..\ 
 
 tAJ ^Mo?iB£Ki<I.] 
 
LIFE OF 
 
 LOED BYEOÍÍ 
 
 AND OTHEK SKETCHES. 
 
 ^ .;/2. 
 
 lA^ 
 
 BT 
 
 EMILIO CASTELAR. 
 
 I.I 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 MES. AETHUE AENOLD. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 TINSLEY BPtOTIIEES, 8, CATHERINE STEEET, STEAND. 
 
 1875. 
 [The Rights of Translation are Reserved.] 
 

 mmT\ 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 SAVILL, EDWABDS AND CO., PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET, 
 
 OOVENT GARDEN. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO 
 
 THE OEiaiNAL EDITION. 
 
 Bt JOSÉ ROMAN LEAL, op Havana. 
 
 *' He cliose a great and honourable work, and laboured to 
 bring it to perfection," — Tkales of Miletus. 
 
 nnHE coincidences of life are so curious, that the 
 work of combined calculation will assimilate 
 better than the product of improvised circumstances. 
 
 Castelar, whose meridional imagination is one of 
 the most exalted of this century, under the melan- 
 choly influence of the heavy atmosphere which hangs 
 over the Saxon city, turned his thoughts to Lord 
 Byron — a genuine descendant of that race ; and 
 having confided some of these reflections to a native 
 of New Castile, eighteen hundred leagues from his 
 own country, under the ardent rays of the sun, which 
 bathes in its light the luxuriant vegetation of 
 the tropics, the writer of these lines sent across 
 distant seas a greeting of affectionate admiration to 
 the author of those brilliant pages, which are worthy 
 of beine: immortalized in gold and marble. 
 
 'O 
 
 197840 
 
PREFACE TO 
 
 He does not, however, think himself entitled on 
 this account to write a prologue to the work of the 
 most daring and hrilliant literary colourist of our 
 times — like the announcement of a shopkeeper 
 painted on the drop-scene of a theatre. Nor does 
 he fall into the folly of wishing to unite an obscure 
 name without any literary pretension to that of the 
 universally-celebrated Eepublican author — an orator 
 unparalleled in this age for eloquence and poetic 
 power; for feigned modesty is more offensive than 
 ostentatious arrogance. Obscurity has its honours 
 in a prudent silence, and in the precise and just 
 estimation of things at their proper value. 
 
 But from all places, and in all times and circum- 
 stances, one friend may salute another, and send him 
 in his salutation a share of his joy or of his sorrow ; 
 thus helping him to withstand the moral changes of 
 his feelings or his ideas, often as fatal as the currents 
 of winds and of rivers, and of all that is agitated in 
 this manifold and living nature, in which the great 
 and the little are mingled, and complete that marvel- 
 lous conjunction which we call harmony. 
 
 Whoever has felt within his breast the furious 
 waves of passionate desires — whoever has dreamed of 
 fantastic delights, and awakened to contrast them 
 with cold and naked reality — whoever has asked 
 the love of his country, and been looked upon disr 
 dainfuUy, and at length been cast from her with 
 
THE ORIGINAL EDITION. 
 
 contempt — whoever has sighed for intimate friend- 
 ship, and has seen buried in the hungry jaws of 
 death the friends of his childhood — whoever has 
 ardently longed for the ineffable joys of home, and 
 his family has denied him its pleasures — whoever, 
 in a terrible disgust of life, has sought to deaden 
 his pain, and suffered himself to be drawn into 
 the whirlpool of sensual pleasures, the inevitable 
 consequences of w4iich are remorse, shame, and 
 opprobrium — whoever has endured sorrow without 
 consolation — whoever has wept without being under- 
 stood — he only can draw near to salute the tomb of 
 Byron. 
 
 But Castelar is in a very different position. He, 
 an upright man, an aristocrat by education, a demo- 
 crat by origin and by sentiments, gifted with fine 
 tastes, opposed to all habits of disorder, a loving 
 son, an affectionate brother, a faithful friend — 
 Castelar cannot find in the crystallized remains of 
 the Saxon poet the shadow of a mortifying or 
 shameful recollection. 
 
 Those remains are for Castelar the worm-eaten 
 leaves of the sad lawsuit which, having failed in 
 opposition, demands the solemn opening of the re- 
 cords to comply with the imprescriptible right of 
 defence. And Castelar, rebutting the charges, accom- 
 plishes his high mission as an advocate of great 
 causes. In order to justify Lord Byron, he deals with 
 
 b 2. 
 
PREFACE TO 
 
 the painful history of the nations of Europe, which 
 is the prolonged Calvary of a civilization destined to 
 give considerable, though posthumous, fruits. 
 
 Lord Byron is the Jeremiah of the present age ; 
 Lord Byron is the (Edipus in an unexampled 
 struggle against the fatality of old institutions. 
 
 He loves the impossible, and appears inconstant 
 because he never finds fault with the ideal. Wounded 
 by disenchantment, he attempts everything — actions 
 the purest and the most sensual ; tastes the most 
 exquisite and the most debased. He desires glory, 
 and receives but contempt; he feels grandeur, and 
 yet rolls in the dust of littleness ; he exalts melan- 
 choly, yet wastes his life in bacchanalian orgies ; he 
 has the most extreme ideas of mental independence, 
 yet submits to the humiliating domination of tyran- 
 nical women; cries out against the pride and the 
 despotism of privilege, yet is himself remarkable for 
 arrogance ; pretends to be above the emptiness of 
 ceremonious customs, yet decks himself with frivo- 
 lous satins and laces, representing in his own person 
 the weakest part of the civilization which has ex- 
 hausted all the eccentricities of fashion, from the 
 capricious costumes of Heliogabalus to the embroi- 
 dered robe of Louis XIV. ; he desires, in fine, to 
 scale Olympus, but is unable to keep his equilibrium, 
 his lameness forbidding him. 
 
 Is not, then, this new (Edipus the simple per- 
 
THE ORIGINAL EDITION. 
 
 sonification of his age, if not the abstract of a gigantic 
 civilization, full of cancerous ulcers ? 
 
 Our civilization is that which, loving science, ap- 
 proaches the juridical age, and appears inconstant 
 because it accumulates systems upon systems. Dis- 
 appointed by abuses, it grasps at everything without 
 being able to realize its constant ideal — peace and 
 justice. It desires a gentleness of manners, a purity 
 of style, a delicacy of taste, and yet allows itself to be 
 dominated by a devouring cupidity, withdrawing 
 itself from the discomforts of resistance to the greater 
 disorders of feudalism, to the catastrophes of paper- 
 money and of fraudulent bankruptcy. It dreams of 
 glory, 3'et loads the cannon to destroy misery ; under- 
 stands greatness, yet seeks an evil reputation, leaving 
 to parasites the government of the people ; admires 
 seriousness, yet debilitates its frame with bacchanalian 
 revels and idle spectacles ; protests against the rigid 
 exclusiveness of castes, and constructs a society made 
 up of a hierarchy of uniforms — an old habit of historic 
 dotage, which extends even to the man of the people, 
 covering with clasps and crosses the bosom of 
 Cambaceres ; has the most exalted idea of inde- 
 pendence, yet cannot inspire respect for the law 
 without the appearance of the police ; labours and 
 struggles to attain prosperity, and sees rise at his feet, 
 like the ghost of Hamlet, the terrifying spectre of 
 pauperism. Alas ! the daring sons of the Caucasus 
 
PREFACE TO 
 
 place their feet on tlie coldest and most sterile zone 
 of the earth, and wounded by the thorns, like the 
 Saxon poet, suffer more pain and fatigue every day 
 from their cruel lameness. 
 
 The superior genius of Lord Byron conquers every- 
 thing but the vulgarity of the intelligences which 
 surround him. 
 
 The su]3reme power of civilization which, torn from 
 the Cyclops and Sestrigones, received its baptism 
 in the Greek Areopagus, has been the means of de- 
 termining nearly everything except the geological 
 problem which we have under our footsteps. 
 
 The Gracchi are impossible in Rome ; where 
 poverty makes a merchandize of a vote, there will not 
 be wanting a Pisistratus. Luxury, alternating with 
 misery, will always recall the Capitol or the hovel. 
 Without doubt misery is not repulsive to the poor 
 except for its privations. Instruction is of small 
 moment to those who have not the means of sub- 
 sistence. Education alone elevates or degrades us. 
 Where there is ignorance and brutality there must 
 be abasement. Tiberius could not have existed unless 
 the people had been abject. The nobility of the 
 future will be the aristocracy of education. These 
 social differences are not determined by the cere- 
 monies of the antechamber. Ceremonious customs 
 alone declare castes. 
 
 Not even the eminent author of this book can 
 
THE ORIGINAL EDITION. 
 
 overcome that wMcli stifles thought in Europe, by 
 loading the moral atmosphere with so many recollec- 
 tions stamped upon the memory, so many interests 
 created in the shadow of privilege, so many old pre- 
 judices deep-rooted in the conscience, and feels — • 
 according to his own expression — a little affection for 
 the tyranny of custom, which is a sort of worn-out 
 dike, raised by society to prevent an overflow. 
 
 The Saxon poet found only in England a gloomy 
 and frigid sky ; dry, skeleton trees, without leaves or 
 flowers ; the country all harsh, frosty, and bitter, and 
 goes in search of other spots more pleasing, seeking 
 repose and consolation in the melancholy of ruins, 
 in the sublimity of grand memories, in the luxuriant 
 vegetation of the valle3^s, in the freshness of the 
 fountains, and in the purity of the heavens. His 
 soul pined for nourishment, and finding inspiration 
 in his travels over the still warm ashes of the Hel- 
 lenic people, he wrote the beautiful cantos of " Childe 
 Harold," gave an immortal work to the world, which 
 at one bound raised him to the heights of the English 
 Parnassus. 
 
 Thus the indomitable son of the Caucasus, flying 
 from the snows, which deny him necessary food, 
 crosses the Oregon, climbs dangerous mountains, and 
 finding a fertile plain, which invites him with grateful 
 fruits, writes in glowing words which kindle the world, 
 an immortal page in tJie wondrous way of the Pacific. 
 
PREFACE TO 
 
 When genius traces tlie path of human intelligence 
 it erects from epoch to epoch a monument of wisdom. 
 The people, in order to indicate the chart by which 
 history advances, construct here and there an archi- 
 tectural monument. Nature, anticipating the steps 
 of humanity, erects monumental mountains in each 
 zone. Thus nature unites and works with man. 
 
 Nature is the majestic theatre in which is 
 unfolded the great tragedy of the thoughts, of the 
 labours, of the sorrows of this gigantic protagonist 
 preceding social catastrophes and geological deluges. 
 As time moves onward she ornaments the world with 
 rocks and valleys, rivers and torrents, seas and 
 plains, according to the greatness of her space. 
 She immortalizes beforehand the glorious periods of 
 succession in the process of ages, raising an obelisk 
 to the eternal memory of the origin of civilization in 
 the Himalayas, to the unfolding of art and science 
 in the St. Grothard, to the hope of the future in 
 Chimborazo. 
 
 The second act of the great drama is fruitful in 
 accidents. The subject is the emancipation of art 
 and science, counting among their martyrs Galileo, 
 Telesio, and Campanella. Among metaphysicians, 
 Locke and Descartes, initiators of the idea which 
 proclaims the rights of man. Among pubhcists, 
 Montesquieu and Filangieri. Among philosophers, 
 Kant, Hegel, and Krauss. Among soldiers, unknown 
 
THE ORIGINAL EDITION. 
 
 herds, wlio voluntarily join the conscription ; and at 
 the head of critics appears Voltaire, initiator of the 
 periodical press in the " Encyclopiedia." But after 
 cruel sacrifices, after long vigilance, after grievous 
 torture and bloody struggles, on definitely attempting 
 the problem for which so many fought and suffered, 
 how many have met with degraded poverty on de- 
 manding a morsel of bread which the sterile zone, 
 exhausted in its productive efforts, denies them ! 
 
 Without doubt, neither the elevation of the idea, 
 nor the subhmity of the subject, nor the quality of 
 the personages can admit of an unfortunate conclu- 
 sion. But the magnitude of the situations demand a 
 more extended scene and greater magnificence in the 
 decoration. For the new Prometheus, personified in 
 Maury, has no room in the narrowness of the ancient 
 world, being destined to surprise the mysterious 
 revolutions of the winds, to reveal the secret motives 
 of currents, to throw the sounding-lead into the 
 stormy deep, and to establish the epic artery of 
 thought in the bottom of the sea. 
 
 If Lord Byron had contemplated this splendid 
 spectacle, he would have understood how fruitless is a 
 warfare with tears, and how fruitful is the stupendous 
 struggle with nature, which extends from Behring's 
 Straits to Cape Horn ; this great power which stretches 
 forth its hands to the venerable mother, armed and 
 provided with the marvellous uses of steam and elec- 
 
PREFACE TO 
 
 tricity, made serviceable by man. Living in the 
 centre of modern life, and with lively recollections of 
 his country, the poet would not have been able to 
 extend his anxious vision from right to left, from 
 Baffin's Bay to Patagonia, without discovering in 
 those vast monolithic temples, sphinxes, statues, 
 pyramids, and obelisks, evidences of the art of distant 
 ages, and which also attest a constituted right, a 
 legitimate interest, a historical difficulty, an obstacle 
 of preoccupation opposed to the triumph of new 
 institutions. In this colossal theatre there are no 
 other monuments than those of the wondrous vege- 
 tation whence the torrid zone, superabundant in raw 
 materials, feeds the industrial spirit of the colder 
 zone; whence the pure springs, the flowing rivers, the 
 impetuous torrents fertilize the valleys; where the 
 fruits are spontaneous, the cotton-plant scatters its 
 down, the golden grain of the corn falls in seed to 
 the rich earth, the sugar-cane renews itself; and 
 where, showing their outline against the sky, are 
 rich groves of ancient trees with precious woods ; 
 and chains of rocks, with mines of gold and iron, coal 
 and silver. Here nature invites to this glorious 
 struggle against her, to bore mountains, to shorten 
 distances, to gain the shore and dilate the breast 
 with hope, breathing the pure and vivifying air that 
 ripples the immense plain of the ocean. This is the 
 hoped-for theatre of civilization. 
 
THE ORIGINAL EDITION. 
 
 If Lord Byron had beheld all this, he would not 
 have sunk into scepticism. 
 
 Castelar, on the contrary, a man of faith and 
 of knowledge, hopes and consecrates all his force, all 
 his faculties, the powerful and irresistible enchant- 
 ment of his eloquence, to the cause of progress, in 
 any dh'ection that he sees or expects some of these 
 manifestations ; for, in fact, this is the cause of hu- 
 manity. In the w^ork of progress are included all 
 ideas, all sentiments, all sorrows, all difficulties, all 
 the degrees of civilization ; and in this Lord Byron is 
 the synthesis of these varied elements, united toge- 
 ther by the force of European peoples, in the critical 
 and supreme hour of anguish, of shock, of confusion, 
 which manifests itself in a penetrating cry of heart- 
 rending, though sublime doubt, Hke a momentary 
 eclipse, which, by the law of contrast, makes appear 
 brighter the flood of light of this intellectual pro- 
 digy, which gives neither truce to the thoughts nor 
 peace to the hand. 
 
 Such is the epopee of the intelligence in the 
 Olympian battle. 
 
 Sublime subject, to which science cannot refuse 
 her number, her barometer, or her quadrant ; neither 
 can the lyre refuse her chords, poetry her rhyme, nor 
 architecture her keystone ! 
 
 May Castelar continue to accomplish his high 
 mission on the earth, engaged in the defence of an 
 
xvi PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION. 
 
 impoi-tant cause; whilst the humblest of his best 
 friends sends him a remembrance of aifection and 
 admiration in these unconnected lines, earnestly 
 hoping that the book which contains them may 
 leave in the mind of the numerous readers the sweet 
 impressions that are felt at this moment among all 
 his admirers, and particularly by his friend, 
 
 José Eoman Leal. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 fAGH 
 
 THE LIFE OF LOED BYKON • 1 
 
 VICTOR HUGO 183 
 
 ALEXAITDER DUMAS 205 
 
 EMILE GIRAEDIN , 235 
 
 DANIEL MANDT 259 
 
 ADOLPHE THIERS 293 
 
THE 
 
 LIFE OF LOED BYRON. 
 
THE 
 
 Life of Lord Byron. 
 
 PJRT THE FIRST. 
 
 /^NE day, about the hour of sunset, I wandered 
 ^-^ through the long walks of Hyde Park, and as 
 I passed on, memory brought before me my recent 
 visits to the Bay of Naples and the Lido of Venice. 
 I thought lovingly and almost tearfully of the far- 
 distant horizon of Cadiz, where the pure sky and the 
 waters commingle, presenting to the eye a feast of 
 colours. And I thought of the groves of Elche, 
 where the palm-trees, shaken by tlie gentle zephyrs 
 of evening, make a melancholy music in harmony 
 with the sadness of the surrounding desert. 
 
 English landscape is altogether different from such 
 scenes, and often as it has been described by great 
 poets, I had never succeeded in picturing to myself 
 its reality. The soil is green, damp, and porous ; the 
 sky is of a sombre grey, shadowed by heavy masses 
 of clouds, sometimes whitish and sometimes approach- 
 
LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 ing to dark violet, from out of wiiich filters a pale 
 and undefinable light, like that from a colossal moon. 
 The treoS; -ivliich rise to an immense height, are covered 
 nith a rich verdure, and the grace and beauty of their 
 fantastic outlines are half lost, half revealed, by the 
 clouds which lend them a mysterious veil. 
 
 In the distance the oriel window of Westminster 
 Abbey and the Gothic towers of the Houses of Par- 
 liament, seen through the capricious and moving 
 vapours, appear less like solid edifices than dissolving 
 pictures traced by the hand of some genius in the 
 watery air, and ready to float away among the clouds.* 
 The difierent aspects of Nature in the north and in the 
 south is something surprising. In the glowing light 
 of the South a line becomes a landscape; in the 
 twilight of the North a building fades into a shadow. 
 Perhaj)s for this reason the Greeks, who were the 
 great interpreters of southern intelligence, made their 
 monuments small and low, leaving to the sun the 
 task of elevating and extending them on his golden 
 wings ; whilst the English, the great interpreters of 
 the North, have made their monuments colossal, that 
 they may penetrate with their pointed spires and 
 massive angles the heavy atmosphere, and dissipate 
 the darkening shadows. 
 
 This is not the country for the plastic arts. A 
 
 * Probably Señor Castelar speaks of St. James's Park, from wliicli 
 Westmiuster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament are visible. 
 
ENGLISH CLIMATE. 
 
 marble statue, which the ardent sun of Italy gilds 
 into the warmth and colour of life, is here soon trans- 
 formed into a shapeless mass of coal. And if one 
 passes quickly from the contemplation of the snowy 
 ornaments of the Chiaja of iSTaples, half hidden among 
 groves of olives and laurels and lighted up by that 
 brilliant sunshine which is reflected in the azure 
 waters of the Tyrrhene Sea, on beholding these 
 sooty figures of London, one is both shocked and 
 astonished, for they offend the eyesight and upset all 
 one's ideas of good taste and of the fine arts» The 
 statues of the South preserve that which in them is 
 eternally beautiful — the outline ; and the people of the 
 Xorth lose in their sculpture that which in themselves 
 is eternally great — the soul. These countries are not 
 those of the arts, but they are the homes of spiritual- 
 istic poetry. Here, like Sir Walter Scott, we maj»- 
 awaken the heroes of past ages, here we may pene- 
 trate into the innermost recesses of our being, as 
 penetrated Shakspeare — that immortal diver into the 
 oceans of the soul. On arrivino- at these northern 
 shores a stranger at once feels the influence of the 
 climate upon his peculiar temperament. If he be 
 strong and nervous, he is induced to labour ; if enter- 
 prising, he inclines to commerce ; if philosophic, he is 
 led to think ; if he be a dreamer, he becomes a poet. 
 In these countries, or in others where the atmospheric 
 influence is similar, have been written the creations of 
 Swift, of Hofl'man, and of Eichter. The grosser part 
 
 1—2 
 
LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 of US — our body — seems to be lost amid sack scenes, 
 like an angel in the immensity of the heavens. 
 
 This is the land of Byron ! One's thoughts must 
 turn to such a man on visiting his birthplace. And 
 why not study his life on beholding his country ? 
 What do not the children of this sickly and unsettled 
 generation owe to his tenderness and susceptibility? 
 Now a sudden revelation of our doubts, then a bitter 
 lamentation in which to express our sorrows, as if his 
 mouth were the fountain from which flowed the 
 stream of our lives, the riches of our ideas. The 
 genius of Byron, which appeared at the beginning of 
 this centur}^, is like a funeral torch sculptured on our 
 cradles. Let us reflect upon the life of one so extra- 
 ordinary and so gifted, and afterwards examine his 
 works, and learn to appreciate his talents. The sub- 
 lime conjunction of the forms of antique sculpture 
 with modern ideality is chiefly embodied in the coun- 
 tries of the North. 
 
