of elements, trampling the irreligion of France beneath his feet, like
the Archangel thrusting Satan to his bottomless abyss. The spectacle
was not lost. It was that beautiful and sublime exhibition of moral
grandeur that quickened the noblest minds in Europe to imitative
virtue, and produced the school of the Reaction. It was rather the
spirit of British faith, and law, and loyalty, personified in him. The
same spirit had been felt in France before: it had moulded the genius
of Montesquieu, abstractly; but Burke was its mighty concrete, and he
wrote himself like a photograph upon kindred intellect throughout the
world. Before his day, the character of English liberty had been
laboriously studied and mechanically learned; but he, as its living
representative and embodiment, made himself the procreant author of an
intellectual family. I fear you will regard this as a theory of my
own, but I would not have ventured to say this on my mere surmise. One
whose religion identifies him with Ultramontanism has made the
acknowledgment before me. I refer to the English editor and translator
of Schlegel's _Philosophy of History_. According to him, Schlegel at
Vienna, and Goerres at Munich, were "the supreme oracles of _that
illustrious school of liberal conservatives_, which numbered, besides
those eminent Germans, a Baron von Haller in Switzerland, a Viscount
de Bonald in France, a Count Henri de Merode in Belgium, and a Count
de Maistre in Piedmont."[4] From the writings of these great men, in a
greater or less degree, he augurs the future political regeneration of
Europe; and yet, strongly warped as he is away from England, and
towards Rome, as the source of all moral and national good, he does
not conceal the fact that this splendid school of the Reaction was
"founded by our great Burke." My hopes from the writings of these men
are not so sanguine: but, so far as they are true to their original,
they have been already of great service. They may hereafter be made
still more powerful for good; and if, at the same time, the rising
school of Conservatism, which begins to make itself felt in America,
shall impart its wholesome influences to an off-shoot of England, so
vast already, and of such grand importance to the future, then, and
not till then, will be duly estimated the real greatness of those
splendid services which Burke was created to perform, not for his
country only, but for the human race.
Perhaps it could hardly have been otherwise; but it must always be
deplored that the Conservatism of England was reproduced on the
Continent in connexion with the Christianity of Ultramontanism. The
conservatism of de Stael and of Chateaubriand, though repudiated by
the _réactionnaires_, is indeed worthy of honourable mention, as their
characters will ever be of all admiration; yet it must be owned to be
deficient in force, and by no means executive. It was the Conservatism
of impulse--the Conservatism of genius, but not the Conservatism of
profound philosophy and energetic benevolence. The spirit that
breathes in the _Génie du Christianisme_ is always beautiful, and
often devout, yet it has been justly censured, as recommending less
the truth than the beauty of the religion of Jesus Christ; and though
it doubtless did something to reproduce the religious sentiment, it
seems to have effected nothing in behalf of religious principle. Its
author would have fulfilled a nobler mission had he taught his
countrymen, in sober prose, their radical defects in morality, and
their absolute lack of a conscience. The Conservatives of the Reaction
have at least attempted greater things. They have bluntly told the
French nation that they must reform; they have set themselves to
produce again the believing spirit: their mistake has been, that they
have confounded faith with superstition, and taken the cause of the
Jesuits into the cause of their country and their God. Nothing could
have been more fatal. It arms against them such characters as
Michelet,[5] with his _Priests, Women, and Families_, and makes even
Quinet formidable with his lectures on "the Jesuits and
Ultramontanism." Yet it must be urged in their behalf, that they have
been pardonably foolish, for they drew their error with their mother's
milk; and when even faith was ridiculed as credulity, it was an
extravagance almost virtuous to rush into superstition. Such is the
dilemma of a good man in Continental Europe: his choice lies between
the extremes of corrupt faith and philosophic unbelief. This was the
misfortune of poor Frederick Schlegel; and, disgusted with the hollow
rationalism of Germany, he became a Papist, in order to profess
himself a Christian. The mistake was magnanimously made. We cannot but
admire the man who eats the book of Roman infallibility, in his hunger
for the bread of everlasting life. Even Chateaubriand must claim our
sympathies on this ground. Our feelings are with such errorists--our
convictions of truth remain unaltered; and we cannot but lament the
fatality which has thus attended European Conservatism like its
shadow, and exposed it to successful assaults from its foes. I have
shown how they use their opportunity. And no wonder, when this
substitution of Ultramontanism for Christianity has involved de
Maistre in an elaborate defence of the Inquisition--debased the
Conservatism of de Bonald to slavish absolutism;[6] and when true to
its deadening influence upon the conscience, it implicated von Haller
in the infamous perjury which, though committed under the sanction of
a Romish bishop, led to his ignominious expulsion from the sovereign
council at Berne. Chateaubriand has not escaped an infection from the
same atmosphere. It taints his writings. In such a work as the _Génie
du Christianisme_, denounced as it is by the Ultramontanists
generally, there is much that is not wholesome. The eloquent champion
of faith wields the glaive as stoutly for fables as for eternal
verities. The poet makes beauty drag decay in her train, and ties a
dead corpse to the wings of immortality. Truth itself, in his apology,
though brought out in grand relief, is sculptured on a sepulchre full
of dead men's bones; and, unhappily, while we draw near to examine the
perfection of his ideal, we find ourselves repelled by a lurking scent
of putrefaction.
