spirit, deemed it comparatively insignificant and unworthy of reverence except so long as it was the residence of that spirit, left it to mingle unnoted with the clay from which it sprung, and denied it all testimonies of respect; the others, believing that soul and body were inseparably connected, that without the body the soul could not exist, and that in our mortal death we perished utterly, were anxious to testify the utmost reverence for that material part of us which, by them, might be almost said to constitute the whole, since, without it, according to their opinion, the immaterial spirit could not be; they therefore did not neglect the inanimate clay : they respected it, and entombed it carefully, and marked its resting-place with a monument, because they believed it to be all that then remained of what was once a reasoning being. If such accounts were given us, could we say that either of these classes of persons, believing as they did, had not acted in strict conformity with the plainest principles by which human actions are regulated? If the case had been different from what we find it, if the rites of sepulture had been unknown in Christian countries, and the dead were thrown aside unheeded, without a stone to mark where they were laid, it might be said with quite as much plausibility as is shown in the observations of M. de Chateaubriand, that this neglect of sepulture, this absence of respect for the tomb, was "a moral proof of the immortality of the soul which should be “insisted on.” It might be said, these people have no reverence for the grave; they care not for the lifeless corpse, because they know that the spirit of the deceased lives still, that nothing is dead but the mere gross, material, earthly part of them, which, having performed its functions as the temporary residence of the immortal spirit, may now be left unheeded to mingle with the dust of which it is a part. They respect not the remains of their ancestors, because a voice tells them that all is not extinguished in them." So peculiarly unfortunate is M. de Chateaubriand's proof, that it is even more efficient when used in an opposite direction; and the purpose for which it was employed can be better effected by its

converse!

But there is yet another proof of the immortality of the soul,a worthy parallel to the last. "Man only," says M. de Chateaubriand, "can be represented more perfect than nature, and as approaching to divinity. No one thinks of painting the beau "ideal of a horse, an eagle, or a lion. We may perceive in this a marvellous proof of the grandeur of our destiny and of the im"mortality of the soul." A marvellous proof indeed! It is not even grounded on a correct assertion. Whoever has studied sculpture knows that the ancients, in their representation of various animals, and especially of the horse, the eagle, and the lion,

which M. de Chateaubriand has infelicitously selected, did try to give a beau idéal, an abstract resemblance, not precisely like any individual creature of the kind, but embodying as much as possible all its best and most remarkable characteristics. "In the ancient figures of that animal," says Winkelmann, that most accurate judge of ancient art, in speaking of the lion, "there is something "ideal which renders them very different from living lions." The ancient artists, in their representation of animals, pursued precisely the same system as in the representation of the human figure. But suppose the assertion true, -by what mental process can it be construed into a proof of the immortality of the soul? In what manner can an artist's representation of outward form be considered indicative of his opinion respecting the spirit that dwells within it? Let us come to particulars. Let us take the finest known specimen of the beau ideal of manly beauty, the Apollo of the Belvidere; and can we gravely ask whether the mere circumstance of that statue being handsomer (as it probably is) than any man who ever existed, is any proof of the immortality of the soul? It would be almost an insult to reasoning beings seriously to propound such a question. Let us only inquire by what process of mind and hand was the statue of the Apollo formed, and how had the artist arrived at the requisite skill? By studying the proportions of the human frame, by careful observation of various models. In the course of this study he will have seen that, of the various ingredients which constitute beauty, some will be wanting even in the most favored individuals, and will be found in greater perfection in others. In forming his statue he is not bound slavishly to adhere to any one model. He has liberty of choice, and need copy only those parts of the figure which seem most perfect in the individual before him; the others he copies from other models. He may do as we know has been done by other artists; he may copy the countenance of one, the neck and chest of another, the arms of a third, the feet and ancles of a fourth; or without exactly copying from any, he may give to every part of his statue the utmost perfection of which he has learnt, by observation, that each separate part of the human frame is capable. Now what possible connexion is there between the process by which the artist thus arrives at the formation of an ideal figure, and the circumstance of man's having an immortal soul? If it had been true, that artists had given us the beau idéal only of the human race and never of animals, we could have suggested a very simple explanation,- merely that we naturally know better what constitutes beauty in our own species than in any other. Such are the proofs which M. de Chateaubriand adduces in support of one of the most awfully important questions which ever entered

into the consideration of man. It is truly lamentable to see such a question discussed in so puerile a manner. So worse than puerile, so dangerously weak are the arguments brought forward, that if any one is so unfortunate as to doubt that he is an immortal being, we earnestly conjure him not to have recourse for his conversion to M. de Chateaubriand's proofs.

As a critic, M. de Chateaubriand is not entitled to much praise. His opinions and views in literature are not liberal and comprehensive. He looks at the extrinsic more than at the intrinsic, and has not profited by the advancement of the age. He is of the school of Rollin, Bossu, and La Harpe, and is moreover a very Frenchman in his judgment on the literature of other nations. "If we estimate impartially," says he, "foreign works and our "own, we shall always find an immense superiority on the side "of French literature." This amusing specimen of impartiality occurs in a dissertation upon Young, whose "Night Thoughts" he does not think sufficiently pensive, mistranslates a few of his weakest passages, and compares them with sundry melancholy extracts from other writers, in which, after all, we must confess our inability to discern that superiority which is so apparent to M. de Chateaubriand. Among others which he cites as superior, is a piece of vague bombast out of Ossian. After translating it, not very correctly, he adds, with diverting naïveté,-"We see that "a literal translation is here very tolerable. What is beautiful, "simple, and natural is so in every language." Ossian simple and natural! We need not comment on what we have quoted. In discoursing further on English writers, he informs us, that "Ben "Jonson is now known only by his comedies, The Fox,' and "The Alchymist." " Of Shakspeare he says much which probably will now be smiled at almost as much in France as in England. He views with horror the increasing taste for the works of our dramatist which had appeared among his countrymen.