 His family is of Scandinavian origin. His genius 
 sprung from the foam and the winds of the Northern 
 Ocean, borne on the leathern barques of the Nor- 
 mans. His ancestors, wandering southward and 
 beaten by the hurricane, after passing through France, 
 were carried on the pinions of their uneasy ambition 
 to the farther side of the Strait. Among the com- 
 panions of William the Conqueror was the head of 
 the Byron family, who afterwards became one of the 
 territorial lords of Nottingham. The richest and 
 
HIS ANCESTORS. 
 
 most beautiful estate possessed by them was tbat of 
 Rochdale, which came into their possession in the 
 time of Edward the First. His forefathers wandered 
 through icy deserts and northern forests, replete with 
 poetry and mystery. They struggled in the immen- 
 sity of distant seas with the roaring waves and the 
 unchained winds ; they went, inspired by the simple 
 faith of the Middle Ages, with the lance in hand and 
 shield upon the breast, to look for the Sepulchre of 
 the Kedeemer amid the burning sands of the East ; 
 tliey fought like gallant cavaliers with the French in 
 the field of Cressy ; they dwelt in magnificent 
 castles, protected from their rivals by their fortified 
 towers, from their vassals by the gibbet, and from the 
 king by their privileges. This hardy race slaughtered 
 monks in England in the reign of Henry the Eighth 
 to serve the heretical party, as they did Arabs in the 
 desert to serve the Church and to gratify Eichard 
 Cceur de Lion. Afterwards they entered boldly into 
 Parliament, defending their seignorial rights and aris- 
 tocratic prerogatives, and contributed without their 
 own desire or knowledge — as did all the British 
 nobility — to found the basis of modern rights, always 
 aided by that exalted genius and that individual 
 independence — their hereditary patrimony from the 
 ice of the Polar seas. But when the estates of this 
 distinguished family descended to the great poet, 
 B3rron, they w^ere encumbered, almost engulfed in 
 ruin. This decline commenced in the time of James 
 
LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 the First, when one of his predecessors gave himself 
 up to the extravagances of Court life, and to support 
 this lavish expenditure he heavily mortgaged the 
 property. Another Byron served Charles the First 
 faithfully all through the troubled reign of that 
 monarch, and still more contributed to the ruin which 
 the Civil Wars completed. Old eagles, when they have 
 no longer feathers to warm their nests, seek shelter in 
 tottering towers, often the homes of the lizard, and the 
 sport of the winds of winter. There, in misery and 
 solitude, they are proud as in their strength and glory. 
 In 1750 this family burst for a time through the 
 shroud of poverty and forgetfulness . The grand- 
 father of the poet suffered a shipwreck so remarkable 
 in its dramatic details as to awaken the attention of 
 all England. In 1765 one of his uncles — he who 
 bore the hereditary title to which the poet afterwards 
 succeeded — killed, in a quarrel rather than a duel, 
 one of his relations, and suspended from the tester of 
 his bed as a trophy the homicidal sword, in order 
 that the sight of it should continually sting his con- 
 science. The House of Peers, summoned to judge 
 the case, absolved him, but he was condemned by 
 public opinion. Ketired to bis castle, he isolated him- 
 self like an imprisoned wolf, shunned all company 
 like a bird of the night, by day chased the wild boar, 
 by night tamed crickets, teaching them by skill, 
 patience, and punishments to perform certain move- 
 ments, and ever showing a hatred of humanity, a 
 
HIS PARENTS. 
 
 most ungovernable temper, and extravagances which 
 bordered upon insanity. 
 
 The father of Byron was twice married, the first 
 time for love, the second from motives of interest. 
 He stole his first wife from her husband. Lord Car- 
 marthen. From this resulted a lawsuit, and from 
 that a divorce. The divorce was followed by a mar- 
 riaije with the wife of his victim. The fruit of this 
 union was Augusta, the elder sister of the poet, and 
 by him most tenderly beloved. Becoming a widower, 
 Byron's father was married a second time, to Catherine 
 Gordon. From this marriage sprang the great poet, 
 begotten in sorrow, born under a decaying roof-tree, 
 made wretched by continual matrimonial dissensions. 
 Byron's father married in order to live luxuriously 
 upon the fortune of his wife, who was passionately 
 attached to him. In two years he dissipated her pro- 
 perty, and to conceal their misery from their neigh- 
 bours they set out for France. Lady Byron, no 
 lono:er beino: able to endure the indifi'erence of her 
 husband, which increased with the privations of 
 poverty, returned to London, wounded in her fondest 
 affections, despairing of the future, still devoted to her 
 husband, but finding her love a poisoned fountain of 
 sorrow. Under these melancholy circumstances the 
 poet was born, described by Goethe in his poem as the 
 son of Faust and Helena, fallen from the heavens to 
 the mire, but preserving his mystic wings; in his 
 hands his golden lyre, and all the splendour of divine 
 
LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 beauty in his Olympian features. Byron observed 
 tiiat the marriages of his family produced but single 
 fruits. " Beasts of prey, tigresses and lionesses," said 
 the poet, " bring forth seldom." The birth was diffi- 
 cult and dangerous, as if he dreaded the sea of life, 
 which he was to ruffle with his passions, to darken 
 with his scepticism, and to stir gently with the sweet 
 zephyr of his sonnets. Torn at last from the bosom 
 of his mother, which had well-nigh been his sepul- 
 chre, he entered the world, which seemed to scorch 
 him ; for this being, destined to fly towards infinity, 
 had one foot contracted. Thus he was a cripple in 
 childhood. This stormy fireside, this rebellious birth, 
 this spendthrift father, this assassin uncle ; this mother 
 embittered by disappointment, the sweetness of whose 
 sex had been pierced by the thorns of her sorrow ; 
 this blood, boiling and agitated like the troubled seas 
 over which wandered the Normans ; this cradle, 
 rocked by despair and watered by tears ; this decay 
 of an illustrious line, which threatened extinction 
 in its lost representative; this accidental lameness, 
 to which the cruel shaft of ridicule made him 
 keenly sensitive ; , all these influences, acting on a 
 naturally sensitive nature, inspired the eternal elegy 
 embodied in his verses, like the continuation of the 
 first bitter cry of his existence. 
 
 There lives but one creature who can soften such 
 sorrows, and smooth the roughest pathway — a mother. 
 God has given her that she may put a drop of honey 
 
A MOTHER'S LOVE. 
 
 with her pure kisses into our cup of aloes. Grod places 
 her near the cradle that the wings of her love may 
 hide from our infant eyes the darkness of the horizon 
 in which we must hereafter combat and conquer death. 
 He wills that her hands should fold ours for their first 
 supplications, and that her smile should be the dawn- 
 ing of the infinite for our aspirations. She is virtue, 
 charity, the tender part of the heart, the melancholy 
 note of the soul, the foundation of purity and inno- 
 cence, which always exists among the folds and wind- 
 ings of the lowest of humanity. When you feel a 
 benevolent impulse, the desire to dry a tear, to assist 
 an unfortunate, to divide your bread with the hungry, 
 to give your own life for that of your neighbour ; 
 close at hand, like the guardian angel who inspires all 
 good, is the beloved shadow of your mother. Eeason, 
 books, the schools, the father, these give us ideas ; 
 our sentiments are always given by the mother, she 
 forms our characters. 
 
 Catherine Grordon might have sweetened by careful 
 training the gall of her sou's existence. The Titan 
 needed the chisel in the tender hands of his mother 
 to smooth away his defects and angularities. But 
 Lady Byron, proud, eccentric, and capricious, had no 
 other passion than that of love for her husband, and 
 stung by his indifference, she seemed even to hate the 
 child whose constant presence kept alive her love and 
 her misfortune. The father, virtually divorced, went 
 home merely to deceive his wife and to preserve 
 
LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 appearances, and seldom looked at the boy, telling him 
 sternly how much he disapproved of him, and giving 
 him a frown or a blow for sole token of endearment. 
 BjTon endeavoured to conceal these painful facts, but 
 the whole history of his life hangs upon them. In 
 1791 death deprived him of his father, who, though 
 given up to dissipation and insane passions, possessed 
 certain qualities, set off by a remarkable and a manly 
 beauty, which commanded admiration. Both his 
 wives were devotedly attached to him. The first, who 
 deserted a wealthy husband for his sake, killed herself 
 by accompanying him to the hunting-field, when her 
 delicate health made violent exercise dangerous. The 
 second, the mother of the poet, loved him to the last 
 with unshaken fidelity, and mourned his death with 
 all the abandonment of sorrow. 
 
 The 3^outh thus strangely educated, had at least one 
 fountain of inspiration — the Bible. The study of the 
 Prophets invigorated the poetic character of his nature. 
 Their rugged genius is visible in some of his works, 
 severe and steady as the simoom, monotonous as the 
 desert, but solemn as immensity, and sublime as the 
 idea of the Almighty ; their semitical genius, expressed 
 by Isaiah in his admirable works, is reproduced by 
 Michael Angelo in the majestic features of his Moses, 
 whose venerable beard, descending to his breast, seems 
 to be stirred by the breezes of Sinai. With these 
 scriptural inspirations were mingled those of the 
 country — of mountains ; for his mother took him from 
 
HIS A THLETIC EXERCISES. \ i 
 
 London, where be was born, to a retired spot near 
 Aberdeen. Tbere, before the dawn of day, while the 
 shrill cry of the cock replied to the melancholy song 
 of the lark, he went out alone, under the pretence of 
 hunting, exercising his body and gratifying his spirit 
 of adventure by wandering on the brinks of precipices, 
 on the summits of mountains, through caverns where 
 still is heard the voice of the gods of his fathers, 
 seeking inspiration in the grand spectacles of Nature, 
 and joining the wail of his poetic nature to the voice 
 of the universe. To these rural inclinations he owed 
 his agility in all athletic sports. He excelled in the 
 chase, understood the use of arms, was a good swimmer 
 and horseman, and was skilled in all gymnastic exer- 
 cises, could run well, and pitch the bar or throw the 
 ball. When he was compared with Eousseau, in his 
 private life, he compared his own robust frame and the 
 debility of the philosopher of Geneva; the awkward- 
 ness and feebleness of the latter and his own vigour 
 in all manly sports ; the aristocratic and elegant 
 habits of Eousseau with his own simple and careless 
 toilet. 
 
 In a body so vigorous, a character so energetic, and 
 an imagination so exalted, the early development of 
 love was a natural occurrence. In the first years of 
 youth one loves unconsciously, and before the instincts 
 of Nature are fully awakened, but later on, when w^e 
 experience a profound passion, we know that we have 
 loved before. Then we remember that in boyhood we 
 
12 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 preferred to play with one girl above all others, that 
 by her side we felt happj^ most happy ; that in her 
 absence our eyes looked for her, and were not satis- 
 fied till she appeared again ; that we went to her soon 
 and left her late ; that we thought of her in our inno- 
 cent bed, and at our awakening that we asked for her, 
 and were sad till we had found her, our greatest desire 
 being to meet herself, and our greatest grief to bid 
 her farewell. Byron has admirably expressed this 
 psychological phenomenon, saying that he had loved 
 before he understood the name or the meaning of 
 love. The worship of Dante for Beatrice was a pas- 
 sion of this kind, the child whom he saw smiling in 
 her infancy, crowned in her girlhood with a death 
 garland, and afterwards by the stars of Heaven. 
 
 Mary Duff was the Beatrice of Byron, his first love 
 at the age of twelve years. His mother laughed at 
 him, the parents of the girl and the friends of both 
 houses ridiculed him, but Byron continued to love her 
 sadly and seriouslj^, without being himself aware of 
 his passion, and with all the tenderness and purity of 
 childhood. When she gave him her miniature — a 
 likeness of her ivory skin which the snow envied, of 
 her rosy cheeks, her bright ringlets falling upon her 
 shoulders, her deep azure eyes — the young poet told 
 her in one of his first verses that he would prefer the 
 painted and inanimate beauty of the picture to all 
 living loveliness, except that of her who had placed 
 the image on his heart. 
 
HIS RESTLESS TEMPERAMEXT. 13 
 
 This uneasiness of temperament, this precocity of 
 sentiment, this too-early unfolding of life ; the study 
 of the Prophets, which formed his taste for the lofty 
 and sublime ; the pages of history, which moved him to 
 converse with the heroes of past ages and almost to 
 summon them at will; the premature love, which 
 smiled upon his boyhood like a tree which flowers 
 before the spring ; his solitary walks to the tops of 
 mountains to see the sun rise before other mortals, and 
 to watch the flight of the clouds and of the eagles, to 
 listen to the roar of cascades and of the wind in the 
 forests ; all these were symptoms of that feverish 
 infirmity of the soul which is called genius ; of that 
 infinite thirst for the ideal which is never assuaged, of 
 that deep melancholy felt by all great natures, a sorrow 
 without relief or cessation, which, implacably pursues 
 its victim ; a restlessness engendered by the immense 
 difference between a wish conceived and a desire rea- 
 lized ; between beauty imagined by the mind in its 
 purity, and beauty obscured by words or by manners ; 
 an evil persecutor from which all great natures suffer, 
 and of which they die ; their glory, but also their tor- 
 mentor. 
 -C Bj^ron, that mental invalid, of independent character 
 and original genius, educated in the free bosom of 
 mother Nature, was at a very early period of life con- 
 strained to move in a society in which the native 
 energy of liberty is tempered by the severity of custom. 
 It is often noticed that wherever liberty is great, 
 
14 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 fashion and custom are imperious. Wherever the curb 
 of the written law is deficient, the restraint of conven- 
 tionalities is placed by the tacit consent of the people. 
 There is no part of Europe in which an individual 
 is more free, his home more secure, his conscience 
 more respected, his speech and his opinions more in- 
 dependent than in this Great Britain — the continual 
 object of our admiration ; but nowhere are the cus- 
 toms of society more tyrannical. The sa7is fa<;on of 
 the Frenchman, the carelessness of the Spaniard, the 
 ease with which we suppress all ceremonials, the 
 lightness with which we overstep all distances, the 
 familiarity of our conversation and manners, are not 
 known in England. Yet do not imagine I lean too 
 much to Spanish customs. I would give some of those 
 which level classes in exchange for a little of the 
 English liberty, the like of which I have never seen 
 either in France or in Spain. I love equally Liberty 
 and Equality ; I cannot conceive them separated ; I be- 
 lieve them to be, not conditions, but essentials of justice. 
 But separate them, and compel me to choose between 
 them, I take Liberty. In France there is more 
 Equality than in England. In England there is more 
 Liberty than in France. I decide for England. 
 Here, without being an English citizen, I find ray- 
 self in my house, under the protection of the English 
 laws, which are as rigorously executed as the laws of 
 Nature. In France I find myself at the mercy of the 
 commissary of the district, and I know not whether 
 
ENGLISH LIBER TV. 15 
 
 the concierge who opens the street-door belongs to the 
 secret police. There is no monster more terrible than 
 an arbitrary Government. A tiger may rend my 
 flesh ; a despotism lacerates my conscience. But 
 we should understand that liberty is not a gratuitous 
 gift, or an object for sport or luxury ; it is obtained 
 by maturity of judgment, and consolidated by a 
 great severity of manners. The trifling sacrifices 
 which are exacted by society are abundantly compen- 
 sated by the dignity so desirable for a people, and as 
 gratifying as the voice of a tranquil conscience for in- 
 dividuals. Thus English liberty finds its natural 
 counterpoise in the rigidity of customs, which are 
 imposed, without the necessity of law or authority, 
 by social power. It is most diflicult to explain 
 this idea to men who are habituated to Hve under a 
 despotism. In my numerous travels through Europe 
 I have met many Eussians, and among them all 
 I found but one who was not progressive. He 
 strove to prove to me a very singular thesis — namely, 
 that St. Petersburg is more free than Xew York. I 
 ought to say that the Eussian was a prince, but a 
 musician. The reason he gave in support of his 
 theory was laughable ; in New York people are not 
 allowed to play the violin on Sundays. And indeed 
 it would be impossible to make the people of the South 
 understand how the Sunday is observed among Anglo- 
 Saxon nations ; the cities seem dead, the intercourse 
 of the inhabitants is restrained for twenty-four hours. 
 
l6 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 The southerns could never understand English manners 
 and ceremonies ; the bells at the doors, the reverences 
 at the rubric, the complicated forms of address, accord- 
 ing to the rank of the person spoken to, in fine all 
 those innumerable small fetters with which instinct 
 disciplines Anglo-Saxon individuality, to withdraw it 
 from anarchy, and to prevent disorder. 
 
 Here we have the young poet, naturally inde- 
 pendent, educated among the mountains, and early 
 placed in the midst of a severe and ceremonious 
 society. Here Byron, who believed himself superior 
 to all his surroundings, was obliged to bend his head 
 and his back, to conform to the habits of those with 
 whom he mingled. His true home had been the 
 ocean cave, from whence he had often seen the stars 
 arise, or the clouds form themselves from the vapours 
 of the valley ; where he heard the raging of the wind 
 as it tossed the branches of the pine-trees, or the 
 rushing sound of the waterfalls, the howling of wolves,* 
 and the sharp cry of the eagles. His greatest pleasure 
 hitherto had been to leap and run, as if seeking to 
 deny his lameness, exercising his strength after the 
 fashion of the ancient clans of Scotland ; to address, 
 like the bards, his songs to the winds, and send them 
 on the wings of the air ; to wander in rocky defiles, 
 and bathe his imagination in the silver ra^^s of the 
 
 * Señor Castelar is evidently unaware tliat the last wolf in Scotland 
 is said to have been kuled by Sir Ewen Cameron of Locliiel, in 1680. 
 
 fl 
 
HIS LAMENESS. i; 
 
 moon ; to climb to the j^eaks of mountains, as if to 
 approach infinity — that infinity which awed his own 
 soul, as it must overwhelm all human greatness. 
 "-^ This extraordinary being — a savage by nature, a 
 mountaineer by habit; from his sublime genius a 
 poet, and for these reasons incomprehensible-) — found 
 himself amidst the most mechanical society in the 
 world, and, as it were, tortured and torn to pieces by 
 the teeth of its wheels. Destiny, which appeared to 
 smile upon him, gave him, by the death of his uncle, 
 the hereditary dignity of Peer, and then punished 
 him by compelling his obedience to English manners. 
 He assumed his new rank with much satisfaction : not 
 comprehending that it would hereafter become a fetter. 
 From the humble elementary school of Aberdeen, 
 where he learned his letters and the Latin laug-uao-e, 
 he passed to that of Harrow. A life in common with 
 others could not be congenial to one of his tempera- 
 ment, which, like the peak of a lofty mountain, sought 
 for solitude. The discipline of the college suited still 
 less his native freedom of character. Its pleasures 
 were to him annoyances, its tastes and habits were 
 repulsive. Above all, he suffered terribly from his 
 unfortunate lameness. The various cures to which 
 he was forced to submit were worse than the infirmity, 
 and the ridicule to which these exposed him was more 
 painful than the remedies. Even his mother mocked 
 at the lameness of the young nobleman, who would 
 not be able to mount the tribune — that pedestal of 
 
 2 
 
LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 the English aristocracy — without staggering like one 
 intoxicated.* These contrarieties drew into his soul 
 the torrent of bitterness afterwards poured forth in 
 his verses — a gall mingled with the leaven of the life 
 of that age. Whenever he could lay aside the course j 
 of study marked out for him, and read for his own \ 
 pleasure, he devoured books of travels and shipwrecks, 
 as a true descendant of the Normans and a worthy 
 son of Britain. With these he warmed his imagina- 
 tion, mingling the raging of his internal tempests, 
 the fever of his passions, the lightning of his ideas, 
 the sunbeam which pierced his temples, with the boil- 
 ing waves, with the unchained hurricanes, with the 
 battles of the winds and the waters, with the dashing 
 of the frail planks against the rocks, with the despair- 
 ing cries of the shipwrecked. 
 
 Under such circumstances, and in such a position, 
 it is easily conceived that his first translation was the 
 Prologue of Prometheus, born, like himself, with the 
 celestial flame upon his brow ; like him chained to 
 earth, struggling with the pride of the gods and the 
 ingratitude of men. At the same time, that sensitive 
 intelligence which pervaded his whole being was con- 
 densed in his head and heart. He loved with exceed- 
 ing tenderness his friends at college ; he hated his 
 enemies with all the fury of passion. 
 
 * Señor Castelar seems to ttink tliat speakers in the English 
 Houses of Parliament ascend a tribune or rostrum, as in Spain and 
 other continental countries. 
 
GEXEROSITY. 
 
 19 
 
 And as, notwithstanding his aristocratic descent 
 and the haughtiness natural to his order, he was always 
 strongly imbued with reforming and progressive ten- 
 dencies, he detested the tyranny of the strong, and 
 enthusiastically desired the emancipation of the weak. 
 He generously interposed to protect the new arrivals 
 at Harrow from being persecuted and annoyed by 
 their companions. According to old custom in pub- 
 lic schools, on a certain occasion one of the elder and 
 stronger pupils had determined to inflict a number of 
 blows upon a younger and weaker boy. When en-j 
 gaged in this cruel task, Byron came up running, and 
 throwing himself down, he exclaimed, " Let him alone, 
 and I will bear the second half of the beating." 
 
 But to these noble impulses of the heart the greatest 
 extravagances were united. He did not understand 
 that genius can only unfold its wings for lofty flights, 
 and that men of exalted imagination — like those 
 birds which soar the highest — seem out of their sphere 
 upon the earth. His lameness irritated him almost 
 to madness, and his moral deficiencies affected him 
 sadly. An artist, and a student of the plastic art, he 
 loved to imitate the repose of antique statues, eter- 
 nally dignified in their perfect beauty. 
 
 Alas ! what statuesque serenity can be given to a 
 cripple ! No arrangement of his costume could be 
 made to hide his bodily imperfection. Disgusted 
 with English taste in dress, he clothed himself richly, 
 after the Oriental fashion, in silk embroidered with 
 
 2—2 
 
LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 colours, and adorned with gold or silver lace ; a turban 
 studded with jewels, a red belt witli knives and pistols 
 of marvellous workmanship — thus imitating the heroes 
 of the Eastern legends, of whom he had read so much, 
 and whom he afterwards described in his verses. He 
 dressed in this manner, especially in his ñr^it vacation, 
 about the year 1802, in Bath, where he commenced 
 those orgies in which he w^asted so much of his life, 
 and consequently so much of his genius — for with 
 B3Ton to live was to think, to imagine, to create, toj 
 compose. 
 
 Without the safeguard of maternal love, the friends 
 of his childhood might have succeeded in calming his 
 impetuous temper by their wise counsels, and, above 
 all, by their own example. But unhappily all his early 
 companions — those who were possessed of prudence 
 and moderation, and who would have exercised a 
 beneficial restraint upon his ardent disposition — all 
 these were prematurely removed by death, and left him 
 abandoned to the whirlwind of his passions, the storm 
 of his own fantastic conceptions, which shut him in 
 from others, and prevented him from hearing the voice 
 of society. Byron had deeply lamented these friends. 
 As he said himself, if tears could sometimes disarm 
 Death, and force him to release the beloved ones he 
 has stolen, they would return again to comfort us. 
 
 But though death robbed him of his friends, and 
 though destiny willed not that maternal tenderness 
 should be as sweet for him as for the rest of humanity. 
 
