VII. 1. Don Carlos; or, Persecution. A Tragedy. By 2. The Fashionable Friends. A Comedy, in Five Acts, as performed by their Majesties' Servants at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane - VIII.-1. First Report from the Select Committee on Post- age, together with the Minutes of Evidence and Appendix. Ordered by the House of Commons I.-1. A new Translation of the Arabian Nights' Enter- tainments. By Edward William Lane. Illus- II.-1. Queen Elizabeth and her Times; a series of Original Correspondence. Edited by Thomas 2. Private Correspondence of Sarah, Duchess of III.—1. Poems of Many Years. By Richard Monckton 2. Memorials of a Residence on the Continent, and IV.-1. Observations on an Autograph of Shakspere, and the Orthography of his Name. Communicated to the Society of Antiquaries by Sir Frederick Madden, R.H., F.R.S., F.S.A., in a Letter to John Gage, Esq., F.R.S., Director 2. De la Servitude Volontaire, ou le Contr'un, par Estienne de la Boëtie (1548), avec les Notes de M. Coste, et une Préface de F. de la Mennais 4 2. Rural Life in England. By Wm. Howitt. 2 vols. VI.-The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of - London. Volume the Eighth. Part II VII.-A Penal Code; prepared by the Indian Law Com- missioners, and published by Command of the Governor-General of India in Council ib. IX.-1. The History and Antiquities of the Tower of Lon- don, &c. &c. By John Bayley, F.R.S. &c. 433 2. A Short History of the Tower of London, includ- ing a Particular Detail of its Interesting Cu- riosities; with a Brief Account of many of the most celebrated Kings of England, Noblemen, and others, whose Figures in Armour, and sitting on Horseback, are exhibited in the X.-1. Rough Notes taken during some Rapid Journeys THE LONDON AND WESTMINSTER REVIEW. ART. I.-Euvres de Alfred de Vigny. Bruxelles, 1837. Consisting of 1. Souvenirs de Servitude et de Grandeur Militaire. -2. Cinq-Mars; ou, Une Conjuration sous Louis XIII.3. Stello; ou, les Consultations du Docteur Noir.-4. Poëmes. -5. Le More de Venise, tragédie traduite de Shakespeare en Vers Français.-6. La Maréchale d'Ancre, drame.-7. Chatterton, drame. IN N the French mind (the most active national mind in Europe at the present moment) one of the most active and stirring elements, and among the fullest of promise for the futurity of France and of the world, is the Royalist, or Carlist, ingredient. We are not now alluding to the attempts of M. de Genoude, and that portion of the Carlist party of which the Gazette de France' is the organ, to effect an alliance between legitimacy and universal suffrage; nor to the eloquent anathemas hurled against all the institutions of society taken together, by a man of a far superior order, the Abbé de la Mennais, whose original fervour of Roman Catholic absolutism has given place to a no less fervour of Roman Catholic ultra-Radicalism. These things too have their importance as symptoms, and even intrinsically are not altogether without their value. But we would speak rather of the somewhat less obvious inward working, which (ever since the Revolution of 1830 annihilated the Carlist party as a power in the state) has been going on in the minds of that accomplished and even numerous portion of the educated youth of France, whose family connexions or early mental impressions ranked them with the defeated party; who had been brought up, as far as the age permitted, in the old ideas of monarchical and Catholic France; were allied by their feelings or imaginations with whatever of great and heroic those old ideas had produced in the past; had not been sullied by participation in the selfish struggles for court favour and power, of which the same ideas were the pretext in the Present-and to whom the Three Days were really the destruction of something which they had loved and revered, if not for itself, at least for the reminiscences associated with it. These reflexions present themselves naturally when we are VOL. XXIX. No. I. B about to speak of the writings of Alfred de Vigny, one of the earliest in date, and one of the most genuine, true-hearted and irreproachable in tendency and spirit, of the new school of French literature, termed the romantic. It would, in fact, be impossible to understand M. de Vigny's writings, especially the later and better portion, or to enter sympathisingly into the peculiar feelings which pervade them, without this clue. M. de Vigny is, in poetry and art, as a greater man, M. de Tocqueville, is in philosophy, a result of the influences of the age upon a mind and character trained up in opinions and feelings opposed to those of the age. Both these writers, educated in one set of views of life and society, found, when they attained manhood, another set predominant in the world they lived in, and, at length, after 1830, enthroned in its high places. The contradictions they had thus to reconcile-the doubts, and perplexities, and misgivings which they had to find the means of overcoming before they could see clearly between these cross-lights-were to them that, for want of which so many otherwise well-educated and naturally-gifted persons grow up hopelessly commonplace. To go through life with a set of opinions ready made and provided for saving them the trouble of thought, was a destiny that could not be theirs. Unable to satisfy themselves with either of the conflicting formulas which were given them for the interpretation of what lay in the world before them, they learnt to take formulas for what they were worth, and look into the world itself for the philosophy of it. They looked with both their eyes, and saw much there, which was neither in the creed they had been taught, nor in that which they found prevailing around them: much that the prejudices, either of Liberalism or of Royalism, amounted to a disqualification for the perception of, and which would have been hid from themselves if the atmosphere of either had surrounded them both in their youth and in their maturer years. That this conflict between a Royalist education, and the spirit of the modern world, triumphant in July 1830, must have gone for something in giving to the speculations of a philosopher like M. de Tocqueville the catholic spirit and comprehensive range which distinguish them, most people will readily admit. But, that the same causes must have exerted an analogous influence over a poet and artist, such as Alfred de Vigny is in his degree; that a political revolution can have given to the genius of poet what principally distinguishes it, may not appear so obvious at least to those who, like most Englishmen, rarely enter into either politics or poetry with their whole soul. Worldly advancement, or religion, are an Englishman's real interests: for politics, except in connexion with one of those |