"The admiration of Shakspeare," he says, "is much more dangerous in France than in England. In the English it is owing only to ignorance; in us it is a depraved taste. The love of deformity is nearly allied to vice; whoever is insensible to beauty is likely to have little perception of virtue. Bad taste and vice almost always accompany each other; the first is only the expression of the second, as words are of thoughts."

So Shakspeare contributes to the demoralization of France! The moral philosophy of this passage is worthy of the criticism. M. de Chateaubriand is not insensible to the merits of some detached passages of Shakspeare. He justly commends the morning scene between Romeo and Juliet, and the scene where

the news of the murder of his wife and children is communicated to Macduff. We should have thought he really felt all the force and beauty of the latter, if he had not thought proper to quote what he considers a close parallel. It is the following fragment of diolague from Corneille.

"Curiatius. Has Alba made choice of her three warriors?

"Flavian. I came to inform you.

"Curiatius. Who then are the three?
"Flavian. Your two brothers and yourself.

"Curiatius. Who?

"Flavian. Yourself and your two brothers."

The words in italics are supposed to contain beauties of the first order. We are sorry we cannot discover the latent sublimity of this passage. We do not understand why Flavian should have been required to repeat his plain answer to a plain question, unless he spoke unintelligibly, or Curiatius was deaf,—nor why he altered the disposition of his words, unless he had collected from the tone of the "Who?" that Curiatius was not pleased at his brothers being named before him. It is not, however, our present business to criticize Corneille; we are only showing what M. de Chateaubriand brings forward as an apt illustration of one of the most pathetic scenes in Shakspeare. He sums up in another place the principal merits of our dramatist: "Some tragical situations, some words true to the feelings of men, something vague "and fantastic in his scenes;-forests, heaths, winds, spectres, << tempests, explain the celebrity of Shakspeare." But, full and clear (and, we had hoped, sufficient) as is the preceding "explanation," we find the ascendency of Shakspeare again explained elsewhere, and in other words. After describing the extreme neglect with which we visit almost all our best writers, such as Pope, Locke, Bacon, Hume, and Gibbon, M. de Chateaubriand adds, Shakspeare alone preserves his ascendency. The cause may be easily seen by the following trait." And what is this most cogent and conclusive trait? Simply this, that being once in the theatre at Covent Garden, he found by his side a sailor, lately landed, who, never having been there before, did not know in what theatre he was, and very naturally asked the

name.

"He was a sailor from the city, who, passing accidentally through the street at the hour of exhibition, and seeing a crowd pressing in at a door, having paid his money, had entered without knowing what was going on. How should the English have a tolerable theatre, when their pits are filled by judges just arrived from Bengal, or from the coast of Guinea, who do not even know where they

are?"

To analyze the absurdities of this passage would be a waste of time, and almost an insult to the understanding of our readers. That any person of literary celebrity should not only have penned such trash, but permitted its republication nearly twenty years afterwards, is almost enough to make one weep for the strange obscurations which can afflict the minds of men of genius.

M. de Chateaubriand has written five novels, Atala, Réné, Les Natchez, Le Dernier Abencerrage, and Les Martyrs, - all similar in tone, and apparently composed in exemplification of the principles maintained in his Génie du Christianisme, namely, the applicability of Christianity to the purposes of poetical or fictitious narration. The subject of Le Dernier Abencerrage bears some resemblance to that of Voltaire's Zaïre: but here there is a double struggle. The Christian loves the Mahometan, and the Mahometan the Christian; yet neither will consent to an union with the other, unless it is preceded by the other's conversion. We know not why M. de Chateaubriand should not have solved the difficulty of this embarrassing position, by making the Mahometan renounce his faith. It would have improved the story, and exalted the firinness of the Christian maiden. But then the Mahometan was his hero, and the last representative of the Abencerrages; and M. de Chateaubriand's chivalrous respect for an ancient lineage probably would not permit him to sully its descendant with even so righteous an apostasy as this. Atala, Réné, and Les Natchez, are parts of one long tale, - the two former being in fact episodes detached from the latter, and published separately, and all treating alike of savage life in the forests of North America. Our author's view of savage life seems to correspond nearly with that of Rousseau, whose writings made an impression which even actual experience was not sufficient to subdue. It was the object of this exploded theory to show, that man in his rude state, or, as he is called, "the man of nature," is nearest to that degree of perfection which Providence designed for him, and that civilization tends only to debase him; a theory false and ridiculous, but perhaps not altogether unnatural in those who drew their notions of civilization from France under Louis XV., and of a life of nature from their own imaginations, or the flowery rhapsodies of lying travellers. Of these three tales, Atala, though faulty, is perhaps the best. It is a short tale of simple structure, containing no complication of plot, or diversity of incident and character, few events, and only three prominent personages,-Chactas, a half-converted Indian; Atala, a Christian, the daughter of an European; and Aubry, a Christian missionary. Atala liberates, the Indian, Chactas, flies with him, and labors to convert him.