MISS CHAWORTH. 21 
 
 lie iiiiglit nevertheless have been saved by that won- 
 derful passion — love. But every event in the life of 
 the man was singular and tragical. The object of his 
 first childish affection died, passing away like the 
 fantastic figures sketched on a fevered imagination. 
 Unfortunately, he became enamoured of Miss Cha- 
 worth, a lovely girl, but belonging to a family hated 
 by his own relations. His uncle, the head of the 
 Byron family, had killed the head of the Chaworth 
 family, the uncle of the young lady. This caused a 
 feud between the houses, similar to that which sepa- 
 rated Eomeo and Juliet, and a corpse lay between the 
 hearts of the lovers. In boyhood, Byron feared to 
 staj' a night in the house inhabited by Miss Chaworth, 
 lest the portraits of her ancestors should descend from 
 their frames, go into the armoury, take down their 
 weapons, and strike the last and only representative of 
 the hated race whose sacrilegious hands had spattered 
 them with blood. But when she walked abroad, when 
 he saw her under the shadow of the grand old trees, 
 on the fresh grass of the lawn, pressing it lightly as 
 the mist of the morning, around her an aureole of 
 beauty and of purity, like that of the silver moon ; 
 the azure heaven of her eyes half concealed by their 
 long lashes — his whole being was subdued, as the 
 ocean is calmed at the soft kisses of the breeze, and 
 his impetuous and poetic nature was hushed and con- 
 quered by reality. Doubtless these touches of har- 
 mony were needed in the life of the poet, in order to 
 
22 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 elevate his genius to the great general principles of 
 his time, to teach him to sing of events like Homer, 
 to paint the passions like Shakspeare, or to unfold ideas 
 like Calderón, to describe the sciences like Goethe, as 
 well as his own sentiments. Who can say whether, 
 if captivated by love, overcome by the enchantment 
 of a pure and happy affection, Byron would not have 
 been the objective poet capable of giving us the cyclical 
 poem of our age, instead of being the subjective 
 poet, who has bequeathed to us the fragments of his 
 palpitating and bleeding heart ? 
 
 The beautiful heiress of the Chaworth family was 
 then sixteen, two years older than her devoted lover. 
 The boy began to think like a man, wished to marr}^ 
 and by this union to bury for ever all ancient ani- 
 mosities; to join old houses and estates, to mingle 
 two English races which had originally sprung from 
 the same root — from heroes, navigators, orators ; 
 worthy to bear his name into those two agitated 
 elements of British greatness — the Parliament and the 
 ocean . 
 
 With a simplicity equal to that of the " Confessions" 
 of Eousseau (who is the eternal model of the art of 
 confidences). Lord Byron describes his interviews 
 among the hills crowned by a diadem of trees, his 
 little voyages on the lakes, above all, one in which the 
 boat containing the two young people was separated 
 from the others, and entered first into the mouth of 
 a cavern so low that they were obliged to recline in 
 
BOYISH LOVE AND JEALOUSY. 
 
 the floating couch upborne by the crystal waters, the 
 soft murmur of the breeze expressing the love the boy 
 dared not reveal by the light of a glance, or the sad- 
 ness of a sigh. 
 
 The girl sometimes made him suffer cruelly. His 
 lameness prevented him from dancing. But his be- 
 loved danced with ail his friends, who had the privi- 
 lege of encircling the waist which Byron could not 
 approach without a nervous trembling, as if he had 
 been struck by lightning. Whilst the happy girl 
 waltzed, the jealous boy struck his heart, fearing that 
 its violent beating would be heard through the saloons. 
 And though he had never formally declared himself, 
 he was understood. She knew well how to sound the 
 abyss of a look ; and he was even so far understood 
 that she gave him her picture as a love token. 
 
 But one day he was nearly driven mad. He hap- 
 pened to be unperceived by a group of young people, 
 among whom was Miss Chaworth, when the conver- 
 sation very natural!}" turned upon love and lovers. 
 Her friends mentioned Lord Byron, his beauty and 
 talents, and the sighs and glances which they had ob- 
 served directed towards Miss Chaworth. Without 
 being in the least disconcerted, and with all the 
 serenity of perfect indifference, she uttered this cruel 
 sentence : " You offend me in thinking I can possi- 
 bly be interested in that boy — that cripple." 
 
 In those two words she had expressly defined the two 
 great gulfs which, according to the poet himself, sepa- 
 
24 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 rated Iiiin from happiness — his youth and his infir- 
 mity : that terrible defect, the first of his misfortunes, 
 the most bitter of his soirows ! But to hear this 
 from the lips of his beloved, to hear it when least 
 expected, to hear it in the moment in which his most 
 cherished projects were unfolding themselves like a 
 vast panorama before his exalted imagination ; just as 
 he was about to throw himself at her feet, to show 
 her the bottom of that heart, veiled hitherto by a 
 profound reverence, to listen to that terrible death- 
 sentence for his enamoured soul, panting with its 
 tender aspirations. Alas ! it was like reaching the 
 threshold of heaven, half beholding its glory, then 
 falling to the abyss of despair ! 
 
 The youth was henceforth transformed ; alone in 
 his sorrow, stripped of his hopes, plunged into despair, 
 into a night of thick darkness, and with no other con- 
 fidant of his anguish and agitation than the sombre 
 atmosphere whose vibrations repeated his heart-rending 
 lamentations, which his stubborn will vainly tried to 
 stifle within his bursting breast. His desperation 
 was equal to his love, Eushing from the house, he 
 ran into the country, without knowing whither he was 
 going; all sleep tied from his burning eyelids, all 
 tranquillity from his tortured soul. The world seemed 
 to him to be empty : empty the heavens ! He would 
 have welcomed death, and in order that death should 
 satisfy his great desire, he wished for non-existence. 
 
 In 1805 the one so deeply beloved was married to 
 
MISS CHAWORTH'S MARRIAGE. 25 
 
 Mi\ Jolin Musters. The love and the ansruish of he 
 poet are easily seen in the short and simple verses 
 consecrated to tliis sorrowful event. Instead of paint- 
 ing his passion in glowing colours, the intensity of 
 his love bordering upon insanity, the beauty of his 
 beloved sufficient to excite his most lively devotion, 
 the triumph of the favoured rival who knew her with- 
 out understanding her, who wedded her without 
 loving her, trampling underfoot the heart of the poet, 
 wounding all its fibres, torturing it with the poison of 
 his own success, burning as molten lead and lasting as 
 eternity — instead of giving himself np to all the 
 furies of an unrequited passion, of a desire impossible 
 to accomplish, of a love without hope — he is content 
 to say mournfully that he will visit no more the hill, 
 the scene of their interviews ; the trees, witnesses of 
 his protestations. 
 
 Thus was concluded the boyhood of Byron, and his 
 youth commenced. He had passed from one period 
 to the other by disenchantment, as he afterwards 
 entered from nothingness to life through sorrow. At 
 the meeting of the line which separated two great 
 segments of the circle of his existence, an overwhelm- 
 ing grief possessed him. His fortune was valueless, 
 his illustrious name was odious, the hangers-on who 
 accompany all greatness were wearisome ; society em- 
 barrassed and restrained him like the walls of a dun- 
 geon ; glory was impossible, his friendships were dead, 
 his love in the power of a happ}' rival. In this melan- 
 
26 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 choly condition of mind, to return to his mountains, 
 to wander alone in gloomy solitudes, to plunge into 
 the blue waters, was his desire ; or if not, to take the 
 wings of the dove, to fly unceasingly, to mount and 
 mount to infinity ; to lose sight of this troubled world, 
 and to search afar in the heavens for the peace he 
 found not below. Forced to leave Harrow, his school, 
 he took a sorrowful farewell of all its surroundings-— 
 of the meadow, where he had fought with his compa- 
 nions ; of the gloomy hall, in which he listened to the 
 reproofs of the pedagogue ; of the theatre, in which he 
 performed, thinking to eclipse Grarrick ; of the ceme- 
 tery, where he went to mourn over his deceased friends, 
 and to carve words cut with sobs in the marble or on 
 the trunks of trees, to look at the last rays of the 
 setting sun, to linger among the mysteries of life and 
 of eternity among the shadows of evening. 
 
 This reckless desperation of Byron, which com- 
 menced so earl}', was destined to continue through 
 life, and to become his moral infirmity. Some attri- 
 buted it to the gloomy climate of his country, others 
 to the delicacy of his nerves and his peculiar tempera- 
 ment, others to the age in which he was born, and 
 whose brazen gates, heated in the fires of the Eevo- 
 lution, enclosed this Titan at his birth, who rose 
 rebellious against restraint, sometimes weeping like a 
 child, and holding imploring hands to the heavens, 
 supplicating a faith, a belief! 
 
 The poet cannot be the representative of his age. 
 
POETS, PHILOSOPHERS', AXD ORATORS. 27 
 
 like tlie philosopher or the orator. The philosopher, 
 after having examined and purified his doubts, com- 
 poses a system dictated by reason, fixed and verified 
 by logic, and thus embodies a new idea or a distinct 
 principle. The orator raises his voice to the height 
 of his own conscience, and consecrates himself to a 
 cause, to a reformation. To do this he is obliged to 
 concentrate his powers, to discipline his character, to 
 group his ideas around one capital subject ; to be 
 consistent and logical, not only in his discourse, but 
 in his life. The philosopher is not an artist ; inspira- 
 tion is not a divinity. The orator is more artistic 
 than the philosopher, but his art is subordinate to 
 thought, and oug-lit to follow his reasoning. To 
 deliver an oration is not to recite ; it is to reason, to 
 convince, to persuade. Beauty and harmony should 
 be the auxiliaries of ratiocination, designed to attain its 
 speedy triumph. But the poet is a mysterious, unde- 
 finable being, who escapes from analysis and dogma, 
 and soars from our sight like the bird of the moun- 
 tain, the lark J when quitting her nest of claj^ she 
 mounts to the ethereal heights, and watches the first 
 streaks of morning, whilst all other creatures sleep 
 profoundly in the shadows, unmindful of the coming 
 day. Poets are harps, which respond to every zephyr/ 
 lakes, whose shades vary with every passing cloud ;\ 
 their faculties are incomprehensible as prophecies, as 
 presentiments, as dreams. The most antagonistic 
 ideas struggle in their brains, and flow in wild disorder 
 
28 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 from their pens. The genius of the poet advances 
 with the restlessness of a torrent; now it is peaceful, 
 now clamorous ; again it wastes itself among dark and 
 rocky defiles, in foamy cascades, or seems to sleep 
 gently ; as a murmuring streamlet to repeat the stars 
 of the night ; and at last enters as a great river into the 
 unfathomable ocean of eternity. By closely examining 
 the mind of a great poet, we can almost understand 
 the conscience of his epoch ; we can behold all his 
 fluctuations, his sorrows, his aspirations, his crises of 
 reaction, his progressive impulses, his internal combats, 
 his conceptions. Victor Hugo has been at times a 
 Bonapartist, a romancist, a teacher, a believer, a 
 rationalist, a free-thinker, and a democrat. But when 
 you would seek the legend of this age, all that we 
 have thought, all that we have felt, our moral failings, 
 our abhorrence of slavery; the hopes we have con- 
 ceived from the proud triumphs of mind over matter ; 
 how we imagine society ought to be constructed, and 
 how we propose to reform it ; our conception of the 
 different epochs of history ; our poem of progress, so 
 much of which is written with the blood of humanity; 
 our doubts, our fears, and our faith, fostered by the 
 exaltation of martyrdom ; if you would comprehend 
 all this — read, study Victor Hugo. 
 
 And Byron resembles him. The sublime disorder I 
 of his genius is like the grand confusion of Nature. ' 
 By the side of a snowy peak, on which the rays of 
 light fall and are reflected with countless scintillations. 
 
COMPARED WITH VICTOR HUGO. 29 
 
 there is an unfathomable abyss ; close by an arid 
 plain there is a grove perfumed by all the flowers of 
 the earth, and filled with harmony from the songs of 
 all the birds of heaven. These contrarieties are 
 visible in the poet, for his work bears a relation to 
 the universe ; his conscience is doubt and faith^ affir- 
 mation and belief, the whole of his epoch. Let us 
 leave him now at his entrance into youth. Later we 
 shall see him in his life ; we shall admire him in his 
 works. 
 
30 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 TART TEE SECOND. 
 
 LET us now consider the second period, and the 
 most critical, of the life of Lord Byron. I will 
 not weary the reader's patience by naming the nume- 
 rous biographies which have been written of this 
 remarkable man. They would form a library in them- 
 selves. Writers of all classes, poets of different styles, 
 psychologists, annalists, doctors, painters, politicians, 
 phrenologists, all curious inquirers into the secrets of 
 human nature, and into the history of the beginning 
 of our century, feel an interest in the actors of those 
 events,; and write something about the strange being 
 who passed before them like a whirlwind of ideas, 
 and left behind him a chorus of immortal songs.) 
 Among this crowd of authors there is one wlio always 
 believed in the mind and character of Byron — Thomas 
 Moore, his friend and confidant. But Moore's book 
 was written when the anger of England against the 
 poet, who was to give her so much glory, was at its 
 height ; so that it was necessarily the biography suited 
 to that particular period, and was deficient in the 
 independence which is essential in order to secure the 
 
MOORE'S ''LIFE OF BVRON." 31 
 
 consideration and respect of contemporaries. And 
 doubtless the " Life of Byron," by Moore, reserved 
 and wanting in courage as it is, is the commencement 
 of a rehabiUtation of Byron's character. 
 
 In these later days we look with much impatience 
 for a work on the life of the poet, a book which shall 
 be, so to speak, monumental ; a book which would 
 throw a new and a brighter light on this great mind, 
 and be for it almost a resurrection. Let us imagine 
 the sort of biography Laura would write of Petrarch. 
 All literary people acknowledge the happy influence 
 exercised by a beautiful Italian lady on the inspira- 
 tions of the English poet. This lovely woman, merely 
 from having caused some calm and happy moments 
 in the turbulent and feverish life of Byron, raised her- 
 self in the estimation of this age to the choir of 
 immortal women. 
 
 Lately I eagerly searched for her poetic spirit by 
 the green waters of the Grrand Canal of Venice, among 
 the crroves of her columns and the Grecian fretwork 
 of her marbles, amongst those undying figures left 
 by the pencils of Paul Veronese or of Titian ; and in 
 the cemetery of Pisa, under the cypresses, upon the 
 holy earth of Jerusalem which brings forth roses 
 beautiful as those of Jericho, celebrated by the pro- 
 phets ; between the grand oriel windows, where are 
 the marble statues which weep eternally on Grecian 
 monuments, the angels of Giotto and of Orcagna, forms 
 of which the wings folded in graceful beauty seem 
 
LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 to move gently in the soft air ; there I could almost 
 hear the sighs of that mysterious woman wafted by 
 the breezes of the Tuscan Sea, laden with the cadences 
 of the Arno and the deathless verses of Byron. It is 
 well known that the Vaucluse of their loves was not 
 a fountain shaded by olive-trees, but the solitary 
 graveyard in which the terrors of the Last Judgment 
 are displayed in all the mystery and all the solemnity 
 of eternal silence, interrupted only by the lament of 
 the bells from the adjoining leaning tower, or by 
 the echo of the orisons and religious canticles from 
 the basilica, by the rustling of the trees, or the 
 hum of the insects which transform into new tissues 
 of life the ashes of the dead. 
 
 While there I thought of one of the books which 
 exercises the greatest influence over my thoughts, and 
 inspired my boyhood with poetic dreams — the great 
 work of Quinet, " Ahasuerus." I could not forget the 
 verses in which the loving women of the story 
 snatch aside, in the moonlight, the white shroud 
 and behold souls without bodies, thoughts without 
 forms, a sort of spiritual butterflies. Wings of light, 
 beautified with ideas, hover over the brow of the 
 poet with their mystic inspirations. There among 
 that choir was Sappho ; she who quenched in death 
 her loving thirst in the waters of Leucates ; there 
 Heloise, in whose bosom human nature began a 
 new existence, under the sackcloth and ashes of the 
 Middle Ages \ there, she who was spotless as the first 
 
THE COUNTESS GUICCIOLI. 
 
 33 
 
 innocent love, the mysterious nymph whose features 
 bore some resemblance to the virgins of Eaphael, the 
 star which turned to gold the bitterness of a stormy 
 life, beautiful as none other, and adorned bv the 
 splendours of eternal sunshine : the Beatrice of 
 Dante. 
 
 Among those immortal women Quinet numbered 
 the Countess Guiccioli, as one of the loveliest forms in 
 which inspiration has ever been clothed upon earth. 
 And indeed that woman, who met the poet half-way 
 in his career, when almost maddened by wild passions 
 and desperation, when faith and life were nearly 
 extinguished ; she who smiled upon him like the 
 moon between the clouds of the tempest, and soothed 
 him with her tears, as the gentle rain calms the 
 stormy ocean, and inspired him with tender verses, 
 whose sweetness and pathos are equalled by their 
 grandeur; she who incited him to deathless actions, such 
 as the struggle for the emancipation of the Grreeks, 
 the memory of whose deeds shall be cherished among 
 the heroisms and the noblest sacrifices of history ; that 
 woman is one of those sublime Muses who pass 
 over the world singing, like a flock of white mystic 
 birds, over its sorrows and terrors. 
 
 I alwaj's thought that the Countess Gruiccioli, after 
 having smiled upon Lord Byron at Venice, after 
 having brought him to Eavenna, after pensive meet- 
 ings and wanderings with him along the banks of the 
 Arno, beneath the dark green pine-trees of Pisa, — I 
 
 3 
 
34 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 thought she would have expired the day after Byron 
 died upon the Grecian shores. What more remained 
 for her on earth ? Wh}^ live when the mysterious 
 nightingale who sung at her side would return no 
 more? No more chant those cantos, not alone to 
 empty air, whose vibrations repeat and dissipate 
 them in a short moment, but transmit tliem to 
 space and bequeath them to immortality ! I could 
 never have believed that death would have snatched 
 away the great Poet and spared the Countess. I 
 thought that their souls would have mingled, so that 
 they would have lived the same life and in the same 
 heaven, like two stars of a constellation which are 
 never separated, and that from the beginning of 
 time look upon each other lovingly in the immen- 
 sity of space. 
 
 Heloise would never have descended to posterity 
 had she harboured another thought than that of 
 Abelard. To exist through all time it was needful 
 for her to die in the ocean of her tears, on the 
 cold stones of the cloister, having lived in continual 
 widowhood. Her tenderness eudures as much as the 
 learning of her lover, for the heart of Heloise con- 
 tained an infinite capacity for loving, as the heart 
 of Abelard was capable of inspiration and of reason- 
 ing. Hatred and violence separated the lovers, but 
 now then- bones rest together and mingle in the 
 sepulchre, in the undying warmth of the ñame which 
 animated them during their lives. 
 
THE COUNTESS GU ICC 10 LPS BOOK. 
 
 But what then did tlie Countess Guiccioli ? She 
 lived. And not only did she live, but she married a 
 wealthy nobleman and Senator of France, the Mar- 
 quis de Boissy. And not only did she marr}-, but, 
 on becoming a widow, she wrote a book upon Lord 
 Byron, in two thick volumes, with the best intentions 
 probably, but tedious like all diffuse apologies. I have 
 gone over the twelve hundred pages of her work 
 without finding any new information, or even a single 
 ray of inspiration. The heavens have refused it to 
 this rich marquise, this wife of a French Senator, who 
 covers with bright flowers and with shining silks the 
 skeleton of her lover I The Countess wrong^ed her first 
 husband for the sake of Byron. Such a fault could 
 have had but one excuse — the eternity of her lo ve. 
 How did the Countess Gruiccioli wear her perpetual 
 mourning ? Calling herself the Marquise de Boiss}^ 
 after the death of her husband, she wrote an intermi- 
 nable book upon Byron, a monotonous and wearisome 
 apology, instead of the lyric poem which should 
 emanate from an enamoured heart. Certainly she 
 would have written a book of another kind if she 
 had shut herself up in her moral widowhood, and 
 worn her mourning till God had called her hence, 
 if, weaving a wreath for the poet, she had sought 
 for the fragrant violets of the cemetery of Pisa, in- 
 stead of the false flowers of Parisian salons. 
 
 In contemplating the life of Byron, we feel even 
 greater sympathy for his misfortunes than sorro\y for 
 
 3—2 
 
36 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 his untimely death. We left him in the early part of 
 his history, when he was leaving the school of Harrow 
 to enter the University of Cambridge. Time passed 
 on, and in the year ISOS we find the boy has become 
 a youth. If, in the beginning of his career, he had 
 been less unhappily circumstanced, he would doubtless 
 have been less vicious as his life advanced. Childhood, 
 like the seed, takes root in the earth, from whence it 
 shoots forth powerful branches of life, mingles with the 
 exterior world, and is penetrated with the spirit of the 
 family ; it is a continuation of the nine months whicli 
 precedes birth, of the two years during which the infant 
 hangs on its mother's breast ; and as the maternal 
 milk is its aliment, as the maternal blood is its life and 
 substance, so the maternal education is its horizon, is 
 its heaven, is the blood and the nourishment of its 
 soul. In the second period of human life these har- 
 monies cease, this subjection is broken ; the life goes 
 forth — almost always overflows from the paternal 
 abode, spreading itself far away from its source, like a 
 torrent loosened by the warm thaw of spring. The 
 young are usually opposed to their surroundings ; they 
 are full of vitality, excitable and rebellious. The 
 passions shoot forth like flowers, they burst the bud 
 and expand. Youth is a great infirmity, and has its 
 continual excesses which time squanders. It looks to 
 the horizon, beholds it extended to infinity, but sees not 
 the shadows which darken it, nor the tempests which 
 thunder in the distance. The life of the family de- 
 
LADY BYROX. 
 
 37 
 
 velops into friendship, the agitations of love take the 
 place of tranquillity, and the passions are substituted 
 for innocence. When we grow older, and as we ad- 
 vance on our journey of life, then the serpent appears 
 to drive us out of Paradise. One must have a sino-ular 
 memory to be able to recollect those supreme days 
 between youthful innocence and the tumult of the 
 passions, that first ebullition of the blood, that tii'st 
 voluptuousness of life which must end in so much bit- 
 terness, if not sweetened by the honey of virtue. In 
 our first years we need maternal love. But in the 
 second period of life— that of youth — we need a wife 
 to love with chaste affection, and to keep us safe and 
 happy. If we meet with such a one on the threshold 
 of life, our felicity is assured, and passion is like a 
 refreshing dew, expressing itself in vague reflections, 
 in ideal aspirations, in a species of poetical religion, 
 which has, indeed, its troubles, like all greatnesses of 
 soul, which kindles the whole of life like a fire, but 
 which, like the fire, invigorates and spreads its bene- 
 ficent warmth to infinity. 
 
