
others,—which only offered a barbarous justice for rule of
conduct,—which neither rendered the present intelligible nor
satisfactory, and left the future uncertain,—could not be that of noble
souls and lofty intellects; and that he could not be the God of truth
who had dictated, in the midst of thunder, his vacillating will, and
had called to the performance of his narrow wishes the slaves of a
vulgar terror. Always conversant with himself, Samuel, who had spoken
what he thought, now performed what he had spoken; and, a year after
his arrival in Germany, solemnly abjured Judaism, and entered into the
bosom of the Reformed Church. As he did not wish to do things by
halves, and desired as much as was in him to put off the old man and
lead a new life, he changed his name of Samuel to that of Peter. Some
time passed, during which he strengthened and instructed himself in his
new religion. Very soon he arrived at the point of searching for
objections to refute, and adversaries to overthrow. Bold and
enterprising, he went at once to the strongest, and Bossuet was the
first Catholic author that he set himself to read. He commenced with a
kind of disdain; believing that the faith which he had just embraced
contained the pure truth. He despised all the attacks which could be
made against it, and laughed already at the irresistible arguments
which he was to find in the works of the Eagle of Meaux. But his
mistrust and irony soon gave place to wonder first, and then to
admiration: he thought that the cause pleaded by such an advocate must,
at least, be respectable; and, by a natural transition, came to think
that great geniuses would only devote themselves to that which was
great. He then studied Catholicism with the same ardor and impartiality
which he had bestowed on Lutheranism. He went into France to gain
instruction from the professors of the Mother Church, as he had from
the Doctors of the reformed creed in Germany. He saw Arnauld Fénélon,
that second Gregory of Nazianzen, and Bossuet himself. Guided by these
masters, whose virtues made him appreciate their talents the more, he
rapidly penetrated to the depth of the mysteries of the Catholic
doctrine and morality. He found, in this religion, all that had for him
constituted the grandeur and beauty of Protestantism,—the dogmas of the
Unity and Eternity of God, which the two religions had borrowed from
Judaism; and, what seemed the natural consequence of the last
doctrine—a doctrine, however, to which the Jews had not arrived—the
doctrine of the immortality of the soul; free will in this life; in the
next, recompense for the good, and punishment for the evil. He found,
more pure, perhaps, and more elevated in Catholicism than in
Protestantism, that sublime morality which preaches equality to man,
fraternity, love, charity, renouncement of self, devotion to your
neighbor; Catholicism, in a word, seemed to possess that vast formula,
and that vigorous unity, which Lutheranism wanted. The latter had,
indeed, in its favor, the liberty of inquiry, which is also a want of
the human mind; and had proclaimed the authority of individual reason:
but it had so lost that which is the necessary basis and vital
condition of all revealed religion—the principle of infallibility;
because nothing can live except in virtue of the laws that presided at
its birth; and, in consequence, one revelation cannot be continued and
confirmed without another. Now, infallibility is nothing but revelation
continued by God, or the Word, in the person of his vicars.
“At last, after much reflection, Hebronius acknowledged himself
entirely and sincerely convinced, and received baptism from the hands
of Bossuet. He added the name of Spiridion to that of Peter, to signify
that he had been twice enlightened by the Spirit. Resolved
thenceforward to consecrate his life to the worship of the new God who
had called him to Him, and to the study of His doctrines, he passed
into Italy, and, with the aid of a large fortune, which one of his
uncles, a Catholic like himself, had left to him, he built this convent
where we now are.”
A friend of mine, who has just come from Italy, says that he has there
left Messrs. Sp—r, P—l, and W. Dr—d, who were the lights of the great
church in Newman Street, who were themselves apostles, and declared and
believed that every word of nonsense which fell from their lips was a
direct spiritual intervention. These gentlemen have become Puseyites
already, and are, my friend states, in the high way to Catholicism.
Madame Sand herself was a Catholic some time since: having been
converted to that faith along with M. N—, of the Academy of Music; Mr.