The career of de Maistre is, in epitome, that of his school. Disgusted
with Jacobinism, and naturally delighting in paradox, it seemed to
afford him relief to avow himself a papist, in an age of atheism. He
was not only the author of the reactionary movement, but his character
was itself the product of Reaction. Driven with his king to Sardinia,
in 1792, by the invasion of Piedmont, his philosophical contempt for
the revolutionists was exhibited in his _Considerations sur la
France_, from which, in a former letter, I have made so long a
quotation. In this work--in some respects his best--his Ultramontanism
is far from extravagant: and not only his religious principles as they
were then, but also the effect which everything English was then
producing on his mind, is clearly seen in a comment upon the English
Church, which, as it passed his review, and was printed again in 1817
with no retractation, must be regarded as somewhat extraordinary. "If
ever Christians reunite," says he, "as all things make it their
interest to do, it would seem that the movement must take rise in the
Church of England. Calvinism was French work, and consequently an
exaggerated production. We are pushed too far away by the sectarians
of so unsubstantial a religion, and there is no mean by which they may
comprehend us: but the Church of England, which touches us with one
hand, touches with the other a class whom we cannot reach; and
although, in a certain point of view, she may thus appear the butt of
two parties, (as being herself rebellious, though preaching
authority,) yet in other respects _she is most precious_, and may be
considered as one of those chemical _intermèdes_, which are capable of
producing a union between elements dissociable in themselves." He
seldom shows such moderation; for the Greek and Anglican churches he
specially hates. In 1804 he was sent ambassador to St Petersburg; and
there he resided till 1817, fulfilling his diplomatic duties with that
zeal for his master, and that devotion to conservative interests,
which are the spirit of his writings. There he published, in 1814, the
pithy _Essai sur le principe générateur des Constitutions_, in which
he reduced to an abstract form the doctrines of his former treatise on
France. His style is peculiarly relishable, sometimes even sportive;
but its main maxims are laid down with a dictatorial dignity and
sternness, which associate the tractate, in the minds of many, with
the writings of Montesquieu. This essay, so little known in England,
has found an able translator and editor in America, who commends it to
his countrymen as an antidote to those interpretations which are put
upon our constitutional law by the political disciples of Rousseau. I
commend the simple fact to your consideration, as a sign of the more
earnest tone of thinking, on such matters, which is beginning to be
felt among us. The fault of the essay is its practical part, or those
applications into which his growing Ultramontanism diverted his sound
theories. His principles are often capable of being turned upon
himself, as I have noticed in the matter of creeds. His genius also
found a congenial amusement in translating Plutarch's _Delays of
Divine Justice_, which he accompanied with learned notes, illustrating
the influence of Christianity upon a heathen mind. On his return from
St Petersburg in 1817, appeared his violent Ultramontane work, _Du
Pape_, in which he most ingeniously, but very sophistically, uses in
support of the papacy an elaborate argument, drawn from the good which
an overruling Providence has accomplished, by the very usurpations and
tyrannies of the Roman See. As if this were not enough, however, he
closes his life and labours with another work, the _Soirées de St
Petersbourg_, in which, with bewitching eloquence, he expends all his
powers of varied learning, and pointed sarcasm, and splendid
sophistry, upon questions which have but the one point of turning
everything to the account of his grand theory of church and state.