 Lady Byron was a most loving mother, but she was 
 not a tender mother ; and she could not sympathize 
 with the early moral necessities of her extraordinary 
 son. His second love, Mary Chaworth, who touched 
 even the depths of that privileged soul, even she cast 
 him aside for an ordinary man who icas not lame. 
 
 The domestic troubles of his own home, the con- 
 stant quarrels between his parents, his hot and ex- 
 
38 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 citable Norman blood, the terrible family history 
 which he often heard repeated, the lonely castle in 
 which his early years were passed, the Scottish moun- 
 tains scorched by lightning, and echoing with the 
 roaring of torrents and the cries of eagles — all this 
 gave to the solitary and impetuous youth born for 
 Titanic struggles an energy so much the more extra- 
 ordinary, that it did not burst all bounds in its deter- 
 mination to overcome whatever opposed it. 
 
 The University of Cambridge was another incite- 
 ment. The extreme laxity of discipline permitted a cor- 
 responding looseness of morals, and this unrestrained 
 freedom of life degenerated into licentiousness. Byron 
 had strange eccentricities, the result of his warm tem- 
 perament, deliriums of that moral fever called genius. 
 At times, for instance, he dressed himself in the most 
 absurd and fantastic fashion. He w^as greatly afraid 
 of becoming corpulent, consequently he scarcely ate 
 anything except meat and vegetables, but notwith- 
 standing his own temperance, he gave Babylonian 
 feasts, in which the image of Sardanapalus — after- 
 wards so majestically evoked by his poem — seemed to 
 appear amidst the exhalations of wine. 
 
 He kept near him a bear in chains, and asked those 
 present to confer on this formidable creature the 
 degree of doctor. On another occasion he persuaded 
 a woman with whom he had become acquainted to 
 disguise herself as a jockey, and to follow him on the 
 public promenade. He took an insane pleasure in 
 
HIS YOUTHFUL EXCESSES. 39 
 
 describing liis life as a whirlwind of vice, and spoke 
 of his conscience as a dead body devoured hj corrup- 
 tion. He organized a sort of monastic association 
 with some of his companions, and drank out of a skull 
 mounted in silver. This circumstance was the origin 
 of the popular belief that the skull was that of a 
 woman to whom he had been attached, and who was 
 supposed to have been murdered. He was skilful in 
 the use of fire-arms, was an accomplished horseman, 
 and swam three miles in the river Thames. 
 
 His favourite dog became attacked with madness. 
 Unmindful of his own danger, he nursed it as if it had 
 been his brother; and when it died preserved its 
 memory in an epitaph as tender as if a portion of his 
 heart had expired. At eighteen years of age he 
 found himself ruined, and his future income in the 
 hands of unprincipled usurers. At eighteen he had 
 fougfht three duels : one of them, because he had 
 been called an atheist. At eighteen he had already 
 composed a volume of verses, and on taking possession 
 of his property he invited his friends to orgies, where 
 he had an ox in imitation of the ancient Homeric ban- 
 quets, where he made libations of wine as in Asiatic 
 festivals, and where they wrestled and fought like 
 Eoman gladiators, concluding with scenes of riot and 
 debauchery. Amongst the guests at these entertain- 
 ments were some young men who afterwards caused a 
 political revolution, like that made by Lord John 
 Eussell in the matter of electoral reform ; and one of 
 
40 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 those social revolutions, which rise to the height of the 
 greatest works of humanity, like that of Sir Robert 
 Peel, who opened the storehouses of the world by 
 giving free trade in corn to the people of England, 
 till then compelled to feed on the scraps which fell 
 from the tables of the aristocracy. Notwithstanding 
 the malicious pains taken by many to picture Byron 
 as a monster capable of all crimes and vices, it was 
 only at this particular epoch that his life was really 
 vicious. Yet nevertheless, on examining it scrupu- 
 lously, we find his vices arose more from recklessness 
 than from a deliberate intention to do evil ; rather 
 from a bold and daring disposition, than from a love of 
 wrong-doing. 
 
 The enthusiasm of art might have been able to re- 
 place with some advantage the defects of his early 
 training, and his unfortunate attachment. One ab- 
 sorbing passion would have left in his heart no room for 
 corruption to enter, and no time to waste in dissipation. 
 An infinite pleasure in labour, the slow elaboration 
 of some great work, a continual contemplation of 
 some beautiful ideal, extinguishes all desire for the 
 voluptuous pleasures of sense. Sensual gratifications 
 cannot compare with the pure delight caused by great 
 artistic creations, or grand scientific conceptions. The 
 fine arts gave to Michael Angelo, philosophy to Kant, 
 mathematics to Sir Isaac Newton, a chastity as com- 
 plete and spiritual as a cenobitical virginity. Their 
 affections were immaterial, their beloved ones were 
 
AN A UTHOR'S SENSITIVENESS. 41 
 
 ideas, their offspring the statue of the Niglit, tlie cri- 
 ticism of Reason, the calculation of the Infinite. 
 Byron belonged more to humanity than these men of 
 genius, who were isolated representatives of thought ; 
 statues, so to speak, animated and enlightened by im- 
 mortal ideas. Byron was born to love and to be 
 loved. But certainly his rare talents, his perception 
 of the true and the beautiful, the admiration which 
 he really felt for purity, the inspirations of his poetic 
 imagination, and the greatness of his heart and soul, 
 should have preserved him from those degrading inti- 
 macies and base pleasures, which intoxicate for the 
 moment, but which leave after them an enduring re- 
 morse and disenchantment. 
 
 But he was unfortunate even in his love of litera- 
 ture. He sought for fame prematurely, and met with 
 bitter censure and disappointment. Those only who 
 have been born with an author's vocation will be able 
 to understand the jealous impatience with which the 
 youthful writer watches the appearance of his own 
 works. And after the publication, with what eager- 
 ness he collects the different criticisms upon them ! 
 How carefully he weighs all opinions ! Self-esteem 
 magnifies their merit in an absurd manner. But this 
 very anxiety for public applause is a proof of mis- 
 trust in his own powers, an assurance that conscience 
 overrules all passion in the human heart, even self- 
 love. It often happens that approbation is conceded 
 to mediocrity, and denied to extraordinary merit. 
 
 I liKin/CDCi-r\y \ 
 
42 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 There is something incomprehensible in every great 
 nature ; with every grand quality the sublime is 
 mingled, and sublimity fatigues us with its incalcu- 
 lable weight, above all when we cannot comprehend its 
 greatness. I have often seen people who, after a long 
 contemplation of the vault of the Sistine Chapel, that 
 masterpiece of Michael Angelo — with its legions of 
 Titans, of prophets, and of sibyls — that wondrous 
 j)ainting which reaches the extreme boundary within 
 which humanity can represent ideas, mounting to the 
 highest summits of art. I have seen that from the 
 study of such a work they draw no other result than 
 a bad pain in their necks. \ And nothing is more easy 
 than to malign that which we do not understand. 
 Besides, there are literary schools just as there are 
 political schools, which deny everything that does not 
 adjust itself to their own particular constitution or 
 idiosyncrasies. Calumny and assassination appear to 
 them to be fair weapons, if used against the enemy. 
 Above all, those who for a long season have been 
 celebrated themselves, fancy they should liave a mono- 
 j)ol3' of fame, and cannot suffer any competition, nor 
 pardon the young author about to succeed them. 
 They have imagined one particular type of critical 
 belief; they have formed, as it were, a church after 
 their own fashion ; they excommunicate all heretics, 
 and not being able to burn the whole body, they burn 
 the blood. 
 
 Lord Byron presented himself with his first volume 
 
CRITICISMS OF THE ''EDINBURGH REVIEW." 43 
 
 of poetry before that Sanhedrim of criticism, the cele- 
 brated Edinburgh Bevieio. That respectable publica- 
 tion poured molten lead upon the cradle of the poet. 
 Never was criticism so harsh, so implacable ! The 
 youthful aspirant to the temple of the Muses did not 
 even reach mediocrity. According to his critics, his 
 ideas neither rose nor fell to the same level ; they re- 
 sembled stasrnant water. He excused himself indeed 
 by speaking of his youth, and this minority was too 
 plainly visible from the beginning to the end of the 
 work, as the inseparable companion of his style. He 
 happened, like most other people, to write a great 
 many miserable verses in the interval between leaving 
 school and leaving the university. He should have 
 remembered, however, that to be a poet, a little senti- 
 ment was necessary, and also a little imagination. 
 The imitations of Ossian and Homer would not pass 
 as good exercises in a class of rhetoric, and were 
 unworthy of pubhcation. In short, the critic boldly 
 declared that the young nobleman was not born to be 
 a poet, and he ought, therefore, to leave this enchant- 
 m<y art to those of taste and talent. 
 
 Lord Byron felt this cruel blow with all the nervous 
 sensibility peculiar to poets. The keen edge of that 
 first criticism froze his very soul. Blood and gall 
 seemed to flow from his lips. In his bitter rage and 
 mortification he turned against his country and against 
 all his contemporaries, whose names were more or less 
 famous. All the Satanic qualities with which he was 
 
44 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 supposed to be endowed were called out of the depths 
 of his heart bj this satire — cynicism, irony, sarcasm, 
 anger, hatred, and the thirst for vengeance. The im- 
 mortal cripple — like Vulcan with his red-hot hammer 
 — ascended the English Olympus, and spared none of 
 the statues of the gods. Some he called narrow- 
 hearted traders, and not inspired poets ; to others he 
 said they had chosen an idiot for the hero of a work, 
 and after having read it one knew not who was the 
 greater fool, the author or the person he described. 
 To these, he says, they have fought a duel with pistols 
 charged with powder ; to those, that they have dressed 
 Camoens in English lace ; to a certain noble lord, 
 that his dinners are worth more than his transla- 
 tions ; to a celebrated historian, that he writes because 
 he must eat, and eats because he writes. He is severe 
 upon those who bring their daughters to crowded re- 
 unions of the dissipated and worthless, demoralizing 
 them by immodest dances, as well as ruining them- 
 selves at the gaming-table, expecting to gain every- 
 thing from these Eabels of vice — the money or the 
 wife of their neighbour. 
 
 Imagine what effect such satires would produce in 
 a society where modesty is so scrupulously respected, 
 and where there is so much chastity of speech and 
 manners ! Imagine how the wounded turned against 
 that burning genius, whose hands had pierced them 
 so ruthlessly ! A cloud of injuries surrounded the 
 poet. This unfortunate satire contributed not a little 
 
LORD CARLISLE. 45 
 
 to increase the implacable hatred of his contempo- 
 raries. At first Lord Byron published it anonymously, 
 but eventually he affixed his own name. He declared 
 that he would give in London as much satisfaction as 
 should be desired. But when all confined themselves 
 to murmurs, without any attempt to challenge him, 
 he exclaimed sadly, "The age of chivalry is over !" 
 
 Among those w^ho had been most hardly treated 
 w^as his relation, Lord Carlisle, who had formerly been 
 his guardian. But the noble youth never repented of 
 this proceeding. On the contrary, in one edition of 
 his works, he excused himself for having once dedi- 
 cated a book to this individual, on the ground of his 
 own inexperience, and declared that all the blood of 
 all the Howards could not ennoble a clown, nor make 
 a sage out of a simpleton. The cause of this bitter 
 vengeance should be understood, for it is inti- 
 mately connected with one of the aspects under which 
 we should regard the poet — that of an orator ; and 
 also with one of the most important acts of his 
 existence — his entrance into the Eno-lish House of 
 Peers. 
 
 Lord Byron had asked the protection and assistance 
 of Lord Carlisle in order to be duly presented in that 
 assembly. Nothing was more natural than his desire 
 to sit in that great oligarchy, which, at that time 
 especially, resembled the Roman Senate, and which, 
 from its world-wide influence, warmed and excited his 
 poetic imagination. Like all men of remarkable 
 
46 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 genius, he liad a longing for greatness, an unquench- 
 able thirst for glory; and the grandest, the most 
 intoxicating of human glories, is the glory of the 
 orator, who, without shedding one drop of blood, 
 without staining his laurels with the fatal trophies of 
 the warrior, can from the tribune conquer the souls of 
 \his hearers, and force them to mingle with his own. 
 No spectacle can compare with that of the orator, who 
 should be at the same time a philosopher, a poet, an 
 artist, a musician, a tactician ; one who can draw from 
 ^the depths of his intellect the hidden treasures of 
 thought, clothe and shape them into beauty, and (with 
 a creative power which, like the fiat of the Eternal, 
 brought forth the worlds) by a miracle of his intelli- 
 gence and his will, a.nd amidst the deafening applause 
 of the people, lay invisible fetters on all hearts, 
 making them slaves of that magic whose supernatural 
 power is one of the most profound mysteries of the 
 spirit. The restless, excitable soul of Lord Byron 
 already imagined scenes in w-hich his brilHant fancy 
 should triumph over all his enemies by the mere 
 magic of his words, and benefit mankind by the purity 
 of his ideas. 
 
 The man whom his enemies represent as being 
 indifi"erent to all human sorrows, and sceptical as to 
 all good ; a despiser of his fellows, and an enemy of 
 G-od ; altogether given up to the gratification of his 
 own vanity and his unbridled vices, had in the depths 
 of his own great soul an altar reserved for the religion 
 
HE ENTERS THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 47 
 
 of the oppressed, and a living faitli in the progress of 
 humanity, which is the ultimate accomplishment of 
 the divine law of justice on the earth. There was not 
 only a sentiment of self-love in the just impatience of 
 Byron to acquire the rights of his own inheritance ; • 
 he had also the more noble love of humanity, which 
 he showed afterwards when lie employed his powerful 
 pen and word in favour of the Irish Catholics, and 
 thus scattering the seeds of those free institutions 
 destined to spring up in our time — a prophet, like all 
 great intelligences, of a new social system. 
 
 But Lord Carlisle responded to all these lofty aspi- 
 rations with culpable indifference. Indeed, he mani- 
 fested the most lively desire to thwart the noble 
 ambition of his nephew. He mislaid the necessary 
 legal documents in order to retard his oihcial reception. 
 He received with contempt the dedication of some 
 poems, which, though the works of a youth, were 
 destined to glorify his name, while his own writings, 
 those of his old age, were already forgotten. And at 
 length he refused to present, in the Assembly of Peers, 
 the genius who bore concealed in his brain a heaven of 
 immortal poetry. Lord Bj^ron entered the Upper 
 House accompanied by a distant relative, with whom 
 he was barely acquainted. The House of Peers 
 devotes itself to its ordinary business with that 
 mathematical regularity common to English habits. 
 No one in that aristocratic assembly divined that the 
 young nobleman come to fill one of its senatorial 
 
48 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 cliiiirs would be in the future the interpreter of 
 the thought of his age — the poet destined to chant its 
 doubts and its sorrows. Perhaps Lord Byron, from 
 the depths of the degradation into which he had fallen, 
 and notwithstanding the disenchantment which cruel 
 criticism had engendered in his heart, foresaw, with 
 the consciousness of his own talents, and with the 
 natural acuteness of genius, the crown of laurels con- 
 cealed under the wreath of thorns, and the transfigu- 
 ration reserved by the future to his merit. Doubtless 
 a mysterious atmosphere surrounded the youth, and a 
 circlet of future glory sparkled on his brow. He was 
 one of those symbolic men chosen among many to 
 personify and represent an age. Like our epoch, he 
 was destined to crawl with his body on the earth as a 
 reptile, and his soul to soar like a luminary of heaven 
 towards infinity; to search after sensual pleasures, 
 and to find enjoyment only in intellectual contempla- 
 tions ; to ridicule creeds, and to die for the faith ; to 
 appear a degraded epicurean, and to merit a name 
 among heroes by his life, and among martyrs by his 
 death ! His remarkable face, the beauty of his Grecian 
 head, his spacious forehead, his arched eyebrows, the 
 depth of his eyes, which in repose assumed the pure 
 blue of the heavens, but which any emotion deepened 
 to black, like an ocean of changing thoughts ; the per- 
 fect line of his lips, sculptured as if to vibrate eternal 
 harmony; his aquiline nose ; his beard, divided with 
 incomparable grace; his Olympic gestures, his majestic 
 
PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 49 
 
 attitudes ; his stiiteliness, tempered by softness ; the 
 genius flashing from his features ; his pale and deUcate 
 complexion, resembling tlie colour of antique marble 
 gilded by the suns of centuries ; all his being, all his 
 person, declared that, in chiselling that perfect vase, 
 tlie Creator did not design that it should remain empty, 
 but be filled with immortal fragrance. 
 
 His entrance into the Upper House was cold and 
 formal. The session was commonplace, and the 
 assemblage small. The Chancellor administered the 
 oath, and declared the admission in the unimpressive 
 manner in which all formularies are delivered. 
 
 I never beheld the old House of Peers, but I 
 have seen the new Houses of Parliament, and I declare 
 that the sight of them awakened in my heart the most 
 profound emotion, like that I experienced at seeing 
 the Cathedral of Toledo, the Colosseum of Pome, or 
 the Cemetery of Pisa. Though there is but little 
 originality in the architecture and an excess of orna- 
 mentation ; the lofty Gothic walls, the formidable 
 towers, the vastness of the proportions, the sombre 
 colour deepened by volumes of smoke from the dif- 
 ferent manufactories and the exhalations from the 
 river ; the gilded angles of the high cupolas, looking 
 like dark cypresses lighted up b}' the m3'sterious rays 
 of a deeply veiled sun — all this leaves in the mind an 
 undefinable image of grandeur like the sublime ex- 
 pression of the sovereignty of a people become great 
 by the consent of ages. The paintings and sculptures 
 
 4 
 
so LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 are alone remarkable from tlieir imperfections, yet the 
 higli pinnacles and the broad lines fill the mind with an 
 idea of greatness. But, however, what one admires most 
 is not that which meets the eye, but all which is done 
 and thought under those vaulted roofs — the strength 
 of English institutions, the extent of English liberty, 
 the progress which nothing interrupts, the prestige of 
 a race that has known how to protect its rights from 
 the universal serfdom into which all others fell in the 
 sixteenth century, when absolute despotism prevailed. 
 In that immense palace I thought of the great in- 
 jury done to the country by the persons whose bitter- 
 ness and envy drove Byron from those benches, filling 
 his soul with inextinguishable hatred. Perhaps ele- 
 vated social ideas and progressive political reforms 
 would have saved him from the ab3'ss into which he 
 fell, and have nourished his infinite desire to love. 
 Perhaps the passion for liberty would have filled his 
 soul more positively than the worship of the ideal. 
 Perhaps to the crown of the poet the glories of elo- 
 quence would have been united. Liberty is not the 
 Bacchante which the world's reactionaries imagine, 
 but the faithful spouse of austere virtue and of chaste 
 fecundity. We can suffer for her, fight for her, die 
 for her, convinced that future a^-es will srather the 
 fruits of our sacrifices. But the enemies of Byron 
 forced him not only to leave the House, but the 
 country. In his rage unnumbered curses burst from 
 his tortured heart. England flung him from her soil, 
 
EXILE. 51 
 
 ignorant that in the future he would be one of the 
 
 first stars in her literary firmament. 
 
 >/ 
 
 That departure of Lord Bjron was not a voyage, 
 but a banishment. He himself tells us that he went 
 forth from England sad as Adam from Paradise. 
 When 3-our country believes you to be incompatible 
 with her repose, her institutions, or her religion, there 
 is no choice left but to abandon her, though in so 
 doing 3'ou forsake the half of your existence. Every- 
 w^here you can breathe air, but not the air which 
 heard the sighs of your first love. All nations may 
 slielter you under their roof-trees, but none can offer 
 5'ou the home where you received the benediction of 
 your mother. Heaven is great and extended over all, 
 but not the Heaven under which you dreamed of 
 felicity, where your hopes withered in the blossom, 
 and you were happy with smiling illusions. Any part of 
 tlie earth may conceal your body, but, alas! 3^our bones 
 will be more isolated in a foreign grave which contains 
 not the remains of your fathers. To die in a strange 
 land is the most cruel of punishments. Not in vain 
 are we born in our motherland. We have from her soil 
 an essence like that which the earth collects from the 
 root of the tree, and its heaven blesses us with an im- 
 mortal kiss. Our hearts are moulded of her claj-, our 
 ideas mingle with the words which our country has 
 put upon our lips. Exile is a mortal malady of the 
 heart. We anxiously desire to live amongst people with 
 whom we have a communit}' of origin, of blood, of 
 
 4—2 
 
52 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 life, and of language. That constitutes the being of 
 our country, the happiness of our own existence. And 
 after having beheld the great nations of the world, the 
 most celebrated cities, the most sublime monuments ; 
 after having discoursed with the most illustrious per- 
 sons, after having been present at the session of the 
 Parliaments of Paris and of London, at High Mass at 
 St Peter's in Eorae, at a sunset in the Bay of Naples, 
 at a serenade on the Grand Canal of Venice ; after 
 having climbed to Alpine peaks among their eternal 
 snows, and heard the roaring of cascades falling in the 
 valleys, and seen the eagles mount among the heights, 
 we turn our eyes sadly to the distant land which was 
 our birthplace, and feel that our utmost ambition is 
 to be the last of her children, the most obscure of her 
 citizens, and to possess a home among our friends and 
 families to-day, and to-morrow a forgotten sepulchre 
 in the earth of our fathers ! 
 