L—, the pianoforte player; and one or two other chosen individuals, by
the famous Abbé de la M—. Abbé de la M— (so told me in the Diligence, a
priest, who read his breviary and gossiped alternately very curiously
and pleasantly) is himself an âme perdue: the man spoke of his brother
clergyman with actual horror; and it certainly appears that the Abbé’s
works of conversion have not prospered; for Madame Sand, having brought
her hero (and herself, as we may presume) to the point of Catholicism,
proceeds directly to dispose of that as she has done of Judaism and
Protestantism, and will not leave, of the whole fabric of Christianity,
a single stone standing.
I think the fate of our English Newman Street apostles, and of M. de la
M—, the mad priest, and his congregation of mad converts, should be a
warning to such of us as are inclined to dabble in religious
speculations; for, in them, as in all others, our flighty brains soon
lose themselves, and we find our reason speedily lying prostrated at
the mercy of our passions; and I think that Madame Sand’s novel of
Spiridion may do a vast deal of good, and bears a good moral with it;
though not such an one, perhaps, as our fair philosopher intended. For
anything he learned, Samuel-Peter-Spiridion-Hebronius might have
remained a Jew from the beginning to the end. Wherefore be in such a
hurry to set up new faiths? Wherefore, Madame Sand, try and be so
preternaturally wise? Wherefore be so eager to jump out of one
religion, for the purpose of jumping into another? See what good this
philosophical friskiness has done you, and on what sort of ground you
are come at last. You are so wonderfully sagacious, that you flounder
in mud at every step; so amazingly clear-sighted, that your eyes cannot
see an inch before you, having put out, with that extinguishing genius
of yours, every one of the lights that are sufficient for the conduct
of common men. And for what? Let our friend Spiridion speak for
himself. After setting up his convent, and filling it with monks, who
entertain an immense respect for his wealth and genius, Father
Hebronius, unanimously elected prior, gives himself up to further
studies, and leaves his monks to themselves. Industrious and sober as
they were, originally, they grow quickly intemperate and idle; and
Hebronius, who does not appear among his flock until he has freed
himself of the Catholic religion, as he has of the Jewish and the
Protestant, sees, with dismay, the evil condition of his disciples, and
regrets, too late, the precipitancy by which he renounced, then and for
ever, Christianity. “But, as he had no new religion to adopt in its
place, and as, grown more prudent and calm, he did not wish to accuse
himself unnecessarily, once more, of inconstancy and apostasy, he still
maintained all the exterior forms of the worship which inwardly he had
abjured. But it was not enough for him to have quitted error, it was
necessary to discover truth. But Hebronius had well looked round to
discover it; he could not find anything that resembled it. Then
commenced for him a series of sufferings, unknown and terrible. Placed
face to face with doubt, this sincere and religious spirit was
frightened at its own solitude; and as it had no other desire nor aim
on earth than truth, and nothing else here below interested it, he
lived absorbed in his own sad contemplations, looked ceaselessly into
the vague that surrounded him like an ocean without bounds, and seeing
the horizon retreat and retreat as ever he wished to near it. Lost in
this immense uncertainty, he felt as if attacked by vertigo, and his
thoughts whirled within his brain. Then, fatigued with his vain toils
and hopeless endeavors, he would sink down depressed, unmanned,
life-wearied, only living in the sensation of that silent grief which
he felt and could not comprehend.”