Thus, from first to last, he identifies his political and moral
philosophy with religious dogmas essentially ruinous to liberty, and
which, during three centuries, have wasted every kingdom in which they
have gained ascendency. To the direct purpose of uprooting the little
that remained of Gallicanism, he devoted a treatise, which accompanies
his work _Du Pape_, and of which the first book is entitled, _De
l'Esprit d'opposition nourri en France contre le Saint-Siège_. Its
points may be stated in a simple sentence from the works of his
coadjutor, Frederick Schlegel, who, in a few words, gives the theory
which has been the great mistake of the Reaction. "The disguised
half-schism of the Gallican church," says he,--"_not less fatal in its
historical effects than the open schism of the Greeks_--has
contributed very materially towards the decline of religion in France,
down to the period of the Restoration."[7] He illustrates it by the
disputes of Louis XIV. with the court of Rome, but forgets to say
anything of his extermination of the Huguenots. In one sense, however,
he is right. It was precisely the _half_-schism to which the mischief
is attributable. This half-way work it was that enabled Louis XIV. to
assert the Gallican theory against a semi-Protestant pope, for the
very purpose of fostering genuine Ultramontanism and favouring the
Jesuits; while under another pontiff he could repudiate Gallicanism,
and force the clergy to retract what he had forced them to adopt! The
schism of England was doubtless "an open schism," in the opinion of
Schlegel, and if so, it should have been followed, on his theory, by
worse effects; but Schlegel lives too long after the days of Bossuet
to bring her example into view. The natural appeal would have been to
that example, as its history is cotemporary; but he adroitly diverts
attention from so instructive a parallel, and cunningly drags in "the
open schism _of the Greeks_!" Thus, against a bristling front of
facts, he drives his theory that France has not been Romish enough,
and lends all his energies to render her less Gallican and more
Tridentine. Were he now alive, he might see reason to amend his
doctrine in the condition of Rome itself! But the condition of France
is quite as conclusive. Since the Restoration, the French Church has
been growing more and more Ultramontane, and the people are worse and
worse. Gallicanism is extinct, but results are all against the
Reactionary theory. France has no more a la Vendée; there will be no
more Chouans; the present Church is incapable of reviving such things.
It makes the infidels. I know there is less show of rampant atheism
just now than formerly; but if there is less of paroxysm, there is
less of life. France dies of a chronic atheism. The Abbé Bonnetat,
writing in 1845 on _The Religious and Moral Wants of the French
Population_, expresses nothing but contempt for the alleged
improvement in religious feeling. According to him, almost a tenth of
the male population, in any given district, not only do not believe in
GOD, but glory in their unbelief. Half of all the rest make no secret
of their infidelity as to the immortality of the soul; and their wives
are equally sceptical, to the curse of their children's children! "The
residue believe," says the Abbé, "only in the sense of not denying.
They affirm nothing, but, as compared with the others, they lack the
science of misbelief." To go on with his melancholy picture, the
divine and salutary institution of the Lord's day no longer effects
its purpose. In towns, the working classes and tradespeople scarcely
ever enter the churches. In the rural districts, a tenth of the people
never go to church at all; and of the rest, one half may hear a mass
on the five great festivals, while the other half, though more
frequent in attendance, are very irregular. One Sunday they perform
the duty perfunctorily; the next they work in the fields; the next
they stay at home, amuse themselves, and forget religion as part of
"dull care." The young folk, in many places, receive their first and
last communion at twelve or fourteen, and that is the end of their
conformity. A worse feature yet in the domestic manners, resulting
from this state of religion, is the fact that girls and boys are
brought up very much in the same way, and are thrown promiscuously
together, spending their evenings where they choose. Parents have
ceased to ask their children--_Why were you not at church? Were you at
vespers? Were you at mass?_ and in fact are the first to corrupt their
offspring, by their brutal irreligion, and coarse language, and
shameless behaviour.[8]
