and living with the great presence of Nature, until her life, become a part of his own, imbued his genius with that freshness and beauty which charm us in his writings. In perusing his accounts of his travels, so vivid in description and elevating by their contemplations, we escape from the temporal wreck of society in France to the fresh life of the west, with its horizon of a vast future, or to the solitudes and ruins of the Orient and the pastboth which hemispheres seem to have imbued his style

"The East with perfume and the West with gold."

In the interesting memorials of his travels, his book on "Greece" and the "Itinerary in the Holy Land," his eye seizes on all that is poetic in landscape and life; the immensity of Nature and the spirit of Religion exalt his contemplations, while that of History is ever present with her repertoire of detail, to give a living interest to the scenes changed by time. To obtain the sentiment elicited by the scenery of the Peloponnesus, the plain of Athens, Corinth sparkling on its thread-like isthmus between the blue Ægean and Ionian waters, Lebanon, the Syrian desert, the Holy Places-Chateaubriand's books will always be favourite reading. There is as much colour in his thoughts as in his descriptions. It is pleasant to ramble with a traveller who can feel as well as observe-especially in the East, where, as in Italy, "the memory sees more than the eye." The aspect of the shores of Hellas, whose laughing waters, sporting beneath headlands crowned with marble ruins, and mingling their glad voices with the murmurs of leaves and the echoes of the mountains, awakened emotions different from those he experienced on beholding the brilliant but austere sea of Syria. Those shores, with their ruined towns and harbours, awaken recollections of crusading days. From Jaffa to Jerusalem all is sterility—a distance imposing by long breadths of shadow and sharp lines pencilled with lights, delicate and clear, where the land rises remotely in the intense azure sky. Arrived at the Holy City, he finds the Feast of St. Joseph is being celebrated; remembers it is his birthday; and his first prayer offered up in the Holy Land is for his mother. The journey to the Dead Sea, -its waters, with their metallic lustre, extending fifty miles, heavy looking as molten silver, and scarcely ruffled by the highest winds-the long line of faint white cloud, high up in the sky which marks its extension-the black, perpendicular cliffs rising sheer from the depths or from the shore, crusted with salt and bitumen—the profiles and attitudes of the giant cliffs, sinister, satanic, as seen under the heavy glow of noon, or in the blood-red doomful glare of sunset-all are eloquently described. French poetic prose dates from the appearance of the "Atala" of Chateaubriand. He was the first who introduced couleur locale into French descriptive writing. In order to draw, intellectual

Chateau

sight is alone requisite, but to colour one must feel. briand had the gift of poetic observation to paint the object and the emotion it elicits. There are occasional falsetto notes in his cloquent descriptions, but his manner is frequently original and grand. Nature is old, yet ever "young with fresh eternity;" and the sentiment awakened by the great forests of America and the deserts of the East in the soul of the solitary genius, not unfrequently have impressed his style with an antique and austere simplicity, and a freshness like spring rain or sunlight. Often his prose is equal to the most beautiful verse. The soul left alone amid the glories and solemnities of the universe, attains purity of feeling, and a certain exaltation of sentiment and imagination. The same influences arising from solitude act in a correspondingly higher degree on the cultivated mind which. selects a religious life-thus, to conserve ideas and feelings which are true, and occupy time with good works only, is to live with God, and attain to a life angelic and divine.

The subject of Chateaubriand's greatest work, "Génie du Christianisme" is the most magnificent and important which a writer could select for exposition, description, comment and illustration. He has treated it from many aspects-the Biblical, the historical, the moral and poetic. After the literature of the Revolution that of philosophers and factions-with its blighting lightning and cloud confusions, this book led France, as under the arch of a rainbow, once more into the sacred region of peace and love, illuminated by religion and heaven. It was necessary to treat the great theme in a popular manner. Chateaubriand alternately expounds principles, paints pictures and inspires sentiment; explains the truths and exhibits the beauties of Christianity: the theologian in one chapter becomes the poet. in the next. The work is divided into four parts. In the first he demonstrates the Christian doctrines, treats briefly of the mysteries and sacraments, of morality, Scripture truths, the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. In the second part he develops the literary and poetic genius of Christianity, and compares its poetry with that of paganism. In the last he treats of worship, the rites of the Church, marriage, funerals, the orders of the clergy, of works of charity, and, in fine, of the influence of Christianity on laws and institutions.

The Concordat of 1801 had re-established Christianity in France concurrently with the appearance of the book. The churches, which had been polluted by the orgies and atheistic fêtes of the Reign of Terror, were thrown open for public prayer ; and where the maniac masses had assembled to worship the "Goddess of Reason"-but who now, after their experience of the Pandemonium resulting from the temporary eclipse of national common sense, had been sharply convinced that true reason could never have produced the horrors through which they had ·

passed the people once more returned to worship the mysteries of Divine Love. Chateaubriand, who was alike attached to monarchy and liberty, was said to have sought in his book to lead back royalty through the gates of the Church, and such was, perhaps, partly his intention. But his real and obvious object was to ensure the restoration and triumph of Religion, to substitute cosmos for chaos, the altar for the scaffold and cannon, and attach the nation to Christianity, by showing, by contrast with other systems, that the revealed truths of Religion were alone those under whose manifold influences any system of life or government could produce permanent happiness to mankind. Such was Chateaubriand's object, and it was one in which the good genius of the writer triumphed. Among the eloquent descriptive passages in this work may be noted those on the education of a young knight of the middle ages, and of the ceremonies of chivalry; those on the physical beauty of the world, its laws and life (liv. 4. c. 5); that on the death of the just, which, though admirable, is not equal to Massillon's finest sermon, "La mort du Pécheur et la morte du Juste."