It is a pity that this hapless Spiridion, so eager in his passage from
one creed to another, and so loud in his profession of the truth,
wherever he fancied that he had found it, had not waited a little,
before he avowed himself either Catholic or Protestant, and implicated
others in errors and follies which might, at least, have been confined
to his own bosom, and there have lain comparatively harmless. In what a
pretty state, for instance, will Messrs. Dr—d and P—l have left their
Newman Street congregation, who are still plunged in their old
superstitions, from which their spiritual pastors and masters have been
set free! In what a state, too, do Mrs. Sand and her brother and sister
philosophers, Templars, Saint Simonians, Fourierites, Lerouxites, or
whatever the sect may be, leave the unfortunate people who have
listened to their doctrines, and who have not the opportunity, or the
fiery versatility of belief, which carries their teachers from one
creed to another, leaving only exploded lies and useless recantations
behind them! I wish the state would make a law that one individual
should not be allowed to preach more than one doctrine in his life, or,
at any rate, should be soundly corrected for every change of creed. How
many charlatans would have been silenced,—how much conceit would have
been kept within bounds,—how many fools, who are dazzled by fine
sentences, and made drunk by declamation, would have remained, quiet
and sober, in that quiet and sober way of faith which their fathers
held before them. However, the reader will be glad to learn that, after
all his doubts and sorrows, Spiridion does discover the truth (THE
truth, what a wise Spiridion!) and some discretion with it; for, having
found among his monks, who are dissolute, superstitious—and all hate
him—one only being, Fulgentius, who is loving, candid, and pious, he
says to him, “If you were like myself, if the first want of your nature
were, like mine, to know, I would, without hesitation, lay bare to you
my entire thoughts. I would make you drink the cup of truth, which I
myself have filled with so many tears, at the risk of intoxicating you
with the draught. But it is not so, alas! you are made to love rather
than to know, and your heart is stronger than your intellect. You are
attached to Catholicism,—I believe so, at least,—by bonds of sentiment
which you could not break without pain, and which, if you were to
break, the truth which I could lay bare to you in return would not
repay you for what you had sacrificed. Instead of exalting, it would
crush you, very likely. It is a food too strong for ordinary men, and
which, when it does not revivify, smothers. I will not, then, reveal to
you this doctrine, which is the triumph of my life, and the consolation
of my last days; because it might, perhaps, be for you only a cause of
mourning and despair..... Of all the works which my long studies have
produced, there is one alone which I have not given to the flames; for
it alone is complete. In that you will find me entire, and there LIES
THE TRUTH. And, as the sage has said you must not bury your treasures
in a well, I will not confide mine to the brutal stupidity of these
monks. But as this volume should only pass into hands worthy to touch
it, and be laid open for eyes that are capable of comprehending its
mysteries, I shall exact from the reader one condition, which, at the
same time, shall be a proof: I shall carry it with me to the tomb, in
order that he who one day shall read it, may have courage enough to
brave the vain terrors of the grave, in searching for it amid the dust
of my sepulchre. As soon as I am dead, therefore, place this writing on
my breast..... Ah! when the time comes for reading it, I think my
withered heart will spring up again, as the frozen grass at the return
of the sun, and that, from the midst of its infinite transformations,
my spirit will enter into immediate communication with thine!”
Does not the reader long to be at this precious manuscript, which
contains THE TRUTH; and ought he not to be very much obliged to Mrs.
Sand, for being so good as to print it for him? We leave all the story
aside: how Fulgentius had not the spirit to read the manuscript, but
left the secret to Alexis; how Alexis, a stern old philosophical
unbelieving monk as ever was, tried in vain to lift up the gravestone,
but was taken with fever, and obliged to forego the discovery; and how,
finally, Angel, his disciple, a youth amiable and innocent as his name,
was the destined person who brought the long-buried treasure to light.
Trembling and delighted, the pair read this tremendous MANUSCRIPT OF
SPIRIDION.
Will it be believed, that of all the dull, vague, windy documents that
mortal ever set eyes on, this is the dullest? If this be absolute
truth, à quoi bon search for it, since we have long, long had the jewel
in our possession, or since, at least, it has been held up as such by
every sham philosopher who has had a mind to pass off his wares on the
public? Hear Spiridion:—
“How much have I wept, how much have I suffered, how much have I
prayed, how much have I labored, before I understood the cause and the
aim of my passage on this earth! After many incertitudes, after much
remorse, after many scruples, I HAVE COMPREHENDED THAT I WAS A
MARTYR!—But why my martyrdom? said I; what crimne did I commit before I
was born, thus to be condemned to labor and groaning, from the hour
when I first saw the day up to that when I am about to enter into the
night of the tomb?
“At last, by dint of imploring God—by dint of inquiry into the history
of man, a ray of the truth has descended on my brow, and the shadows of
the past have melted from before my eyes. I have lifted a corner of the
curtain: I have seen enough to know that my life, like that of the rest
of the human race, has been a series of necessary errors, yet, to speak
more correctly, of incomplete truths, conducting, more or less slowly
and directly, to absolute truth and ideal perfection. But when will
they rise on the face of the earth—when will they issue from the bosom
of the Divinity—those generations who shall salute the august
countenance of Truth, and proclaim the reign of the ideal on earth? I
see well how humanity marches, but I neither can see its cradle nor its
apotheosis. Man seems to me a transitory race, between the beast and
the angel; but I know not how many centuries have been required, that
he might pass from the state of brute to the state of man, and I cannot
tell how many ages are necessary that he may pass from the state of man
to the state of angel!