 Love, love alone, could have created for Lord Byron 
 a new world of hope and of happiness. But the truest 
 atfection of his life, the first really serious love of his 
 heart, did not meet with the response which would 
 probably have made his eternal felicity. To love, and 
 not to be loved ! Who can conceive greater torment ? 
 The lonely heart can only bring forth serpents like 
 the desert. No one to care for our life, no one 
 interested in our destiny ! The brightest conceptions 
 fall by their own weight into the abyss of the soul, 
 when there is no one to whom \ve can communicate 
 
LIFE I VITHO UT LOVE. 53 
 
 them, wounding and destroying it. You come forth 
 from your house and no one detains you, and return 
 with none to regard you. Your health is yours only, 
 and you expose it to the greatest perils. You play it 
 as a trump card, and as death can strike but one soli- 
 tary heart, you regard it with indifference. There are 
 none to partake your joys and sorrows. The divided 
 soul may enlarge itself to infinity, but alone it dries 
 up and withers like green fruits fallen from the tree. 
 When tlie powerful emotions of a manly heart, when 
 the roughnesses of a mind which has deeply suffered, 
 have not the smile of a beloved wife to temper them, 
 they assume the aspect of savageness, like a field 
 abandoned by the husbandman. For the solitary 
 soul, alter a tempest, there is no calm ; after the 
 night, there is no morning ; after doubt, no ñiitli ; 
 after sorrow, no consolation. A life without love is a 
 heaven without stars ! 
 
 Miss Chaworth forsook Lord B^'ron, and by so 
 doing probably cut the wings by which he would 
 have mounted to the skies, and left him the prey of 
 his own passions, and to the solitude of his own 
 thoughts, among the whirlwinds of the universe. 
 Before his departure the poet desired to see her. He 
 was, in fact, brave enough to look once more upon the 
 woman who had forsaken her first lover, and who was 
 happy with another. Trampling upon his own heart, 
 he entered the house which he had fondly hoped 
 would have been the temple of felicity for himself. 
 
54 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 Tlie fair head bent in salutation. The loolis of the 
 lovers — for ever separated — met in those supreme 
 adieux, Byron told her his sole desire was the happi- 
 ness of his beloved, and that he left England content 
 in her welfare ; that though in deep affliction, before 
 all and above all, he felt for her an infinite tenderness ; 
 that he felt even capable of loving her husband because 
 he loved her also. When he beheld the little son of 
 Mary Chaworth, then scarcely two years old, when he 
 recognised in the infant's face some of the features of 
 his father, his jealous heart beat almost to bursting. 
 But on observing that the child had the eyes of his 
 mother, he pressed him to his heart, and almost suffo- 
 cated him with kisses. At last he departed. We 
 shall see him again on his travels, his mind clear as a 
 ray of light, his heart surcharged with sorrow. 
 
NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN SCENE R Y. 55 
 
 PART THE THIRD. 
 
 rpO leave England, to quit that ceremonious society, in 
 -^ wliicli the restless genius of the poet could scarcely 
 move or breathe, was an absolute necessity of his 
 mental life. He burst the bars of his prison, and 
 plunged into the sweets of liberty. Passing from 
 British fogs, he bathed in our extended horizon, in our 
 brilliant light, under our azure heavens. If the chil- 
 dren of the South cannot contemplate a sunset, when 
 the clouds are tinged with purple, and the outline of 
 the mountains is clear before them ; when the bright 
 waters are beautiful with chano^incy shades — if thev 
 who are accustomed to this glorious sight cannot look 
 upon it without being enchanted b}' this festival of 
 harmonies and of colours, what must these be to the 
 native of the North, who sees always his gigantic trees 
 and his pale sun through the veil of his nebulous 
 atmosphere ! 
 
 For the moment Lord Byron experienced a delight 
 heretofore unknown ; his morbid ideas, his continual 
 melancholy, his doubts, and his despair, fell into the 
 bosom of the blue waters, as if the amorous kisses 
 
56 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 of the sea-breeze penetrated into his soul. Indeed, 
 notbiníT invio-orates and comforts us so much as tlie 
 y-rand spectacles of Nature — the wind, caught by the 
 swelling canvas ; the foamy waves, rent and furrowed 
 by the conquering keel ; a depth beneath our feet, and 
 an infinite height above our heads ; life on all sides, 
 intoxicating us with its voluptuousness ; the light 
 dazzling and increasing in the transparent waters ; the 
 saline aroma of marine vegetation mingling with our 
 blood ; the vigour of the will manifested by the struggle 
 with the elements ; and the human dignity realized at 
 each m.oment by the victory. 
 
 We find by the correspondence of Lord Byron that 
 his soul grew younger on the ocean, that his life be- 
 came greater with the infinite life of the universe. In 
 fact, whatever may be our ideas of Nature, we may 
 consider her as a veil which conceals the Creator, or, 
 after the manner of the Mystics and Pantheists, as 
 the embodiment of universal life. When we give 
 ourselves up to the enjoyment of her beauty and 
 grandeur ; when we breathe the vivifying air which 
 circulates around her bosom, or contemplate the glories 
 of the starry heavens, which seem to look upon us 
 lovingly ; when we repose in her meadows, enamelled 
 with the flowers of April, and gay with butterflies of 
 brilliant hues, and hear the chorus of her myriads of 
 birds, and the sweet orchestra of her mysterious mur- 
 murs, and cast our eyes on the far distant horizon — 
 suddenly we become converted into poets, and though 
 
L/SBO.V. 57 
 
 unable to express our ideas in eloquent and glowing 
 language, we feel the tremblings of inspiration thrill 
 through our agitated nerves like the chords of a harp, 
 at the same time that the current of universal life 
 centuples the vigour of our own frail existence. 
 
 Few poets have sympathized with Nature like Lord 
 Byron. True, he loved to disturb her serenity with 
 the wail of private sorrows, but he showed how her 
 sap penetrated his imagination, and caused it to bring 
 forth blossoms, as the spring juices swell the buds 
 of the dry almond-tree. He has most admirably 
 described his arrival in western countries, after 
 passing the stormy Bay of Biscay, the enchanting 
 shores of the old Lusitania, the mouth of the 
 Tagus, the mountains with their lofty peaks half 
 veiled in clouds, the golden fruits hidden under 
 the broad emerald leaves, and filling the air with 
 aroma ; Lisbon beholding herself in the mirror of her 
 bright waters, and the blooming groves of Cintra, 
 through whose narrow streets is seen a monasterj^ in- 
 habited by gloomy penitents, or the crosses which 
 mark the scenes of horrible assassinations ; but above 
 all, the granite rocks with their dentated summits, 
 seeming, in the quick changes from light to darkness, 
 to be moved by the wind ; profound valleys, where the 
 northern vegetation mourns the sun's absence ; the 
 declivities covered with orange-trees ; the heights 
 crowned with white honeysuckle ; the roar of its thou- 
 sand streams breaking into cascades, and the distant 
 
58 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 view of the great ocean reflecting the light on her 
 azure bosom. 
 
 Lord Byron crossed the Guadiana. On entering 
 our country, the shade of Spain in her days of chivalry 
 rose before him. The heroic nation seemed to him 
 wounded by all conquerors because of her beauty, and 
 draofo^inp: them at the heels of her war-horse. In the 
 immense Spanish plains, in the clouds of dust tossed 
 about by the wind, his imagination beheld the bitter 
 struf^^gle between the Moors and the Christians, who 
 have mingled their blood in the furrows of our mother- 
 land. And when tlie night appears and the stars 
 sliine in the pure heavens, one seems to hear around 
 the music of the guifar, the romances of ancient 
 heroism, the songs of eternal love. I have gone over 
 the loveliest plains of Europe, and neither on the 
 shores of the Ehine, amidst the soft dreams of Ger- 
 manic poetry, nor in the Gulf of ISTaples, where the 
 sirens raise their marble brows crowned with Greek 
 epigrams, have I felt the touching sadness of poetry, 
 such as I have experienced in the nights of Andalusia, 
 when, on the warm earth, under the changing light of 
 the stars, beneath the vine or the palm tree, the gitana 
 with her black eyes and bronzed complexion, flinging 
 on her shoulders her ebon tresses, whose weight obliges 
 her to raise her head, and extending her arms to the 
 heavens as if about to fly from the earth, dances as if 
 in delirium to the sound of the guitar's sorrowful com- 
 plaint, and of the song of love, sad as an elegy, sus- 
 
SARAGOSSA. 59 
 
 tained in long cadences like a series of uninterrupted 
 wailings. 
 
 Lord Bj'ron arrived in Spain during the AVar of 
 Independence. Her rural soil, her rude stubble, was 
 on fire. On each of her hills a fortress had been 
 erected. Everywhere cannons opened their deadly 
 mouths. Every Spaniard arose, his blood-coloured 
 cockade in his hat, and his arms under his mantle. 
 Saragossa writhed on tlie rack of torment, terrifying 
 the world by her contempt of death. She seemed 
 an entire city immolating herself like Cato — one 
 woman dried her tears, and amidst mountains of 
 smoking ruins and heaps of mouldering corpses, 
 applied with her own hands the match to the cannon 
 which defended the martyr city, converted into a vast 
 cemetery. This sublime delirium of Spain in defence 
 of her independence has been eloquently described by 
 the poet, who, laying aside his usual flippancy and his 
 ironical scepticism, rises to the heights of epic poetr}^ 
 the spirit of which his absorbing genius had caught 
 from the ancient Eomancists. 
 
 But yet he observed our customs somewhat too 
 lightly. The sight of Seville should have inspired him 
 with something better than the insipid story of the two 
 lodging-house keepers with whom he lived but four 
 days. Coming more especially from England, how much 
 there is to admire in the tower from whence Arabian 
 sages studied the science of astronomj^ ; the hospital 
 erected by penitence, and containing the paintings of 
 
6o . LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 the Water flowing from the Eock, and the Multiplica- 
 tion of Loaves, which may be called pictures of life ; 
 a id with these some others so terrifying, that they may 
 be called pictures of death ; the Gothic Cathedral, 
 severe as tlie Middle Ages, and already illuminated by 
 the dawn of the Renaissance, as if the shadows of an 
 epoch were in its base, and the daybreak of another 
 epoch in its oriels ; the silent palace chiselled like a 
 jewel, and adorned with all the colours of the East ; 
 the j^atios, with their vases of flowers refreshed by 
 murmuring fountains, whose crystal showers sprinkle 
 the marble pavements ; where repose those lovely 
 women with bronze complexions and lustrous eyes, 
 whose ebon depths speak of love and tenderness, and 
 who so forcibly remind us of the virgins of Murillo. 
 
 Cadiz inspired him with some exquisite verses. But 
 why did not Lord Byron — who showed himself so 
 keenly sensible of the valour of Spaniards — why 
 did he not also appreciate the virtue of Spanish 
 women? The virtues of men are easily discovered, 
 for they shine in the field or in the senate. Along 
 the walls of Cadiz you may still see the broken 
 bombs of Napoleon. But the virtues of women are 
 hidden in the home, in the sanctuary of the family ; 
 one must seek them, as pearls in their shells, in 
 the depths of the ocean. A traveller passes some 
 days in a foreign town : he sees all things superficially, 
 finds vice and vicious pleasures easy of attainment, 
 and generahzes his emotions. Thus I explain the in- 
 
SPANISH WOMEíY. 6i 
 
 justice of Bj-ron, and the hard words in which he so 
 lightly mentions the women of Cadiz. But doubtless, 
 had he entered into those homes, and beheld the 
 treasures of tenderness, the devotion of passionate 
 affection, joined to the strictest fidelity, his ideas would 
 have been altogether different. Nowhere else are 
 families so loving and so united in spirit ; nowhere 
 else is a whole life so faithfully consecrated to one 
 only attachment. I have seen many attractive women, 
 born to enchant society, languish in retirement, de- 
 voting their years to the memory of the absent ones 
 gone to die upon inhospitable shores. I have beheld 
 them, widows of a first unhappy love, remain faithful 
 to that only love, to that virgin afiection, until death, 
 and die hoping to find their beloved in happier regions. 
 I have seen them from their earliest growth keep up 
 their friendships for ten or fifteen years with the 
 chosen of their heart, and in all these fifteen years 
 not one kiss has soiled the purity of their lips, not 
 one unchaste thought the modesty of their souls. I 
 have beheld young and beautiful mothers die to the 
 world the day they became widows, convertino- their 
 houses into cloisters, and holding no other relations 
 with society than those necessarj' for the education of 
 their children. Passion takes among us the infinite 
 intensity of the ardent climate, but, like all else that 
 is infinite, it goes be3'ond the limited regions of 
 matter, too frail and too narrow to contain it, and 
 plunges into the boundless regions of thought, where 
 
62 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 it is clothed with an almost divine purity, and acquires 
 an almost celestial existence. Bj^ron should not have 
 been contented to behold the fire stolen from heaven 
 by the black eyes of our Andalusian ladies, the passion 
 which flashes from under their silken lashes, the long 
 tresses of rich hair which tw^ine over their shoulders like 
 serpents ; among so much beauty he should have dis- 
 covered the delicacy and the loveliness of the soul. 
 
 He soon quitted our country. As a poet, he desired 
 to visit the land of artistic forms, the land of perfect 
 expression. There is no country in the world that 
 has so completely carried out and embodied the beauty 
 of ideas as Greece. Scarcely a thought can pass 
 through her mind than she clothes it with an immortal 
 outline, which is the delineation of perfect beauty. 
 A few strokes sufíiced her painters to trace in the 
 marble those bas-reliefs whose simplicity is confounded 
 almost with the native simplicity of ideas, and whose 
 beauty is the calm perfection of eternal serenity. 
 The Greek ideas are like the most natural melodies of 
 the creation, like the murmur of the rivulets, like the 
 song of the nightingale. Her statues are the most 
 beautiful realization of the plastic art. It seems not 
 as if the marble had obeyed the hammer, which sepa- 
 rated it from the mountains, or that the chisel had 
 clothed it with form, but as i I' it had been formed by 
 the will and the imagination. The statue, so to speak, 
 has risen from the stone at the invocation of the 
 artist, with the same exactness with which Adam 
 
GREEK POETRY. 63 
 
 arose from the clay at the command of the Creator, An 
 immortal soul seems to hiy enshrined in those divine 
 features, and to shine upon that ample forehead. The 
 Greeks, being masters of a languai^e above all others 
 remarkable for flexibility' and richness, their souls 
 became the channels of ideas in those glowing words, 
 as an instrument of music conveys harmonious notes. 
 They can never forget their great past, while thej^ read 
 in the original the verses in which Thetis consoles her 
 son, the description of the valley of Colonna in the 
 (Edipus of Sophocles, of the fear-inspiring furies in the 
 Orestes of ^schjlus, and the immortal periods of the 
 Timeo of Plato. It must be acknowledged that 
 humanity has been able to do nothing better than to 
 copy and re-copy these eternal models, as a young 
 student of painting copies the picture set before 
 him, borrowing its tints and touches, perhaps at 
 times putting some superiority in the expression, or in 
 one of the features, but never attaining to its per- 
 fection. xVll artists, whether classical or romance 
 writers ; poets, painters, sculptors, or architects ; those 
 who cultivate the art of speaking in the senate or in 
 the professorial chair, have to seek in Greece the 
 beauty of form. Byron did not fail in this. The 
 country of the arts seemed to him like an emptj' skull 
 which once bore the weight of a living soul, a soul 
 almost capable of. grasping the infinite, but which in 
 decay can scarce aiford a habitation for an insect. 
 The perfidy of man seized even the ruins of the Par- 
 
64 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 thcnon, and conveyed them to tlie British Museum. 
 With sacrilegious hands they outraged a corpse to 
 despoil it of its riches. I have seen in the Museum of 
 London the broken marbles of the Parthenon, ani- 
 mated by the chisel of Ictinus, of Callicrates, and of 
 Phidias ; 1 have beheld them with my ej'es, and I 
 could have pressed them to my lips, as the pious pil- 
 grim kisses the sacred soil of Jerusalem. I have seen 
 the theories, the processions, the defiles of gods and of 
 heroes ; the Grecian virgins offering the presents of 
 Attica ; the demigods, conquerors of the Centaurs ; 
 the victims destined for the sacrifice, unclad ^"outhful 
 warriors mounted on their barebacked horses, each 
 perfect in serene and immortal beauty ; but in lonely 
 sadness, far from the hills where grew the olives of 
 Minerva, and from the streams bordered by the bays 
 of Apollo — surrounded by an atmosphere dense and 
 heavy from smoke and the exhalations of the Thames, 
 instead of the pure zephyrs among whose caresses they 
 sprung into being, the perfumed breezes of Mount 
 Hymettus, and the harmonies of the iEgean Sea ; in a 
 foreign land, they are for ever strangers — they, the 
 genii of the South, the representatives of art and of 
 lisrht, in the shadows and sadness of a northern clime, 
 more unhappy among the mists of Albion than Eury- 
 dice in the darkness of Inferno ! 
 
 Never has the genius of man inspired pages more 
 beautiful than those in which Lord Byron describes his 
 travels in Greece. The poem is an elegy in which we 
 
CLASSIC SCENES. 65 
 
 know not which is the most admirable, the perfect 
 composition, the grandeur of ideas, or the bitter me- 
 lancholy. The plastic gracefulness of the Greeks is 
 there united to the profound sadness of the Christians. 
 "When I read them I seem to behold again the lovely 
 statue of "Night," by Michael Angelo, extended over 
 the sepulchre of Florence, that powerful Grecian deity, 
 chaste as the Venus of Milo, but sad as a Dolorosa 
 of Rivera. The vessel of the poet is coasting among 
 the Greek promontories, and his spirit invokes the 
 voices of the ruins, the lamentations of the shores de- 
 spoiled of their deities. Never, since Plutarch wrote 
 the lament heard by Thamo near the cave of Messina, 
 when Natural Religion expired — never have there 
 been lines so touching. Tears gush from them, burn- 
 ing tears, fit to call forth the gods of antiquity from 
 the cold ashes of their ruined altars. From his vessel 
 BjTon saw the shadow of the rock overhanging the 
 sea of Leucades, where Sappho appeased in the waters 
 the infinite desires of her heart. From thence he 
 also beheld the little bay in which the practical genius 
 of the West, personified by Augustus, overcame the 
 more exalted genius of the East represented by that 
 powerful but luxurious Marc Antony, he who 
 sacrificed his love for Eome to his devotion to 
 Cleopatra, the maga, poetess, enchantress, capable 
 of reviving with her soft embraces and voluptuous 
 dances the Oriental theogony even in the Grecian 
 temples, and twining herself, like a serpent of Asia, 
 
 5 
 
66 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 around tlie Eternal City, suffocating it to avenge the 
 slavery of her lathers and the destruction of her 
 gods. 
 
 An astonishing flexibility is the distinctive charac- 
 teristic of the poet. In him are united the ancient 
 chissics, modern romances, and the glowing imagery 
 oí' the East ; and to dreamy, and vague idealism he 
 joins a more crude and severe realism. He is the 
 embodiment of his caustic epoch. He is an instru- 
 ment which every breeze may soothe or irritate ; 
 sometimes he is lulled by the celestial breath of 
 morning, filled with aroma and with harmony ; and 
 sometimes maddened by the roar of the hurricane, 
 laden with dust and ashes. The ocean does not reflect 
 the changes of the heavens more faithfully than his 
 conscience repeats the changes of ideas ; it does not 
 picture the varying clouds more truly than the soul 
 of the poet expresses the thoughts of his epoch. In 
 this feeling, being, as he is, a subjective poet, he is 
 never unmindful of his personality, dragging the chain 
 of his individual sorrows on the earth, sensitive as 
 must be a faithful poet of this uncertain age, which 
 from its commencement has vacillated between faith 
 and reason, between right and tradition, between 
 liberty and despotism. Action and reaction never 
 struggle with more force, and never preserve a greater 
 equilibrium, than that which proceeds from this mutual 
 paralysation. In this sense Lord Byron is the poetic 
 age. Dilferent ideas combat pow^erfully in his con- 
 
ALBAA'TA. 67 
 
 science, and lie clothes all liis characters with some- 
 thing from his own soul. 
 
 After passing by the classic shores of Attica, evokino- 
 in verses of perfect purity the guardian spirit of the 
 ruins, he went to Albania, and felt strongly attracted 
 by a spectacle much opposed to Hellenic severity ; by 
 the Oriental customs, the hyperbole, the sensual habits, 
 and the voluptuous feasts of Asia. His eyes were 
 offended by the mountaineers of Albania, with their 
 great leather boots embroidered with silks ; the full 
 white garments ; the coloured belt, \\\i\\ its weapons 
 of Damascus steel brilliant with jewels; the jacket and 
 vest of fine scarlet cloth, bordered with gold ; upon 
 this man the large tassel falling from the Greek cap, 
 and with that the great firelock inlaid with ivory ; the 
 complexion bronzed by the ardent sun, eyes black and 
 brilliant, the features perfect, the stature tall, and the 
 form flexible ; agile as the deer of their mountains, 
 emanations from the first races of humanity, bearing 
 still upon their brows the august marks of their pris- 
 tine greatness. 
 
 The Governor of those regions received him as 
 Turkish officials know how to welcome the English 
 aristocracy. The hospitality of Ali was a continual 
 enchantment for Lord Byron. In a white marble 
 pavilion, from the centre of which rose a murmuring 
 fountain ; reclining on soft cushions of richest silk, on 
 one side an amber dish of perfume, and coffee on the 
 other; before each a large pipe, the golden liglit 
 
 5—2 
 
68 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 beaming through the lattice, and half revealing the 
 luxurious vegetation of the East, the palm mingling 
 with the cypress — in such a scene Lord Byron and 
 Ali conversed, surrounded by Albanians in their pic- 
 turesque costume, by jVIacedonians in their red mantles, 
 graceful and athletic Greeks with their sculptured fea- 
 tures, negroes brought at great cost from Nubia ; and 
 without, on horses fleet as the wind, caracole troopers 
 of diiferent Asiatic races, preceded by rude music and 
 light- tambours ; while from the highest minaret the 
 solitary mollah announces the hour of prayer, as a re- 
 minder that ideas of religion and of the Deity surround, 
 like a moral atmosphere, all the grandeur of the East. 
 But Athens was the true home of the poet. There, 
 flying from the gloomy shadows of the North, he 
 acknowledged his country. Long ages, and the un- 
 thinking wrath of men, have passed over the temples, 
 the statues, and the columns ; yet still the azure sky 
 shows the delicate outlines of the mountains, the 
 groves of olives, of laurels, and of the shady mastic 
 trees, as in the days when the gods chose these shores 
 for their abode ; still the sweet thyme of Hj'mettus 
 distils the delicious honey on which fed the poets, 
 whose lips vibrated with harmonious canticles ; still 
 the bees which Plato admired whirr their bright wdngs 
 in the fragrant air, and construct in the trunks of 
 trees the honeycombs from which flow streams of liquid 
 gold upon altars crowned with flowers ; still the warm 
 rays of Apollo gild with their immortal light the 
 
LADY HESTER STANHOPE. 69 
 
 marbles from which come forth statues of eternal 
 beauty ; and the voices of sylvan fauns mingle with 
 the sighs of sirens which issue from the waves ; 
 because, if gods and heroes have departed, if art has 
 expired, if glory and liberty have passed away — 
 Kature still exists and is fruitful. This religious 
 sentiment towards the universe is another of the most 
 beautiful characteristics of Lord Byron's poetry. It is 
 easy to perceive that it is not a conventional feeling im- 
 posed b}' an aesthetic law, like the sentiment of Groethe, 
 but an emotion born spontaneously, and that rushes like 
 a torrent from his soul, replete with universal life. 
 