Chateaubriand's prose is far more poetic than the French poetry of his period; it is more so than that of Lamartine and Hugo-more delicately emotional, coloured, efflorescent. Some of his choicest passages are to be found in René," which he at first strangely made the appanage of the "Germe du Christianisme." René is a melodious dream of a soul placed amid the harmonies of the universe. It is vaguely ideal, full of mysterious beauty. Among its lovely passages is that which depicts the impression made on the mind by hearing the village bells of a Sabbath in a wood, that primitive green temple. Leaning against the trunk of a beech-tree, René listens in silence to the sacred sounds undulating on the air, and gently stirring the leaves with their vibrations. They recall the simplicity of rural manners, the innocence of early days, their affections and fancies, and, in the calm solitude, the holy feelings of religion, family, country-bells that rang when the infant was born, which recall the joys of the father, the pains and joys of the mother; bells which rang amid the silence of death, and whose voice is associated alike with the cradle and the tomb. If we were to seek for a physical image to represent the lofty, tender and ideal genius of Chateaubriand, we should somehow select a beautiful chestnut tree, full of broad leaves and brown fruitleaves which, green or richly hued with autumn, respond the varying music to each wind of heaven-through whose branches we obtain vistas of the great fresh new world in the sunset beyond the grey ocean, and of the old, sacred, lonely world toward the dawn-a tree, too, which shelters an altar raised to God, where the soul can pray, and dream of the divine.

N. W.

THE MONITOR:

An Ellustrated Dublin Magazine.

DECEMBER, 1879.

THE LORD'S CHAMBER.

DY THE AUTHOR OF "THE HOUSE OF YORKE,"

""GRAPES AND THORNS," FTC.

CHAPTER XXIX.-A PENITENT.

THE next morning Clara went to St. Peter's to hear Mass before her aunt was up. She had fallen into this habit of church-going because she found it pleasing, and because she was studying the Mass; but she made no promises, and held herself quite free. This morning her visit was one of thanksgiving.

"It does seem that, for a great and signal favour, one should go to the church to thank God," she owned, as she went out into the dewy splendour of the spring morning.

It was at that moment of clear, undazzling light, when the sun is near the horizon, but has not yet touched it, and the colonnades were softly illuminated, and had scarcely a shadow. The lavish fountains were tossing, now this way, now that, in the light breeze, impatient for their rainbows; the lantern and the cross of St. Peter's stretched up to catch the first ray.

Inside the church was quite dim. It required the direct fiery rays of the sun to brighten that mild carly twilight that had hardly yet done with the stars. There was no one to be seen,

except, far away, a tiny figure in white and gold, followed by another still tinier in black and white. A priest was going to one of the farthest altars to say Mass.

The hour of

Clara was in a tremor of joyous excitement. bitterness had been short, and she thought now only of the happiness in store for her aunt, and of her cousin's escape from a premature death He was only a cousin to her now, and never would be more; but she was ready to treat him kindly in that

VOL. II.-NO. XII

2 C

relation. She had already discovered that her fancy for him in any other had been a delusion which she could sweep away now with a laugh. It was her fancy of his love, not her own, which

had held her.

"The idea of my ever being his wife! It is too absurd."

Reaching home again, she stole softly up-stairs, and changed her black dress for a pale blue one that had been brought home the day before. It was the first time that she had worn any colour but grey or violet since her father's death.

'I wonder if Aunt Marian will have any thought of clouds breaking away, leaving a clear sky, when she sees my dress, or if she will notice it at all!" she thought, as she went down stairs.

Mrs. Percy sat in a large and pleasant room that had two windows looking out into the villa gardens. The sun was shining in fully. Our two New-England ladies had not yet acquired the Italian habit of shutting out the sun. In the square of tempered light between these two squares of gold was placed an arm-chair, footstool, and a small table with coffee. Beside the tray was a

pile of papers and letters for Clara, and her own favourite chair stood opposite that of her aunt.

Pausing one instant on the threshold of the room before entering, Clara knew that her blue dress would receive no attention. "She has got it already!" she thought, seeing the paper in her aunt's hands.

Mrs. Percy was gazing at something in the paper, but without any longer reading. She glanced round, and replied to the greeting of her niece, but without seeming more than half conscious of her presence. After a moment she folded the journal, and still holding it closely in her hand, drank her coffee without saying a word. It was hard to find from her face what her emotions might be. She seemed simply absorbed.

Clara began to open her letters, and while reading them over, gave a message now and then to her aunt, or read some passage which she thought might be of interest to her, affecting not to notice anything unusual in her manner.

Mrs. Percy unfolded the paper again presently, and again fixed her eyes on the item which had arrested her attention, and which had been written for that purpose. It read as follows:

One of the intended passengers on the steamer 'Orleans,' which was wrecked last autumn while on her way from Marseilles to Civita Vecchia, a young Englishman, whose family have for months mourned for him as lost, has unexpectedly appeared. He had bought his ticket, and was about to go on board when a sudden indisposition prevented him, and he entered the house of some good Samaritan, only to become at once insensible. A long sickness followed, and on his recovery he learned the fate of the steamer, and that his name had been included in the list of lost