“Yet I hope, and I feel within me, at the approach of death, that which
warns me that great destinies await humanity. In this life all is over
for me. Much have I striven, to advance but little: I have labored
without ceasing, and have done almost nothing. Yet, after pains
immeasurable, I die content, for I know that I have done all I could,
and am sure that the little I have done will not be lost.
“What, then, have I done? this wilt thou demand of me, man of a future
age, who will seek for truth in the testaments of the past. Thou who
wilt be no more Catholic—no more Christian, thou wilt ask of the poor
monk, lying in the dust, an account of his life and death. Thou wouldst
know wherefore were his vows, why his austerities, his labors, his
retreat, his prayers?
“You who turn back to me, in order that I may guide you on your road,
and that you may arrive more quickly at the goal which it has not been
my lot to attain, pause, yet, for a moment, and look upon the past
history of humanity. You will see that its fate has been ever to choose
between the least of two evils, and ever to commit great faults in
order to avoid others still greater. You will see.... on one side, the
heathen mythology, that debased the spirit, in its efforts to deify the
flesh; on the other, the austere Christian principle, that debased the
flesh too much, in order to raise the worship of the spirit. You will
see, afterwards, how the religion of Christ embodies itself in a
church, and raises itself a generous democratic power against the
tyranny of princes. Later still, you will see how that power has
attained its end, and passed beyond it. You will see it, having chained
and conquered princes, league itself with them, in order to oppress the
people, and seize on temporal power. Schism, then, raises up against it
the standard of revolt, and preaches the bold and legitimate principle
of liberty of conscience: but, also, you will see how this liberty of
conscience brings religious anarchy in its train; or, worse still,
religious indifference and disgust. And if your soul, shattered in the
tempestuous changes which you behold humanity undergoing, would strike
out for itself a passage through the rocks, amidst which, like a frail
bark, lies tossing trembling truth, you will be embarrassed to choose
between the new philosophers—who, in preaching tolerance, destroy
religious and social unity—and the last Christians, who, to preserve
society, that is, religion and philosophy, are obliged to brave the
principle of toleration. Man of truth! to whom I address, at once, my
instruction and my justification, at the time when you shall live, the
science of truth no doubt will have advanced a step. Think, then, of
all your fathers have suffered, as, bending beneath the weight of their
ignorance and uncertainty, they have traversed the desert across which,
with so much pain, they have conducted thee! And if the pride of thy
young learning shall make thee contemplate the petty strifes in which
our life has been consumed, pause and tremble, as you think of that
which is still unknown to yourself, and of the judgment that your
descendants will pass on you. Think of this, and learn to respect all
those who, seeking their way in all sincerity, have wandered from the
path, frightened by the storm, and sorely tried by the severe hand of
the All-Powerful. Think of this, and prostrate yourself; for all these,
even the most mistaken among them, are saints and martyrs.
“Without their conquests and their defeats, thou wert in darkness
still. Yes, their failures, their errors even, have a right to your
respect; for man is weak..... Weep then, for us obscure
travellers—unknown victims, who, by our mortal sufferings and
unheard-of labors, have prepared the way before you. Pity me, who have
passionately loved justice, and perseveringly sought for truth, only
opened my eyes to shut them again for ever, and saw that I had been in
vain endeavoring to support a ruin, to take refuge in a vault of which
the foundations were worn away.”....
The rest of the book of Spiridion is made up of a history of the rise,
progress, and (what our philosopher is pleased to call) decay of
Christianity—of an assertion, that the “doctrine of Christ is
incomplete;” that “Christ may, nevertheless, take his place in the
Pantheon of divine men!” and of a long, disgusting, absurd, and impious
vision, in which the Saviour, Moses, David, and Elijah are represented,
and in which Christ is made to say—“WE ARE ALL MESSIAHS, when we wish
to bring the reign of truth upon earth; we are all Christs, when we
suffer for it!”