 While in exile he did not fail to meet with adven- 
 tures. The first happened during his stay at beauti- 
 ful Florence, where he twice escaped the persecutions 
 of Xapoleon. Afterwards, in Athens, he became 
 deeplj^ enamoured of three lovely J^oung Grreek girls, 
 who refused to accept the offer of his too universal 
 and expansive affections. However, he contracted a 
 friendship with one of the least understood and most 
 eccentric persons of the age — Lad}^ Hester Stanhope. 
 The soul of the poet was able to comprehend that 
 of the English lady. If her age and her well-known 
 homeliness opposed obstacles to love, the exaltation 
 of her character, and the poetic tendency of her 
 disposition, united them in the strictest relations of 
 friendship. Lady Hester had also fled from the fogs 
 of England in search of Eastern light and beauty. 
 And on leaving the country she had condemned its con- 
 
JO LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 ventional society, quitting it for the companionship 
 of the clouds, of the eagles, of tempests, of the winds, 
 of all that comes or goes from the Infinite in myste- 
 rious airy circles. On entering those Asiatic regions, 
 she had laid aside her Protestant creed as the serpent 
 casts his skin. Her Bible was the universe, her 
 temple the primeval forest, which still exhales the 
 breath of the deluge ; her altar, the mountains of 
 Lebanon, whence the Hebrew prophets cut their 
 gigantic harps ; her habitation the caverns ; her com- 
 panions the huge cedars, whose deep roots absorb the 
 moisture of the earth, and whose tops mount towards 
 the lightning ; her Deity, the unimaginable Infinite ; 
 her profession, prophecy as in the times of the Sibyls ; 
 her means of divination, magnetism; her mode of ex- 
 pression, a nervous style, replete with flowery images 
 like the Oriental ; her only motive, a certain restless 
 poetry, incapable of expression, which, being unable 
 to embody itself in great works, excited her to mar- 
 vellous actions and a wandering life ; but the lead- 
 ing characteristic was a real, although a sublime, 
 mental derangement. If I mistake not, Lamartine 
 also met that extraordinary woman during the happy 
 period of his Eastern travels. It was the supreme 
 moment of his lii'e, and the supreme crisis of his 
 genius. The Eoyalist left behind her in Europe her 
 aristocratic convictions — the Catholic his faith, an 
 unsettled aspiration for the happiness of the human 
 race swelled his heart ; other desires, not less waver- 
 
I UNIVERSITY j 
 
 LADY HESTER STANHOPE. 71 
 
 ing, led him to a sentimental pantheism. As there 
 are birds of the dawn, so there are intelligences which 
 do not reach the full light of day. They are like 
 angels lost between heaven and earth ; their heads 
 in sunhght, and their feet in shadow, dwelling 
 strangely between brightness and darkness. Thus 
 Lamartine wandered, then handsome and young, a 
 celebraied poet, with his " Meditations" in his hand, 
 as the testament of his early years, his heart and 
 mind already fixed on more extended regions. Lady 
 Hester Stanhope declared to him that the destinies 
 of his country would one day be in his hands. This 
 gifted and eccentric woman would have passed fur a 
 miracle of prevision and prophetic power, if her death 
 had not disclosed her insanity. M. Lescure, who has 
 wTitten a beautiful and instructive biography of Lord 
 Byron, promises to study the life of this spiritual 
 sister of the poet, who, like Lord Byron, left England 
 cursing its society ; like Byron, gave herself up to 
 ideas mingled of faith and of doubt; like Byron, 
 united to an expansive temperament a profound 
 melancholy ; like Byron, sought in the sun of Oriental 
 countries warmth for her chilled heart ; and, like 
 Byron, died on the bosom of Nature ! 
 
 But friendships of this kind were not the only ones 
 contracted by the poet; he had also adventures 
 capable of exalting his heart and his imagination, 
 both of which overflowed with his surpassing genius. 
 It is impossible to read the poem entitled " The 
 
LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 Giaour," without feeling the sublime tragic terror 
 expressed by its daring images, thrilling your nerves 
 with its electric current. Leila was one of the 
 loveliest women of Hassan's harem. The flower of 
 the pomegranate had dyed her cheeks, the black 
 and transparent lava of Etna, with its brilliant flame, 
 had made the crystal of her eyes. Enveloped in her 
 robes of white gauze, she shone like a star among 
 clouds. But she wore a mantle still more beautiful, 
 the covering of her raven tresses, which descended to 
 her feet, white as unstained snow when it falls from 
 the cloud upon the peaks of the mountains. A Vene- 
 tian saw and loved her. His love was requited, and 
 for a short period these two, whose souls an infi- 
 nite affection had united, were happy. Hassan sus- 
 pected her. On the delicious shores of Greece, 
 in one of those little creeks from whose borders 
 arise mountains enamelled by the rosy light of the 
 southern sun^, there occurred a terrible event. A boat 
 appeared bearing a sack. Within the sack there was a 
 human body. The sack and the body were cast into 
 the deepest water. But when Hassan returned from 
 accomplishing his vengeance, a man, more relentless 
 than the tigers of the desert, stopped him, fought 
 with him and his followers, almost tearing ofí" the 
 hand which held his scimitar, and then left him 
 writhing in agony till he expired on the dust of the 
 wayside. And the pitiless one goes to a Christian 
 convent, begs admission in exchange for riches. 
 
THE GIAOUR. 73 
 
 without making any vow, or observing any cere- 
 monies, but looking continually to the distant sea, 
 and uttering only a few half-broken words, in which 
 are expressed love and death — like a spirit of dark- 
 ness accomplishing a penance. At last he died, 
 demandingr but for^etfulness of his name and a 
 wooden cross for his monument, I was wrong, he 
 also beffo-ed — if it be true that those thus drowned in 
 the sea leave it to ask of the earth a more tranquil 
 grave — that the unhappy Leila should lay her cold 
 fingers on the forehead of her lover, press them on his 
 burning heart, and, placing herself by his side, should 
 sleep thus, never to be separated. 
 
 ^ ife yf ^ ^ 
 
 But the whole of this poem must be read to be 
 understood and appreciated. It seems to be a trans- 
 lation from the Arabic, from its richness of conception, 
 and from the boldness of its images. The final elegy 
 alone resembles the ps3'chological literature of the 
 North, and the Norman temperament of the author. 
 This beautiful legend was inspired by some of his 
 own adventures. That same Ali, who so hospitably 
 received Lord Byron in his palace, had caused twelve 
 Turkish women accused of infidelity to be sewn up in 
 sacks, and to be thrown into the sea. Not one of 
 them uttered a complaint. They all accepted death 
 with resignation and in profound silence; beautiful 
 toys of destiny, broken like glass against the rocks I 
 Such occurrences were frequent. 
 
74 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 A Neapolitan nobleman, passing through Janina, 
 fell deeply in love with a Turkish girl of sixteen 
 years. This attachment was suspected by the police, 
 who watched the lovers and found them together. The 
 police stoned the girl to death, and banished the Italian 
 to anotlier town, isolated on account of the plague, 
 where he died, not of the pestilence, but of sorrow. 
 
 In a similar scene Lord Byron had been an actor, 
 and perhaps the extraordinar}^ warmth of expression 
 in " The Giaour" is due to this circumstance, for he 
 frequently describes his personal emotions. Moore 
 and Medwin relate, that when in Athens the great 
 poet became enamoured of a lovely young Turkish 
 girl. The seclusion in which Turkish women live ; 
 the melancholy retirement to which they are 
 compelled by their countrymen ; the necessity of 
 sharing any affection they may receive with several 
 others ; their own ardent nature, exalted by the visions 
 of solitude, and the dreams and imaginings which 
 come to them from the outer world through gauzes 
 and gratings— all these develop in them a wonderful 
 aptitude to sacrifice themselves to one of those amours 
 prohibited by their laws — a love the most intense 
 when most perilous, and of which the attractions in- 
 crease with the continual threats of death ; these 
 being but the nourishment of a fatal passion, which 
 in its transports and delirium makes them court and 
 enjoy danger, thus joyfully showing all the treasures 
 of a tenderness capable from its intensity of changing 
 
MAHOMETAN JUSTICE. 75 
 
 the supreme agony into a supreme voluptuousness, and 
 of making the last sigh of life a breath of eternal love. 
 Byron, from his personal accomplishments, must 
 Lave inspired the most exalted passions. Of these 
 there is some record in the description of Haydée, 
 never sufficiently admired, and of those meetings by 
 the light of the stars, and the music of the waves. 
 Byron and his beloved frequentl}^ saw each other. But 
 their intercourse was interrupted by the Turkish 
 Eamazan, the regulations of which are extremely 
 strict with regard to love affairs. The poet did not 
 feel this obligation, and made some efforts to see the 
 lady. These were unfortunately discovered, notwith- 
 standing the greatest precautions. One evening he 
 rode on horseback through the Pira}us, followed by 
 his strong: escort of Albanians. In the middle of the 
 square he saw a group of Government agents dragging 
 along a large sack. A stifled groan, a bitter sob, 
 floated on the air. The blood rushed to the youth's 
 temples, and a terrible presentiment shot through his 
 heart. With the quick divination of genius he 
 fancied he saw struggling in the waters, in the death 
 agony, the lovely woman so dear to his enamoured 
 heart. And he was right. His distinguished ap- 
 pearance, his imperious gestures, the richness of his 
 apparel, his numerous followers, the influence of the 
 English name over the Turkish officials, stayed the 
 execution of that fearful crime when about to be per- 
 petrated by Mahometan justice, implacable as destiny. 
 
76 LIFE OF LORD B YRON. 
 
 The sack was opened, and Lord Byron beheld the 
 young girl, pale as a corpse, whom he had loved more 
 than life. There, in the presence of the people, he tore 
 her from her murderers, placed his own bosom as a 
 shield, and declared they should be united in death. The 
 official of the Athenian Government was moved either 
 b}' compassion or terror. He deferred the execution, 
 and this act of clemency was confirmed by the Turkish 
 Governor of Athens. But solely on the condition 
 that the lovers should remain apart. Banished to 
 Thebes, the unhappy beauty died, if not in the depths 
 of the sea, in a sorrowful seclusion, fading and wither- 
 ing like a flower deprived of its sap. Medwin and 
 Moore, who relate this anecdote, particularly mention 
 her fate. Moore also speaks of the account given by 
 the Marquis of Sligo. But, according to Hobhouse, 
 Byron saved a Turkish woman from death, not because 
 he loved her himself, but because she was beloved by 
 one of his travelling companions or servants. At all 
 events, whether as protector, actor, or witness, these 
 Oriental adventures touched the recesses of his soul, 
 filling him with all that sublime horror expressed 
 in one of his most beautiful poems. 
 
 The sojourn of Byron in Constantinople did not 
 inspire the thrilling verses called forth by his stay in 
 Greece. Touched by an English enthusiasm, strong in 
 liis anti-Britannic temperament, he places St. Paul's 
 Cathedral above Santa Sophia in Constantinople. His 
 visit to the Dardanelles was remarkable for an event 
 worth relating. 
 
HERO AND LEAXDER. 77 
 
 The poet was an experienced swimmer. He had 
 inherited a love for this exercise from his prede- 
 cessors, for his ancestors were expert mariners. His 
 skill was so great in this accomplishment, that in 
 Venice he was called "the English fish." More- 
 over, as his chief characteristic was an intense admi- 
 ration for nature, and his spirit was profoundly 
 pantheistic, when he undressed to plunge into the 
 water he fancied he had returned to the innocent 
 estate of the primitive Eden, free from any defence 
 against the propitious and beneficent elements, im- 
 mersing himself in the principle of universal life, 
 and absorbing it through all his pores, his heart 
 dilating to an infinity like that of the ocean itself. 
 
 The way in which Ovid has illustrated these cele- 
 brated scenes is well known. On one side are the 
 shores of Asia, on the other those of Europe. Since 
 tlie beginning of time two worlds behold each other 
 face to face, draw near as if to embrace, yet scarcely 
 ever arrive at a mutual understanding. One is the 
 world of the Infinite, of religion, of despotism, of 
 caste, of fatality ; the other is the world of the finite, 
 of philosophy, of democracy, of liberty. And on these 
 two coasts there were in former times two loving 
 hearts — those of Hero and Leander. The father of 
 Hero, to preserve her from this fatal passion, had con- 
 fined her in a strong tower erected on one of the banks 
 of the Bosphorus, while Leander was consumed with 
 love on the opposite shore. But love can conquer 
 impossibilities. This passion, which removes all im- 
 
78 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 pediments, could easily overcome tlie ab3'ss between 
 Europe and Asia. When night hung over the Bos- 
 phorus, when the navigation of the channel was 
 suspended, when the two continents slumbered, Hero 
 placed a light in the highest part of her towei% and 
 Leander swam, having for a guide that star illumined 
 by love. A thousand times the darkness betraj^ed 
 him, and the light alarmed him. Often he ar- 
 rived rigid with cold, exhausted, ready to expire. 
 But a look from Hero, a sigh from her lips, reanimated 
 him. Then there came a fatal night. The traitor 
 sea calmed and slept ; Hero's light shone brilliantly 
 through the darkness. Leander swam, expecting a 
 loving word for his reward. When near the shore, 
 the hurricane was unloosed, the waves boiled, the 
 lightning cast its dreadful rays over the spectacle of 
 Nature in torments, over that fury of wild waters. 
 Hero knew that Leander was in peril, and flung her- 
 self from her tower into the foaming water. The 
 next day two corpses floated together in the Bos- 
 phorus, their nuptial couch, resting in the arms of 
 death. 
 
 Lord Byron was anxious to prove if the expedition 
 of Leander was possible. It is scarcely a mile from 
 one coast to the other, but the currents are extremely 
 strong. At first he was unable to conquer the resis- 
 tance of the water, but the second time he was suc- 
 cessful. He was a poet in his imagination, a poet in 
 his genius, a poet in his life; the last and most sublime 
 
HIS EMOriOXAL TEMPERAMENT. 79 
 
 representative of the artistic ages, replaced by our 
 period of prose and industry. 
 
 From all these exciting expeditions Byron drew 
 inspiration for two cantos of " Childe Harold" and 
 " The Giaour." The same uncertainties which pre- 
 vailed respecting his opinions were common regarding 
 his writings. A bad judge of himself, he preferred 
 the difíuse Commentary of Horace to the melancholy 
 pages of the Odyssey, in which he beheld the human 
 mind afflicted by doubts, bending under the weight of 
 the rich inheritance of ideas, traversing the tombs of 
 the departed, and feeling in those heaps of dry 
 bones the warmth of life. His desires were never 
 satiated. Overflowing the too narrow limits known 
 to our organism at its unfolding, he rushed un- 
 easily in search of new emotions, without examining 
 either their nature or their origin, seeking only to be 
 profoundly touched. Byron might have said, trans- 
 forming the utterance of Descartes, " I feel, therefore 
 I exist." He did not study ideas, the universe, 
 society, shut up in his chamber, with the cold analysis 
 of Goethe, aided by the experience of other men of 
 genius, and by the labours of former ages — no ; he 
 arrived at the knowledge of society by his own pas- 
 sions ; of the conception of the universe by his own 
 travels ; of comprehension of ideas by his own beliefs ; 
 he gave utterance to his sentiments, and became 
 acquainted with Art, not by the inspirations of fancy, 
 but by the actions of his own life. To see, to experi- 
 
8o LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 ence, to suffer or to enjoy, to struggle, to live rather 
 than to think — these were the characteristics of Lord 
 Byron. His belief was in action. He considered 
 poetry, not as a dream hidden in the depths of the 
 soul, but as a bas-relief graven on the bosom of nature. 
 The earth, society, the heavens reflect themselves in 
 the course of this tempestuous life, taking their own 
 hues. An individualist, like the rest of his race, 
 filled with the spleen created by Northern mists, an 
 aristocrat by education and opinions, the necessity of 
 sympathy brought him to the heart of humanity, to 
 the worship of generous and just ideas, as the means 
 of expressing his sentiments and of enjoying them 
 afresh — brought him to convey them in the most 
 sublime language of poetry. Certainly there are 
 observing men, who, like the bird of Juno, have a 
 retina of extraordinary power in every pore. BjTon 
 might have said that in every pore he had a beating 
 heart. His songs are the vibration of his nerves, 
 and his ideas are as sensitive as his verses. The 
 human body is like a great tree, which, after its roots, 
 trunk, and branches, terminates towards the heavens 
 with a spherical blossom^ — the most beautiful of all 
 flowers — called, from its form, the head ; from its con- 
 tents, the cerebrum. Well, the life of Byron ended 
 in the heart. I believe he bore it in his head, and 
 that there was the pendulum, the needle, and the 
 machine, which moved, which announced, which ex- 
 pressed his sentiments. 
 
INFLUENCE OF HIS WRITINGS. 8i 
 
 The most lofty mountains bear traces of the first 
 fire in which the earth burned. See how the granite, 
 notwithstanding its coldness to the touch, appears yet 
 to burn by the sparkling of the quartz — by the black 
 particles resembling powdered coal. And surely as the 
 planet bears marks of the primitive fire, the age bears, 
 for those who comprehend it, traces of the griefs of 
 Byron. His heart, like a sponge pressed upon our 
 brows, has poured forth the flood of its feelings, its 
 aspirations. It has infected us with his sentiments, 
 and baptized us with his blood. There is no child of 
 this age, no one who carefully examines his inmost 
 feelings, who does not perceive in the depths of his 
 conscience some drops of the gall of unbelief, or find 
 in his overburdened heart some unuttered cry of 
 despair. There is, then, no one with whose being 
 some song of Byron is not woven ; as in the thirteenth 
 century there were none whose lives were without a 
 fragment of the Inferno of Dante — a scar not the 
 less real if concealed. 
 
 Our sorrow arises from the disproportioii of the 
 ideal in our own souls with our powers and the 
 time we have to realize it. To do so, an immortal life 
 would be required, like the lifetime of humanity. It 
 would necessitate a universe like the via ladea, where 
 there are worlds within worlds, infinite planetary sys- 
 tems, moving in an infusion of materia cósmica. And 
 our life is but a span. We are undeveloped insects, 
 hidden in a poor atom of dust ! This is the secret of 
 
 Ü 
 
82 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 our sorrow, though often concealed from us ; and the 
 greatness of Byron consisted in this — he knew how to 
 complain. 
 
 Let us conclude in a few words this period of his 
 life, which comprises his return to London. Desirous 
 of becoming better acquainted with countries and with 
 epochs, and consequently with life, he greatly desired 
 to visit Egypt, wishing to lose himself in that im- 
 mense necropolis, where the solemn voice of death is 
 always audible, cheered by the smiling hope of immor- 
 tality. But this intention, which would have extended 
 the horizon of his imagination, could not be carried 
 out for want of money. To the wings or to the feet 
 of genius these morsels of metal are attached, as a 
 perpetual reminder of its cradle of clay and its sepulchre 
 of dust. In vain he wrote to his mother and to his 
 lawyer, begging them to send him supplies. Neither 
 of them could satisfy his necessities. The poet then 
 proposed the sale of Eochdale, in order to obtain a 
 sufficient sum to continue his researches through the 
 great countries of antiquity. The only estate of which 
 he resolved not to deprive himself was Newstead, for 
 there he had deeply suffered. Sorrow is a strange 
 guest. We fly from it, and yet we love it. We have 
 a sort of worship for those Calvaries on which we 
 have been sacrificed. And at the close of life we love 
 even our crown of thorns, the wounds which know- 
 ledge has opened in our bosoms, and those which 
 sentiment has pierced in our hearts. 
 
HE RETURNS TO EXGLAXD. 
 
 Tlie private affairs of Byron were so embarrassed, 
 that it was not only impossible to him to travel in 
 Eg3'pt, but extremel}' difficult to continue his sojourn 
 ¡n Greece. A series of loans, contracted to support 
 the first follies of his boyhood, had fallen like a whirl- 
 sviud upon the remnant of his property. To these 
 succeeded lawsuits, which deepened still more the 
 abyss of his ruin. A lawyer put up for sale the 
 house which Byron so much wished to keep, as the 
 cradle of his thoughts, the nest of his first love, the 
 pantheon of his illusions. 
 
 At last he left Greece to return to England. Ail 
 he brought home from this expedition were some 
 pieces of marble, some Greek skulls found in ancient 
 sepulchres, three servants, two tortoises, and a phial 
 containing juice of the plant which poisoned Socrates. 
 But in reality the western world received something 
 extraordinary from these travels — the poet himself, 
 grown greater by the sight of the monuments of anti- 
 quity, from plunging into the life of nature, from the 
 experience of undying sentiments, by the infinite aspi- 
 ration after great ideas, by the sorrow which is like 
 an unquenchable thirst, like an unsatisfied hunger — ■ 
 a sorrow not the less felt because it is ideal — a sym- 
 pathy for human suffering, a grief which words cannot 
 utter, but which is as true and incomprehensible as 
 the mystery of death, as the magnetism of inspiration, 
 as the electricity of sentiment, but a trouble without 
 which there never has existed, and never can exist, a 
 
 C— 2 
 
84 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 true genius. Life is a struggle. Glory is the result 
 of this continual labour and warfare. Genius is like 
 the fire of slow martyrdom. It scorches the flesh, 
 boils the blood, in the furnace of affliction. The 
 heart writhes in the pain caused by the immense dis- 
 jDroportion which it finds between the ideal and the 
 real. Everything of yesterday appears lifeless, faded, 
 and melancholy. Everything belonging to the morrow 
 pleases while it is merely pictured on the mind, but 
 disenchants when brought visibly before us. But the 
 sorrow which sympathizes with all troubles, the aspi- 
 rations which desire benefits for all humanity, the 
 necessity of consoling, of aiding, of encouraging, forces 
 genius to activity. And this necessity of its nature 
 sometimes causes it to produce works of the first order 
 of merit — works which confer immortality on their 
 author. Then he is indeed a genius, and has become 
 a symbol of the age which gave him birth ! 
 