Such is the moral picture of France. The Abbé has brightened his mass
of shadow with here and there a reflection of light, but there is no
mistaking his work for a Claude Lorraine. France is in a moral
eclipse, and her portrait presents, of necessity, the _chiaro 'scuro_
of a Rembrandt. One needs no more than these confessions of a French
ecclesiastic to account for her false and fickle notions of liberty,
and for her interminable _émeutes_ and revolutions. Yet if Quinet has
not wholly invented his assertions, the Conservatism of France is
pledged to prescribe as remedies the same old poison from which the
disease results. It would take the Christianity of the nation, at its
last gasp, and dose it anew with Ultramontanism. They have adopted the
sound principle, that Christianity moulds a people to enlightened
notions of liberty, but they seem not to know that it does this by
acting directly upon the conscience; and hence their political system
is spoiled by their fatal substitution, for pure Christianity, of that
spurious religion whose great defect is precisely this, that it does
not undertake to cleanse and cure the conscience, but only to subject
it, mechanically, to irrational authority. Montesquieu, in asserting
the importance of Christianity, without question failed to detect this
essential defect in Popery, but he instinctively taught his
countrymen, by memorable example, to eschew Ultramontanism. In the
closing scene of a life which, with all its blemishes, was a great
life, and, in comparison with his times, a good one, he accepted with
reverence the ministrations of his parish priest, but repulsed from
his deathbed, with aversion and disgust, the officious and intrusive
Jesuits.[9] De Maistre is more devout than Montesquieu, but he is less
jealous of liberty, and his ideas of "what a people ought to will" are
limited, if not illiberal. His more moderate ally, Ballanche, has not
unjustly characterised him as "not, like Providence, merciful, but,
like destiny, inexorable." It is impossible that a Conservatism, of
which such is the sovereign genius, should achieve anything for the
restoration of such a country as France. I have, indeed, predicted the
restoration of the Bourbons, according to de Maistre's principles, by
the sheer tenacity of life which belongs to a hereditary claim, and by
which it outlasts all other pretensions. But I cannot think that
either he or his disciples have done much to bring it about; and still
less do I imagine that their system, as a system, can give permanence
to the monarchy or prosperity to the state. On the contrary, let Mons.
Berryer, or the Comte de Montalembert, attempt the settlement of the
kingdom on the theory of the _réactionnaires_, and they will speedily
bring it to that full stop which Heaven at last adjudges to princes as
well as to people, "who show themselves untutored by calamity, and
rebels to experience." They will, at best, prolong the era of
revolutions to some indefinite epoch of futurity, and consign the
nation to a fever, which will return periodically, like a tertian, and
wear it out by shakings.
It will be well, then, if the imperial farce that must precede "the
_legitimate_ drama" shall prove somewhat protracted. The Legitimists,
meantime, may become convinced of the blunder of the Reaction, and
resolve upon a wiser and more sound conservatism. De Maistre hazards
some predictions in his works, on which he stakes the soundness of his
theories, and for which he challenges derision and contempt to his
doctrines, if they fail. The position of _Pio Nono_, from the very
outset of his career, has stultified those theories already; and if he
remains permanently where he now is, it will be to good-breeding alone
that de Maistre will owe his preservation from the contempt he has
invoked, by staking his reputation on the conservative character of
that very court of Rome, from which the democratic wildfire, that has
inflamed all Europe, has proceeded! In any conceivable settlement of
the Roman States, the Pontiff will hardly be to Europe what he has
been during the former years of this century; and if he is to sink to
a mere patriarchal primate, the grand dream of ultramontanism is
dissipated.[10] It is to be hoped, then, that the restoration may be
deferred till the Legitimists have been effectually taught the grand
fallacy of ultramontane conservatism; and that Henry V. will ascend
the throne, cured of the hereditary plague of his immediate ancestors,
and willing to revert, for his example, to his great name-sake, Henri
Quatre. He will need another Sully to restore France to a sound mind.