And this is the ultimatum, the supreme secret, the absolute truth! and
it has been published by Mrs. Sand, for so many napoleons per sheet, in
the Revue des Deux Mondes: and the Deux Mondes are to abide by it for
the future. After having attained it, are we a whit wiser? “Man is
between an angel and a beast: I don’t know how long it is since he was
a brute—I can’t say how long it will be before he is an angel.” Think
of people living by their wits, and living by such a wit as this! Think
of the state of mental debauch and disease which must have been passed
through, ere such words could be written, and could be popular!
When a man leaves our dismal, smoky London atmosphere, and breathes,
instead of coal-smoke and yellow fog, this bright, clear, French air,
he is quite intoxicated by it at first, and feels a glow in his blood,
and a joy in his spirits, which scarcely thrice a year, and then only
at a distance from London, he can attain in England. Is the
intoxication, I wonder, permanent among the natives? and may we not
account for the ten thousand frantic freaks of these people by the
peculiar influence of French air and sun? The philosophers are from
night to morning drunk, the politicians are drunk, the literary men
reel and stagger from one absurdity to another, and how shall we
understand their vagaries? Let us suppose, charitably, that Madame Sand
had inhaled a more than ordinary quantity of this laughing gas when she
wrote for us this precious manuscript of Spiridion. That great
destinies are in prospect for the human race we may fancy, without her
ladyship’s word for it: but more liberal than she, and having a little
retrospective charity, as well as that easy prospective benevolence
which Mrs. Sand adopts, let us try and think there is some hope for our
fathers (who were nearer brutality than ourselves, according to the
Sandean creed), or else there is a very poor chance for us, who, great
philosophers as we are, are yet, alas! far removed from that angelic
consummation which all must wish for so devoutly. She cannot say—is it
not extraordinary?—how many centuries have been necessary before man
could pass from the brutal state to his present condition, or how many
ages will be required ere we may pass from the state of man to the
state of angels? What the deuce is the use of chronology or philosophy?
We were beasts, and we can’t tell when our tails dropped off: we shall
be angels; but when our wings are to begin to sprout, who knows? In the
meantime, O man of genius, follow our counsel: lead an easy life, don’t
stick at trifles; never mind about DUTY, it is only made for slaves; if
the world reproach you, reproach the world in return, you have a good
loud tongue in your head: if your straight-laced morals injure your
mental respiration, fling off the old-fashioned stays, and leave your
free limbs to rise and fall as Nature pleases; and when you have grown
pretty sick of your liberty, and yet unfit to return to restraint,
curse the world, and scorn it, and be miserable, like my Lord Byron and
other philosophers of his kidney; or else mount a step higher, and,
with conceit still more monstrous, and mental vision still more
wretchedly debauched and weak, begin suddenly to find yourself
afflicted with a maudlin compassion for the human race, and a desire to
set them right after your own fashion. There is the quarrelsome stage
of drunkenness, when a man can as yet walk and speak, when he can call
names, and fling plates and wine-glasses at his neighbor’s head with a
pretty good aim; after this comes the pathetic stage, when the patient
becomes wondrous philanthropic, and weeps wildly, as he lies in the
gutter, and fancies he is at home in bed—where he ought to be; but this
is an allegory.
I don’t wish to carry this any farther, or to say a word in defence of
the doctrine which Mrs. Dudevant has found “incomplete”;—here, at
least, is not the place for discussing its merits, any more than Mrs.
Sand’s book was the place for exposing, forsooth, its errors: our
business is only with the day and the new novels, and the clever or
silly people who write them. Oh! if they but knew their places, and
would keep to them, and drop their absurd philosophical jargon! Not all
the big words in the world can make Mrs. Sand talk like a philosopher:
when will she go back to her old trade, of which she was the very
ablest practitioner in France?
I should have been glad to give some extracts from the dramatic and
descriptive parts of the novel, that cannot, in point of style and
beauty, be praised too highly. One must suffice,—it is the descent of
Alexis to seek that unlucky manuscript, Spiridion.