 And how truly we should welcome the works of 
 those extraordinary persons who have allowed us to 
 enjoy the benefit of their greatness ! They have 
 opened before us an enchanted world bathed in the 
 glowing hues of that uncreated light which is called 
 thought. So on leaving the noise and dust of cities, 
 and wandering among groves at the foot of mountains, 
 on the banks of rivers, we say, " I am a man ;" if 
 brought into communication with the Infinite by 
 means of a work of art, we say, " I am humanity." 
 Beauty is the moon which lights with melancholy 
 
POETRY. 85 
 
 splendour the darkness of the soul. Poetry elevates 
 us, as if with wings, from the busy world of industry 
 we inhabit, to the boundless heaven of the ideal. 
 Blessed be all poets ! Blessed be beauty, inspiration, 
 the ai-ts, the angels which beckon us to the end of our 
 career — the Infinity of the Creator ! 
 
86 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 PABT THE FOURTH. 
 
 17 ROM his return home till the time of his marriage 
 ^ may be called the golden age of Lord Byron. The 
 first cantos of " Childe Harold," so highly poetical, 
 raised him to the summit of the English Parnassus. 
 He suddenly became the most celebrated poet of his 
 country, and one of the most distinguished men of his 
 age. Those who had so severely criticised him, now- 
 exalted him. Society, which had formerly despised 
 him, placed him at its head. Ladies contended for a 
 smile from his lips ; editors disputed for a verse from 
 his pen. The most aristocratic saloons were opened 
 to him ; there he was surrounded by a court of ad- 
 mirers, and drank deeply the incense of adulation. 
 He was nominated an honorary member of the best 
 clubs in London. The Prince Eegent invited him to 
 his banquets, and in the presence of all the English 
 aristocracy pressed the hands which held the immortal 
 lyre. The House of Lords, which had treated him as 
 an obscure youth, gloried in his greatness. And even 
 orthodox Protestant writers, according to Macaulay, 
 were not so strongly irritated with the sublime genius 
 
POP ULA R AD ULA TION. 87 
 
 that undermined the foundations of Christian princi- 
 ples, being dazzled by the splendour of its rays. 
 Byron, whose chief characteristic was sensitiveness, 
 drank copious draughts from the golden cup. Dis- 
 gusted with the world and his passions, he fancied he 
 could exist in a cloud, like the gods of antiquity, hear- 
 ing a perpetual hymn in praise of his genius. Flat- 
 tery, applause, glory, sound sweetly in the ear. At 
 first the inexperienced heart believes such demonstra- 
 tions of enthusiasm to be eternal, tliat the flowers of 
 victory will not wither. It forgets that there is in 
 the depths of society, as in the bosom of nature, the 
 sting of pain to give life an impulse, to spur and to 
 wound it. It io'nores that those souls which have the 
 most genius contain also most evil and misfortune, 
 is ature, after having endowed her chosen children with 
 the grand qualities which lead to glory, obliges them 
 to merit these gifts by their labours and their strug- 
 gles. Thus there is always an abyss in the depths of 
 all genius. A crown of stars cannot be placed upon 
 the brow, unless there is at the same time a crown of 
 thorns around the heart. One cannot enter the temple 
 to inscribe an immortal name, but at the cost of 
 writing it in the blood of one's veins. Once in an 
 age a genius appears, labours, struggles, falls, again 
 and again, dies forgotten in the path to glory, and pos- 
 terity alone acknowledges his merit, and avenges the 
 injustice of his epoch. What more ? In these post- 
 humous judgments, which are thought to be definitive 
 
S8 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 and implacable, there are great alternatives and great 
 eclipses. Shakspeare, the most beloved and admired 
 poet of our age, passed through other ages for a 
 barbarian. There was no academical poet, of those 
 who have combed out phrases, almost converting 
 syntax and prosody into the art of the hairdresser, 
 there was no one who did not condemn the taste of 
 the great poet, and who did not believe him only fit 
 to divert the vulgar with his horrors and monstrosities. 
 And yet, without doubt, Shakspeare is now the great 
 glory of England. 
 
 Life is full of complications, and for the same rea- 
 son of insuperable difficulties. And as there are 
 great contrasts in nature, there are also in society 
 opposed forces. By the side of the prophet who 
 announces the future, arises the magistrate who be- 
 lieves his mission is to be the conservation of the 
 present system, and who, as a result of this conviction, 
 persecutes the prophet. In the vicinity of every new 
 thinker there exists an association which believes itself 
 infallible. Beside each reformer is placed the eternal 
 cup of hemlock. It appears that seeds cannot fall 
 upon the earth unless the vase which contains them 
 is broken. Every old prejudice feels itself wounded 
 by a new idea, and hates it accordingly. Every privi- 
 lege oppresses and calumniates every right which con- 
 tradicts it. Society is movement ; but those who move 
 it fall under the weight of its crushing wheel. Society 
 is renovation ; but those who renew it are slain by its 
 
PREJUDICES AND POETS. 89 
 
 old errors. We cannot aspire to be blessed by posterity 
 without being cursed by our contemporaries. Savage 
 beasts do not disappear from a country without having 
 been long and patiently chased. How many bright 
 intelligences fall, how many fail, how many die and 
 depart like shadows in the struggle which is necessary 
 to rid the earth of monsters ! The greater number of 
 people believe you are tearing their souls from God if 
 you endeavour to uproot one of the prejudices or errors 
 under whose shadows their fathers lived for ages ! 
 
 And you, poetic souls, you who come from purer 
 regions crowned with flowers, beating your white 
 wings, clothed with ether ; with an immortal song 
 upon your lips and a lyre in your hands, like the first 
 angels who gazed upon chaos at the birth of the uni- 
 verse ; you, who bear imagination like a star upon 
 your brows, and who live awe-struck and ecstatic in 
 the contemplation of a world of ideas, which to us 
 weak mortals whose vision cannot penetrate it appears 
 a world of shadows ; you cannot enter this sphere of 
 realities without falling into an abyss, without tearing 
 your wings, and wounding your feet with thorns ; you 
 cannot descend from the fire in which you have been 
 moulded to the coldness of our shades, unless the dew 
 of your tears is frozen in their fall, and the transparent 
 vase of 3^our hearts is broken by the hailstones. 
 
 AVithout doubt, the sorrow of sorrows consists in 
 the existing disproportion between the ideas of good- 
 ness, of beauty, and of justice, and the realities of the 
 
90 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 world. The only means of lightening this sorrow, 
 is to labour for the modification of the reality ; to 
 chisel and shape the world, as it were, as the sculptor 
 chisels a statue till it approaches his conception, and 
 to live and die in the assured belief that this work 
 will never be interrupted, but that it will be continued 
 by other hands. 
 
 Every poet feels that which is called in common 
 language home sickness — the sorrow of exile, the 
 longing after things higher and holier. Every great 
 poet is like an exiled angel. Byron felt, more than 
 any other, this im.mense, this infinite regret. That 
 which is in Yirgil, in Petrarch, in Bellini, in Raphael, 
 a gentle melancholy, sweet and unruffled as moonlight, 
 is in Calderón, in Cervantes, in Shakspeare, in Michael 
 Angelo, in Dante, and in Byron an abandonment of 
 grief, which borders on despair, like the roaring of a 
 hurricane above the foam of the ocean. Many men 
 of genius console themselves by unfolding their souls 
 in their works and writings. Michael Angelo secluded 
 himself for many years, and peopled the vaulted roof of 
 the Sistine Chapel with prophets, with sibyls, and 
 with sublime Titans. Each of these figures cost him 
 the most profound emotion. All of them are the 
 produce of his soul's agony. Their positions show them 
 to be beyond the limits conceded to ordinary works of 
 art. I feel sure that the nervous excitement of the 
 great artist was soothed and comforted in the midst 
 of these masterpieces — his immortal works. But 
 
DISAPPOINTMENT. 91 
 
 Byron sought for his consolation in real life, in the 
 world, in the same cup from whence flowed his trouble. 
 And none of the women he met responded to his 
 cherished ideas. 
 
 The Countess Guiccioli approached in some degree 
 the women of his imagination. None of his friends 
 loved him with the sentiment of exaltation which in 
 Byron himself amounted even to hero-worship. His 
 orgies never satisfied the fever of ideal pleasure which 
 existed in the chaos of his mind. None of his travels 
 allayed his thirst for knowledge, or slaked his desire to 
 travel on to Infinity. Among the waves of the ocean 
 and the stars of heaven, across the coast of Spain, 
 embrowned by the rays of our splendid sun ; in the 
 shadows of the Giralda, and beside the laurels of the 
 Alcazar of Seville ; on the summit of Mount Yesu- 
 TÍUS ; upon the coasts of the Adriatic Islands, and 
 those of the Grecian Archipelago ; by the shores of 
 the Bosphorus, and on the ruins of ancient Rome ; in 
 the silent nights of Athens, when the silvery moon- 
 light bathes with her melancholy splendour the marbles 
 of antiquity, those ivy-twined columns, above which 
 wave the palm-trees, stirred by the breezes of the 
 .^gean Sea — in all those great theatres of art and of 
 history, everywhere in the world, he always found the 
 disgust which he bore in his own soul. The sea falls 
 like a drop of gall, and the earth Hke an atom of powder, 
 into the unfathomable abyss of desire. Hence human 
 life — this life full of infinite ^aspirations — is not like 
 
LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 the circle wliicli a child produces by throwing a stone 
 into a calm lake, but resembles the infinite system of 
 worlds, which the Almighty called forth in the im- 
 mensity of space by his creative fiat. Human life is 
 infinite. From the moment in which we become con- 
 vinced of this truth we compare the deeds which are 
 within our limited reach, and are possible, with the 
 desires and aspirations in our own minds, which are 
 impossible for ns to realize ; thoughts which flash 
 from time to time like mystic flames in the eternity 
 of the future, which stretches to the bosom of the 
 Deity. 
 
 Lord Byron had painful struggles with his present 
 life. On the 14th of June, 1811, he returned to Lon- 
 don, much invigorated by his travels. Shortly after he 
 found in Mr. Murray a publisher, who has united his 
 own name with that of the poet. At this period life 
 seemed to smile upon him. But, as if an evil genius 
 pursued him, almost all the friends for whom he felt 
 sincere afl'ection died, following each other in quick 
 succession. Life is full of strange mysteries. Each 
 cradle is placed upon a heap of tombs. Our very exist- 
 ence is the consequence of a long series of skeletons 
 lost in the depths of the earth, like the roots of a 
 tree. To trace back our genealogy is to count a pile 
 of bones. And doubtless there is a time in our lives 
 in which innocence is the atmosphere of the soul, and 
 the world is then a paradise. We seem to have so 
 much time before us that the sensible horizon of our 
 
DEA TH. 
 
 93 
 
 individual existence is almost confounded with tlie 
 vastness of eternity. Not only do we ignore the pro- 
 bability of our own death, but we endow those we 
 love with immortality ; though the devouring monster 
 is ever present, striking down and rending asunder, 
 suspended over us, like a spider among flies. We 
 think death is impossible. But one day, in the spring- 
 tide of our life, the blossom of our youth, we are 
 overwhelmed by the death of some beloved compa- 
 nion ; the mother from whose sacred breast we re- 
 ceived the stream of life, the friend with whom we 
 shared our joys and sorrows. This first sad experience 
 wounds us to the soul, and goes to the depths of our 
 hearts. 
 
 In the presence of a corpse we are surprised at the 
 facility with which human beings die. And that 
 which is the most strange to us is the continuation of 
 our own life, after the extinction of that life with- 
 out which we thought it impossible for us to exist ! 
 But though we do not die instantly in those first hours 
 of supreme sorrow, we begin to die. With the first 
 beloved dead we give a portion of our hearts into 
 the jaws of death. Afterwards, one by one, beings 
 who are dear to us fall into the earth already moistened 
 with our tears, like dry leaves in the autumn. And 
 not only do we bury our aSections, our friends, our 
 mothers, our beloved, but we also la}' in the grave our 
 hopes and our illusions. And when death comes to 
 us, we are like withered and leafless trees, on which 
 
94 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 love sometimes places a nest as a promise of the con- 
 tinuation of life through future generations. 
 
 The first blow which Lord Byron received was 
 caused by the death of his mother. Though not 
 sufficiently careful as to the education of her son, 
 often too violent in temper, she was his mother! For 
 a long time the proud lady was aware of her approach- 
 ing death, but grieved at the prospect of departure 
 without seeing her son. How unfortunate are those 
 who have not received the last look of their dying 
 mother, that pale and sad ray of the sun as he sets in 
 the west, often full of the counsels of virtue and 
 promises of immortality i If, in the moment of com- 
 mitting an evil action or of cherishing a wicked 
 thought, we remembered the holy look which asked of 
 us an imitation of a mother's virtues and of her love, 
 and expressed a hope of an untroubled future, if we 
 remembered this treasure of the soul, we should hold 
 it pure and unsullied. 
 
 To understand the worth of virtue, we must see a 
 virtuous mother die in divine serenity. To believe in 
 immortality, we must contemplate death. The death 
 of Lord Byron's mother was violent as her own cha- 
 racter. She was already suffering, when a cabinet- 
 maker presented her a very long account for altera- 
 tions made in her house. She fell into a passion, 
 which ended in a fit of apoplexy, and killed her like 
 a thunderbolt. The mother and son did not meet in 
 this last hour. When the latter arrived, he sank 
 
DEATH OF HIS MOTHER. 
 
 95 
 
 down motionless at the head of her coffin. A bitter 
 sob burst from his heart, soon repressed by his in- 
 domitable wilh The young poet followed the custom 
 of southern peoples, who do not usually accompany 
 the bodies of their friends to the grave, like the French 
 and English. AVhen the body had been brought from 
 the house, he invited one of his servants to hold with 
 him a wager and boxing match, so common at that 
 time in England. He endeavoured by these bodily 
 exercises to chase the gloomy thoughts which oppressed 
 him ; but soon, overcome by mental exhaustion, and 
 unable to sustain his feigned serenity, he shut him- 
 self up in his chamber, and gave way to a burst of 
 tears. 
 
 The links of life's chain break easily. The three 
 most beloved friends of his childhood died shortly 
 afterwards. The one for whom Byron mourned the 
 most was Edleston, a chorister of Cambridge, a youth 
 of almost angelic voice and beauty, of whom, from his 
 earliest years, it was predicted he would be in the world 
 but a passing apparition, like a flower or a butterfly. 
 
 The grief of the poet was so violent that he made his 
 will, thinking he could not possibly outlive the rude 
 attacks of destiny. This testament, written by his own 
 hand, was short and tragic. He divided his fortune 
 among his legitimate heirs. He laid upon them asolemn 
 obligation to give him a modest and private funeral in 
 the garden at Newstead, but without in any way dis- 
 turbing the body of his dog, which was buried there. 
 
96 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 His nerves seemed to snap like the chords of a harp 
 when strained unduly. He passed his days in a lan- 
 guor which resembled death, and his nights in a state 
 of excitement bordering on insanity. His desolated 
 hearth was no refuge, he had no comfort in friendship 
 — his friends had departed : no relief in his own 
 imagination, which was more sad than a sepulchre. 
 The woman he had loved was wedded to another. 
 Her son, which should have belonged to him, tortured 
 him with his caresses, and recalled the happier 
 lot of his rival. The heavens seemed to frown upon 
 him, the earth on which he walked was a desert, his 
 thoughts were a tempest, his heart a bleeding wound. 
 Then, desperate from sorrow, and demanding, like 
 Job, the cause of so many incomprehensible evils, he 
 resolved to give himself to the world and its vices, 
 and he entered anew into society with curses on his 
 lips, but with tenderness in his heart. 
 
 The years 1812, 1813, and 1814 were the three 
 3'ears of Lord B3'ron's greatest fame. Undoubtedly 
 this was the most dramatic portion of his existence, 
 and also the most unknown. The memoirs, which 
 the poet wrote in a style superior even to his verses, 
 if we can judge by some remaining fragments, those 
 sketches which would have been one of the most faith- 
 ful historic testimonies of the times, have disappeared 
 through the prudery of the English aristocracy, who 
 were there painted nude, according to the method 
 of great artists. Once Lord Byron was on the point 
 
THOMAS MOORE. 97 
 
 of fighting a duel with Moore, the Irish poet, but the 
 affair ended in a banquet, and in a lasting friendship 
 between the two. This friendship was so real in the 
 heart of Bjron, that he gave up his memoirs to 
 Moore. But Moore, who was crafty and cold-hearted, 
 incapable of telling a truth, and desirous to frequent 
 high society, becoming the possessor of tragic and 
 comic descriptions of ladies of rank, and thinking it 
 unwise to reveal their secrets, broke the mirror in 
 which posterity could have seen the face of the great 
 poet and of his epoch. Consequently, we are without 
 the key to many events which occurred at this period, 
 to which reference is often made, but of which com- 
 paratively little is known. 
 
 In IS 1.2 Lord Byron went to live in Xo. 8, 
 St. James's Street — a central part of London. He was 
 then in the zenith of his fame, in all the pride of 
 youth and manly beauty, in the fulness of his mental 
 vigour, in which his lips scattered oracles, his impe- 
 rious glances magnetized those before him. The man 
 bore candour stamped upon his features. His ejes 
 of a rare brilliancy and of an un definable colour, 
 seemed to possess an immortal brightness. Whatever 
 the sculptor has chiselled in order to express genius, 
 either before or after his time, appeared in Byron, from 
 the Apollo Belvedere to the bust of Napoleon by 
 Canova. I well remember the da}" in which I first 
 saw that bust on one of the tables of the wonderful 
 Palazzo Pitti in Florence. The bust is not a portrait, 
 
 7 
 
98 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 but an apotheosis. The sculptor saw the Napoleon of 
 Manzoni with genius, glory, heroism, immortality, 
 inspiration on his brow, the world at his feet, two 
 ages striving beside him, and crowning his temples 
 with lightning. The sculptors of the heroic times of 
 the Eoman Empire thus represented the Caisars, 
 when they desired to elevate them to the altars of 
 immortality. That is the head of a god, one says 
 on looking at the bust. At first sight I thought, 
 from its likeness, it was the head of Byron. Perhaps 
 it would be impossible to paint or model genius, with- 
 out copying the features of that truly Apollo-like 
 physiognomy over which inspiration has fl.ung sub- 
 limity. 
 
 The sap of youthful genius burst forth in writings 
 and discourses. Lord Byron entered the House of 
 Peers once more, and delivered three speeches. In 
 all of them he advocated that supremely righteous 
 cause — the cause of the oppressed. Never can human 
 language — that gift of gifts — be so gloriously em- 
 ployed, as vfhen consecrated to the cause of justice. 
 There is no music in nature to be compared to that 
 of speech, each of whose phases is an idea, and each 
 of whose ideas may be the seed of a new world. To 
 sully it with a sophism is an error, to degrade it 
 by adulation is a crime. Eloquence is the angel's 
 trumpet which calls down the judgment of God upon 
 tyrants, and unfolds the infinite joys of a new 
 existence. 
 
HIS THREE SPEECHES. 
 
 99 
 
 Lord Bjron possessed all the faculties essential to 
 an orator — sensibility, imagination, ideas, a flexible 
 voice which responded to the various tones of thought, 
 a flow of words, clear notions of justice. He failed 
 only in stability of purpose. His uneasy genius 
 lifted him to other heights of art, in which his too 
 highly-developed individuality could expand itself in 
 all directions without obstacle. To ascend was for 
 him a necessity. His aspiring soul felt itself too near 
 the earth in the senate, but in poetry it unrolled 
 itself to the full. And the three discourses which 
 remain to us, without being extraordinarj^, make us 
 lament that his evil fortune drove him from London, 
 and consequently from the British Parliament, before 
 he had time to give greater play to his talents. His 
 first speech was made against a cruel law which it 
 had been proposed to enact against operatives, who, 
 harassed by want, destroyed the new machines which 
 kept them out of emplojmient. His second speech 
 was in support of Catholic Emancipation, Catholics, 
 being then persecuted by Protestant intolerance. The 
 third was to complain to Parliament on behalf of 
 a Major Cartwright, chief of the league for par- 
 liamentary reform, molested by the police on account 
 of his demands — a yearly Parliament and a vote for 
 all male citizens. So that in all the questions wliich 
 so long troubled England, in the problem of labour, 
 in the emancipation of the Catholics (the termina- 
 tion of which was due to the firmness of Gladstone),. 
 
 7—2 
 
LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 and in electoral reform, Byron has left traces of Lis in- 
 telligence, as a constant defender of the cause of liberty. 
 The world drew him into its vortex, and tempted 
 him with its passions. Society had an extraordinary 
 admiration for his poetry, but its seductive pleasures 
 besieged him so continually as scarce to leave him 
 time to write a new poem. Society resembles those 
 people who, when admiring the beauty of a rose, or 
 enjoying its odour, tear it from the stalk. It is not 
 aware that all great vocations necessitate a continual 
 and almost exclusive culture. Tlie conclusion of 
 " Childe Harold" made an extraordinary sensation. 
 England felt his sadness in that sublime lament, his 
 adventurous genius in that Odyssey of the West to 
 the East of Europe, his national pride in those cantos 
 consecrated to the war under Napoleon, and the 
 eyes of the country were turned on that gigantic soul, 
 which, notwithstanding its instability, ever remem- 
 bered great sacrifices, and felt a loving sympathy for 
 the heroic deeds of history. Around him arose a 
 tempest of enthusiasm. The people of England all 
 but suffocated their idol. Lord Byron could scarcely 
 breathe under that abundant rain of flowers. There 
 was no society, no saloon, that did not desire his pre- 
 sence ; no celebrated man nor woman who did not 
 seek his friendship. Even those he had so severely 
 criticised in his satires not only freely forgave them, 
 but were proud of the w^ounds made by the lance of 
 the youthful god of poetry. 
 