His cause demands a minister who will not trust it to the tide of
impulse on which it will come in, but who will labour with prudence
and with foresight, to gain an anchorage before the ebb. Give but a
minister to the restoration capable of that kind of patient and
practical forecast, which sent Peter to the dock-yards; and let him
begin with the parochial schools, to mould a new race of Frenchmen
under the influences of true religion; and let him have the seventeen
years which Louis Philippe wasted on steam-ships and bastions, and
Montpensier marriages; and then, if it be "men that constitute a
state," there is yet a future of hope for France. And forgive me for
adding, Basil, that if England shall reverse this policy, and make the
national schools the sources of disaffection to the national
religion--then may she expect to see her Oxford and Cambridge degraded
to such seats of sedition as "the College of France," and their
ingenuous youth converted from gownsmen into blousemen, under such
_savans_ as Quinet. Remember, too, in connexion with what I have
written, that Ireland is the most ultramontane of all nations under
heaven, and you will be able to estimate the value of government
measures for its relief! May God open the eyes of all who seek the
prosperity of the British empire to the primary importance of a
wholesome national religion, retaining its hold on the national heart,
and moulding the national conscience to the grand political wisdom of
the proverb--"My son, fear the Lord and the king, and meddle not with
them that are given to change." Yours,
ERNEST.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] _Ultramontanism; or the Roman Church and Modern Society._ By E.
QUINET, of the College of France. Translated from the French. Third
edition, with the author's approbation, by C. COCKS, B.L. London: John
Chapman. 1845.
[3] He surely means _Bernini_, and is a _ninny_ for not saying so. But
Mr Cocks' translation says _Berni_--p. 144.
[4] _Literary Life of Frederick von Schlegel._ By James Burton
Robertson, Esq.
[5] See _Blackwood_ for August 1845.
[6] Mr Robertson says of de Bonald, "As long as this great writer
deals in general propositions, he seldom errs; but when he comes to
apply his principles to practice, then the political prejudices in
which he was bred lead him sometimes into exaggerations and errors."
For "political prejudices" substitute _Ultramontanism_, and Mr
Robertson has characterised the whole school of the Reaction.
[7] _Philosophy of History._
[8] _De l'Etat et des besoins Religieux et Moraux des Populations en
France_: par M. L'ABBÉ J. BONNETAT. Paris. 1845.
[9] See _Blackwood_, October 1845.
[10] "Le Souverain Pontife est la base nécessaire, unique, et
exclusive du Christianisme.... Si les évènements contrarient ce que
j'avance, j'appelle sur ma mémoire le mépris et les risées de la
postérité."--_Du Pape_, chap. v. p. 268.
MADAME D'ARBOUVILLE'S "VILLAGE DOCTOR."
The readers of _Blackwood_ can hardly have forgotten a charming French
tale, of which an abridged translation appeared, under the title of
"_An Unpublished French Novel_," in the number of the Magazine for
December 1847. In the brief notice prefixed to it, we mentioned the
existence of a companion story by the same authoress, which had
obtained wider circulation than its fellow, through arbitrary transfer
to the pages of a French periodical; and which, on that account,
although of more convenient length than the _Histoire Hollandaise_, we
abstained from reproducing. Having thus drawn attention to one of the
most pleasing tales we in any language are acquainted with, we fully
expected speedily to meet with it in an English version. Not having
done so, our vivid recollection of the great merits of "_Le Médecin du
Village_" now induces us to revoke our first decision--the more
readily that we have repeatedly been solicited to give the English
public an opportunity of appreciating a tale unprocurable in the form
in which it was originally printed, and which few persons in this
country are likely to have read in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. The
exquisite delineation of the erring, but meekly penitent Annunciata,
and of the long-suffering and enthusiastically pious Christine, may
well inspire a wish to become acquainted with other productions of the
same delicate and graceful pen. The simple story of the _Village
Doctor_ will not disappoint expectation. We ourselves, deeply sensible
of the fascinations of the Countess d'Arbouville's style, consider it
her happiest effort; and although we once hinted a doubt of the
probability of its crowning incident, we forget to play the critic
when under the influence of her touching pathos and delightful
diction. In our present capacity of translators we feel but too
strongly the impossibility of rendering the artless elegance of her
style, which flows on, smooth, fresh, and sparkling, like a summer
streamlet over golden sands. And, with all her apparent simplicity,
Madame d'Arbouville is a cunning artist, playing with skilful hand
upon the chords of the heart, which vibrate at her lightest touch. The
effects she produces are the more striking because seemingly unsought.
But her merits will be better exhibited by this second specimen of her
writings than by any praise we could lavish; and we therefore proceed,
without further preamble, to the narrative of Eva Meredith's sorrows,
as given by her humble friend,
THE VILLAGE DOCTOR.
"What is that?" exclaimed several persons assembled in the dining-room
of the château of Burcy.