“It seemed to me,” he begins, “that the descent was eternal; and that I
was burying myself in the depths of Erebus: at last, I reached a level
place,—and I heard a mournful voice deliver these words, as it were, to
the secret centre of the earth—‘He will mount that ascent no
more!’—Immediately I heard arise towards me, from the depth of
invisible abysses, a myriad of formidable voices united in a strange
chant—‘Let us destroy him! Let him be destroyed! What does he here
among the dead? Let him be delivered back to torture! Let him be given
again to life!’
“Then a feeble light began to pierce the darkness, and I perceived that
I stood on the lowest step of a staircase, vast as the foot of a
mountain. Behind me were thousands of steps of lurid iron; before me,
nothing but a void—an abyss, and ether; the blue gloom of midnight
beneath my feet, as above my head. I became delirious, and quitting
that staircase, which methought it was impossible for me to reascend, I
sprung forth into the void with an execration. But, immediately, when I
had uttered the curse, the void began to be filled with forms and
colors, and I presently perceived that I was in a vast gallery, along
which I advanced, trembling. There was still darkness round me; but the
hollows of the vaults gleamed with a red light, and showed me the
strange and hideous forms of their building..... I did not distinguish
the nearest objects; but those towards which I advanced assumed an
appearance more and more ominous, and my terror increased with every
step I took. The enormous pillars which supported the vault, and the
tracery thereof itself, were figures of men, of supernatural stature,
delivered to tortures without a name. Some hung by their feet, and,
locked in the coils of monstrous serpents, clenched their teeth in the
marble of the pavement; others, fastened by their waists, were dragged
upwards, these by their feet, those by their heads, towards capitals,
where other figures stooped towards them, eager to torment them. Other
pillars, again, represented a struggling mass of figures devouring one
another; each of which only offered a trunk severed to the knees or to
the shoulders, the fierce heads whereof retained life enough to seize
and devour that which was near them. There were some who, half hanging
down, agonized themselves by attempting, with their upper limbs, to
flay the lower moiety of their bodies, which drooped from the columns,
or were attached to the pedestals; and others, who, in their fight with
each other, were dragged along by morsels of flesh,—grasping which,
they clung to each other with a countenance of unspeakable hate and
agony. Along, or rather in place of, the frieze, there were on either
side a range of unclean beings, wearing the human form, but of a
loathsome ugliness, busied in tearing human corpses to pieces—in
feasting upon their limbs and entrails. From the vault, instead of
bosses and pendants, hung the crushed and wounded forms of children; as
if to escape these eaters of man’s flesh, they would throw themselves
downwards, and be dashed to pieces on the pavement..... The silence and
motionlessness of the whole added to its awfulness. I became so faint
with terror, that I stopped, and would fain have returned. But at that
moment I heard, from the depths of the gloom through which I had
passed, confused noises, like those of a multitude on its march. And
the sounds soon became more distinct, and the clamor fiercer, and the
steps came hurrying on tumultuously—at every new burst nearer, more
violent, more threatening. I thought that I was pursued by this
disorderly crowd; and I strove to advance, hurrying into the midst of
those dismal sculptures. Then it seemed as if those figures began to
heave,—and to sweat blood,—and their beady eyes to move in their
sockets. At once I beheld that they were all looking upon me, that they
were all leaning towards me,—some with frightful derision, others with
furious aversion. Every arm was raised against me, and they made as
though they would crush me with the quivering limbs they had torn one
from the other.”....
It is, indeed, a pity that the poor fellow gave himself the trouble to
go down into damp, unwholesome graves, for the purpose of fetching up a
few trumpery sheets of manuscript; and if the public has been rather
tired with their contents, and is disposed to ask why Mrs. Sand’s
religious or irreligious notions are to be brought forward to people
who are quite satisfied with their own, we can only say that this lady
is the representative of a vast class of her countrymen, whom the wits
and philosophers of the eighteenth century have brought to this
condition. The leaves of the Diderot and Rousseau tree have produced
this goodly fruit: here it is, ripe, bursting, and ready to fall;—and
how to fall? Heaven send that it may drop easily, for all can see that
the time is come.