SCEPTICISM AND INDECISION. 
 
 The year 1813 was one continued triumph. In it 
 he saw arise, as in a dream, the templje ;oí -hi?^ g^ory, 
 and beheld the first of nations at his . feet;, ,offerij>g 
 him with transport the crown of genius ! 
 
 And to all this he felt antipathy. Grlory was bit- 
 terness to him, enthusiasm vanity, the passions called 
 forth among these laurel pathways were venomous. His 
 soul was devoured by this disgust of realit}^ against 
 which he had but one refusre — the ideal. And being 
 naturally practical and loyal, he struck the earth with 
 his feet, looking for the flowing of its joys. The supreme 
 joy for reall}' great souls is the ecstatic contemplation 
 of one particular idea, and their labour is a daily 
 effort to realize the idea. But in the changeful mind 
 of Byron ideas were vacillating flames, which Avere 
 kindled or extinguished by his stormy passions. The 
 scepticism which belonged to his character continually 
 overturned his resolutions. He had no desire to cul- 
 tivate that serene and equal happiness which consti- 
 tutes the real charm of life. For friendship it was 
 too late ; and besides, all the friends of his childhood 
 had departed. For marriage it was rather too early ; 
 and then no woman attracted him to the point of 
 giving her his life. "Alas !" he exclaimed, "we cannot 
 live with women any more than we can live without 
 them." Doubt was the serpent he bore entwined about 
 his heart, and which mingled poison with all his plea- 
 sures. To chase away this chronic malady he imagined 
 a woman of superhuman beauty and goodness, in whose 
 
LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 society his weary soul could find repose. But these 
 ^spiratioa^-' Y/ere deceitful, and falsehood disgusted 
 him. < After disenchantment, he returned to life's 
 reality, and went to the house of a married friend, 
 happy in wife and children, to see if he could learn, 
 as in a practical school, domestic happiness. He knew 
 not the charm that may be found in common charac- 
 ters, when he fancied he could learn practical lessons 
 of domestic felicity. Where among the world's path- 
 ways could he encounter the angel of his dreams ? 
 In what society could he find rest from the stormy 
 passions which oppressed him ? What could remove 
 the dark cloud which covered him ? What safeguard 
 against the lightning of these sudden inspirations 
 which flashed through his brain, exhausting his nerves, 
 and making them tremble in mortal agony ? What 
 specific against genius, that epilepsy of the soul? 
 On what shore unload this weary weight of human 
 greatness ? Byron's malady was immortal. If he 
 has not found in another and happier world the in- 
 finity, the eternal beauty, for which here he longed 
 so vainly, his soul still suffers the inexhaustible thirst 
 which consumed it, and that was at once his glory and 
 his torment. 
 
 Eequited afiection can alone make the happiness of, 
 a poet. Love balances the faculties, calms the pas-i 
 sions, administers the opium of forgetfulness against 
 adversity, and is an ecstacy which reduces life to one 
 point — the object beloved — in whom centres the uni- 
 
LADY CAROLINE LAMB. 103 
 
 verse. Scepticism no longer torments us ; we liave a 
 belief. Human ingratitude avails nothing, for we 
 have one friendship. Life's reality no more affrights 
 us ; it is changed into paradise in the presence of her 
 whom we love. Death loses all his terrors if she but 
 share our grave. Two souls have become united, and 
 one heaven is created. 
 
 Such was the happiness which Byron sought. But 
 he failed to find it, perhaps because love was like an 
 electric shock to his ardent nature, and not a mild and 
 lasting splendour. He had some passing attachments. 
 He had a friendship with jMadame de Stael, an affection 
 less of the heart than of the mind, produced by the 
 greatness of two souls which approached without un- 
 derstanding each other, and that enjoyed each other's 
 society without love. 
 
 But two women left ineffaceable traces in his 
 memory. Two passions governed his destiny; one 
 unlawful, the other legitimate ; both were unfortunate, 
 and the causes of all his other misfortunes. Lady 
 Caroline Lamb was his first evil genius. A daughter 
 of one of the principal families in England, of literary 
 tastes, nervous temperament, and exalted imagina- 
 tion ; a course of romantic reading and a poetic en- 
 thusiasm had excited her passions, and given her an 
 intense desire for adventure. An error of this nature 
 is a poisoned stream, which overflows the boundary 
 line between the world of poetry and the world of 
 reality. This lady was a heroine of romance. The 
 
I04 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 husband her parents bad j^iven ber was unable to 
 subdue these exaltations of a rash fancy, which re- 
 sembled flaming skyrockets in the midst of the 
 prosaic realities of life. Nevertheless, the marriage 
 was at first happy. This arose partly from mutual 
 attachment, and partly because nothing had occurred 
 to kindle the imagination of Caroline; certainly her 
 days passed in the tranquillity of domestic content. 
 The 3'oung lady read ber writings to an intelligent 
 company assembled in her spacious library ; and these 
 occupations filled np her existence, and the applause 
 she received from her audience satisfied her ambition, 
 so that at this time there was no haj^pier marriage in 
 London. 
 
 But one evening Caroline and Lord BjTon met at 
 the house of Lady Jersey. The romantic young 
 woman was deeply struck by the poet. She, who 
 had so often described love in her poems, had never 
 felt its fever till that unhappy moment. The fanciful 
 creations of her novels condensed into a passion which 
 invaded her whole soul and existence. The powerful 
 magnetism which the extraordinary genius of the 
 man possessed like a talisman, invincibly attracted 
 her. The wings of her soul were bound to the heart 
 of Byron. And from that hour there remained for 
 her no more art or poetry ; no world, no heaven, no 
 ideas, no life ; nothing but love ! He had not enticed, 
 but he had fascinated her. Without pausing or re- 
 flecting, she di'ew towards that guilty passion in 
 
IXFA TU A TIOX. 
 
 whose intricate mazes she was to leave happiness, 
 life, and honour. The world offered her numerous 
 attractions, wealth laid its treasures at her feet, society 
 respected her, literature gave her its honey and not 
 its aloes ; marriage its holy serenity ; three lovely 
 children the affection which should deUght the heart 
 of a mother ; and she forgot all for her insane passion. 
 She saw nothing, remembered nothing, sustained no 
 battle with her own conscience, thought not of re- 
 morse ; honour and modesty fled, scorched by the 
 lightning blast fallen from a tranquil heaven. Caroline 
 believed that evening that from all eternity she and 
 Byron had been predestined for each other, and that 
 it was as natural for her to give him her heart as for 
 an inert body to be drawn to its centre of gravity. 
 
 FataUsm alwa^'s tries to excuse the will before the 
 conscience. But not content with betraying her 
 feelings to her lover, she betrayed them to the world. 
 It was a suicide of honour, of which we have no 
 similar record. The name of her husband and the 
 name of her family, the love of her children, the 
 purest instincts of her nature, were all flung into the 
 flames of that ruinous and devouring passion which, 
 alike forgetful of reason and religion, mocked at the 
 voice of conscience in its madness, and feared not the 
 remorse of the future. 
 
 For some time Byron naturally responded to so 
 much devotion, and was unable to extricate himself 
 from the web woven around him. But he soon be- 
 
io6 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 came indifferent, and unable to return so much affec- 
 tion. His passion — if he ever felt it — soon perished, 
 consumed in the flame, like the delicate wings of a 
 butterfly. It is diflücult to balance the temperature 
 of two hearts when one of them burns with an inex- 
 haustible flame. The less loving melts like ice before 
 the devotion it can neither comprehend nor return, 
 and the eternal punishment of a continually changing 
 fancy is, that no woman can long trust the man who 
 follows all women. No pure passion can find shelter 
 in a heart capable of admitting grosser sentiments. 
 And Lord Byron was at that period of his life too 
 much possessed by the spirit of adventure to be will- 
 ing to give himself up to the worship of one woman, 
 even though she loved him to excess. 
 
 Caroline thought that having sacrificed family, hus- 
 band, children, and name at the feet of her idol, she 
 would gain from his feelings of justice that which she 
 scarcely hoped from his añection. Society was shocked 
 and indignant. The English nobility might have 
 forgiven the wrong, but they could never pardon the 
 scandal.* The aflfair for a time attracted Lord Bja-on. 
 Caroline disguised herself as a valet, and went to his 
 house, saying she was the bearer of a letter. But in 
 this strange attire Byron immediately recognised her. 
 
 * Señor Castelar is evidently not aware that Lady Caroline Lamb 
 was considered of unsound mind, and that during the latter part of 
 her life she was never suffered to be without an attendant, who was in 
 reaUty a keeper. 
 
CAROLIXES EXTRAVAGANCES. 107 
 
 She was sadly deceived in thinking she could fix his 
 wandering fancy. For a person of his distinct indi- 
 vidualit}^ impatient of an}^ yoke, and soon weary of 
 pleasure, the intense devotion which she lavished 
 upon him became like a chain which tortured and 
 oppressed him. She could not fix that fickle nature 
 which changed as the shadows upon a lake, those 
 desires which were the sport of each passing wind. 
 She overwhelmed him with letters, even making ap- 
 pointments at her own house when her husband was 
 in London. On these occasions, though always in 
 danger of discovery, she wept, reproached, and expos- 
 tulated. During one of these scenes her husband 
 knocked at the door. Alarmed beyond measure, the 
 eccentricity natural to Byron's character suggested an 
 expedient, which proved successful. He drew a 
 dasreer, and brandished it in his right hand, while in 
 the left he snatched up a jewel-case and rushed out, 
 in danger of being taken by the police, and appearing 
 in a court of justice as a burglar. But in the con- 
 fusion of this tragi-comedy he left the lady in a 
 nervous attack, flinging herself against the furniture, 
 while a letter with his name and address fell from his 
 pocket. 
 
 This state of things could not continue. Lord 
 Byron would have gone through the greatest dangers 
 for a woman he loved, but not for one to whom he 
 was indiff'erent. When weary of pleasure, he took 
 refuge in morality. He wrote angry letters, remind- 
 
io8 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 ing Caroline of her duties of wife and mother. He 
 spoke of the perils they both ran through her im- 
 prudence, and the necessity of speedily putting an 
 end to so unpleasant a situation. Caroline believed 
 herself the mistress of his heart, and defended her 
 property with the ardour natural to her character. 
 She pursued him everywhere, though acquainted with 
 his infidelity. On one occasion he received a lady in 
 his house. She had scarcely entered when a posti- 
 lion appeared at the door, who, rapidly removing the 
 disguise, showed herself to be Caroline. Byron de- 
 scribes this event in the story of Faublas. 
 
 Such a state of affairs was necessarily wretched. 
 Both suffered in the struggle, he to disentangle him- 
 self from so fatal a passion, she to retain him in her 
 power. Caroline spared no arts or efforts to secure 
 the affections, or at least the sympathy, of the man to 
 Vv'hom she had so weakly sacrificed her reputation. 
 One evening she was asked to dance in one of the 
 most brilliant assemblies of London. Blushing deeply, 
 she turned timidly to ask the permission of the poet. 
 She must have remembered the lament in which, in 
 one of his earlier verses, he complained of the pro- 
 fane arms which encircled in the gay waltz the waist 
 of his Mary. But Byron answered rudely, that it 
 was useless to ask permission of one who had neither 
 the right nor the desire to exercise any influence 
 over her. Then Caroline flew into a passion of tears, 
 utterly forgetful of the numerous company which 
 
LYSAXE PASS/ON. 109 
 
 suiToundecl tliem. The ill-natured world was much 
 amused at the absurd position of the great poet, 
 pursued by so insane a passion. Meanwhile, many 
 adventurers approached the forsaken and disdained 
 lady, offering her love and vengeance. To one of 
 them Caroline said she did not love him, but she 
 promised him her gratitude and friendship if he would 
 kill Lord Byron in a duel. 
 
 In all this he saw but the exaltation of a dis- 
 ordered ñmcy ; but it was really the expression of a 
 devoted affection. These follies were proofs of love, 
 proofs of jealousy, proofs that her love bordered on 
 madness. One day, her agitation being insupportable, 
 she resolved to return to the house of the poet, to 
 throw herself at his feet, to bathe his hands in her 
 tears, to ask from him love or death, which she feared 
 less if coming from him than the prolonged martyrdom 
 she was suffering. She entered his house, the spot 
 which she would have been content to make her 
 universe, provided she could have kept him by her 
 side. There was no one there. Caroline felt a sad 
 pleasure in looking over the saloon, and examined the 
 furniture with the minuteness with which passionate 
 souls dwell on every object that feeds their sorrow. 
 She reclined on the cushions where Byron had re- 
 posed. She threw herself into his accustomed chair. 
 She saw upon a table the favourite book of her former 
 lover. Touched by her fond recollections, intoxicated 
 by the aroma which exhaled from those beloved 
 
no LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 pages, she took a pencil, kissed it, moistened it with 
 lier tears, and traced upon the book this supplication 
 of her broken heart, " Bemeinher me T 
 
 ^yYon was not moved even by this touching appeal, 
 which he considered a threat. He angril}^ took his 
 pen and wrote these words, which he sent her under 
 an envelope : " Remember you ! remember you ! Until 
 the waters of Lethe have flowed over the burning 
 torrent of your existence, shame and remorse will cry 
 in your ears, and pursue you with the delirium of fever. 
 Kemember you ! Do not doubt it, I will remember ! 
 And your husband will also remember you. Neither 
 of us can ever forget you. To him you have been an 
 unfaithful wife, and to me, a devil." 
 
 These were cruel and terrible vv-ords. Caroline felt 
 deeply wounded, and swore to be avenged. Her love 
 changed into hatred. Not being able to use a sword, 
 she took up her pen. Filling her ink-bottle with 
 venom, she poured it on the name of Byron. She re- 
 vealed her own shame to the world. She poured out her 
 guilty heart to society, as Agrippina bared her breast 
 when the emissaries of her son were sent to murder 
 her. Society fled from her in disgust, fled in order to 
 avoid the poison which had taken possession of her 
 soul. She called her book of vengeance " Glenarvon," 
 and in it she described Lord Byron as the Genius of 
 Evil, with all the seduction and treachery of the ser- 
 pent which deceived the first woman. But in her case 
 Byron was not the seducer; he was the seduced. 
 
SIN AND SORROW. 
 
 Caroline was guilty, but she clearly suffered for lier 
 oifence. Grown old in her youth, miserable in her 
 splendid home; despised by the society in which she had 
 been admired ; buried alive with a husband who was 
 her judge, and with children who were her punishment; 
 wretched in the possession of her useless riches, de- 
 graded even by her own literary works, in which she 
 more and more proclaimed her own dishonour; in 
 affliction, but without the solace of sympathy ; for life 
 a fever, for consolation the recollection of past happi- 
 ness, which was her present torment ; for the future, 
 the contempt of the world and the stings of conscience; 
 for her only hope, death and forgetfulness ; a moral 
 evil, followed by a physical infirmity ; these emotions 
 plunged her in a deplorable languor and debility, from 
 which she never wholly recovered. 
 
 One day the great poet, whom she had described as 
 a criminal, died in Greece the death of a hero. By 
 his last desire his aslies were placed in the ungrateful 
 country wdiich had not sufficiently honoured his 
 genius while living. Caroline happened to be at her 
 window, enjoying the sunshine. The same light 
 which beamed upon her gilded the coffin of him who 
 once loved its brightness. In fact, at that moment 
 there passed along the road, before the door and the 
 window where Caroline was standing — going to the 
 eternal repose — the bones of Bj-ron: those bones which, 
 when animated with life, had brought so much trouble 
 to the solitary mourner. The coffin was borne in a 
 
LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 hearse, covered witli a funeral pall ; a clog followed 
 the hearse, howling piteously. Caroline uttered a 
 heart-rending cry, and fell to the ground insensible. 
 Her friends raised her, and placed her in bed, from 
 which she never arose. From that bed she passed to 
 the grave. 
 
 The genius and the beauty of Byron were fatal gifts 
 for himself. These endowments, which would have 
 been for other men a continual source of happiness, 
 were for him but the cause of constant sorrow. He 
 compared himself to his grandfather, who^ being a 
 great traveller, never embarked without seeing the 
 elements unchained, and being exposed to the fury of 
 a tempest. Su Byron never gained a heart without 
 afflictins: it and himself. All the sweetness of his rich 
 fancy turned to bitterness at the presence of reality. 
 Aloes were mingled in his cup, and there was a sort 
 of fatality in his life, so that his affections seemed 
 less to comfort than to wither their object. He was 
 like one of those G'-eek heroes — youthful, resplendent, 
 as skilful with the sword as with the lyre — beloved by 
 a beautiful woman, conqueror alike in sports as in 
 battles ; and yet condemned from the cradle by a cruel 
 destiny to the infernal deities. Against this tragic 
 fatality of his existence there was but one remedy ; 
 to renounce a life of adventure, and to enter into the 
 conditions of domestic life, to make for himself a 
 home sheltered from the tempest of passion, to unite 
 himself to a w^oman whom he should love tenderly 
 
MISS MILBANKE. 113 
 
 and tranquilly, with that serene, calm affection under 
 whose wincrs alone marriage can be happy. 
 
 Without doubt, this idea of marriage was one which, 
 had it been successfully carried out, would have saved 
 Lord Byron. He arrived at it from a thoughtful 
 study of his past life, and from the imperious prompt- 
 ings of his conscience. At last he found the woman 
 to whom he was to resign his destiny. The only 
 daughter of a distinguished family, educated with Puri- 
 tanic strictness, learned in metaphysics and in mathe- 
 matics, cold in temperament, proud of her aristocratic 
 name and of her loft}^ virtues, encompassed by English 
 customs and the social laws of her time, as in her centre 
 of gravity, capable of exalting the etiquette of society 
 to a dogma as imperious and inscrutable as that of the 
 Koran — she was at the same time incapable of com- 
 prehending Byron, or of calming his excitable nature 
 caressingly, for to do so would have disturbed her im- 
 placable serenity, and she refused to enter even for a 
 moment into the whirlwinds of genius. 
 
 Her name was Miss Milbanke ; young and pure- 
 minded, she had dared to protest against the irregular 
 and stormy passions which inspired " Childe Harold," 
 in verses which passed from hand to hand, and which 
 excited Lord Byron's fatal curiosity. A lark from 
 her humble nest boldly defied the lordly eagle, which 
 held the clouds in his talons, the lightning, like dry 
 straws under his wings, infinite space like a crown 
 upon his head, and the sun in his retina. The poet 
 
 8 
 
114 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 wished to become acquainted with this bird of ill 
 omen, which scattered mistrust into the hearts of his 
 numerous admirers. He heard she was expected at 
 one of Lady Strafford's receptions, and he went there 
 to see her. At the entrance of the house he stumbled, 
 and was near falling. A Eoman, under such circum- 
 stances, would have returned home. He went in and 
 saw the young lady very simply attired, seated on a 
 sofa, with a candid and modest countenance. Her 
 features, though somewhat irregular, were delicate j 
 her figure was graceful and flexible, her manner soft 
 and unpretending; affording a contrast to the arti- 
 ficial manners of English society at that period. 
 
 Lord Byron possessed that greatest quality of 
 genius — frankness. Miss Milbanke had the peculiarity 
 often seen in the feeble — craftiness. The poet went 
 nearly as far as a declaration. The lady nearly to 
 one of those negatives which excite the passions by 
 not depriving them of hope, and which gave the sem- 
 blance of love to his attentions, and to her refined 
 coquetry a certain victory. A year passed away thus, 
 in doubt and vacillation between the unconquerable 
 aspirations of his nature, which led him to take part 
 in the world's battles, and the stern counsels of his 
 conscience, which beckoned him to the tranquillity of 
 the fireside. It is impossible to say how much this 
 sublime satyr wished to experience all sensations ; to 
 swallow life at one draught ; to twine himself like a 
 gigantic serpent around the trunk of the tree of the 
 
RESOLVES TO MARJiV. 115 
 
 universe, from the roots to the topmost branches; to 
 exhaust mind and spirit ; to pass at one bound to the 
 highest step of the infinite ladder of humanity ; to 
 lose himself in eternity ; to plunge himself in the un- 
 fathomable ocean. And yet he shrunk terrified from 
 reality, would weep like a child, was contented to 
 have no other friend than a dog ; for all his happiness 
 the small heart of an ordinary woman, and with his 
 brilliant imagination, with his conscience, his feelings, 
 his aspirations, he was the sport of destiny. But he 
 could not thus crush his heart and brain with im- 
 punity, without wounding them, and staining them 
 and himself with his own blood. 
 
 To Lord Byron may be justly applied these words 
 of Emerson : " The story of Thor, who was condemned 
 to drink from the horn of Asgard, to wrestle with an 
 old woman, and to run with the swift-footed Lok, and 
 the result was that he drank the ocean, wrestled with 
 time, and ran with thought ; this story represents 
 those amono- us who are constrained to measure our- 
 selves in the midst of apparent weakness, with the 
 supreme energies of nature." 
 
 At last Lord Byron resolved to marry. His choice 
 fell upon the young Puritan, whom the aristocratic 
 and monarchical society of London counted among 
 its idols. The simple and modest young girl he had 
 first met at the house of Lady Strafford was to be his 
 bride. Although heiress to a large fortune, at that 
 time she was not rich ; and this was, in his eyes, an 
 
 8—2 
 
n6 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 attraction. Besides, she belonged to the circle dis- 
 tinguished for its aristocratic and Protestant principles, 
 which was offended with his Jacobinism, and for 
 this reason he wished to convert her. Because she 
 was naturally of an imperious temper, Lord Byron 
 determined to conquer her. Because she had written 
 a sort of anti-Byron, he desired to demonstrate that 
 the young Tory was like Frederick of Prussia, who 
 wrote an anti-Machiavel and practised Machiave- 
 lianism. Fatal error ! Instead of entering the married 
 state with real views of life, he was like one walking 
 in his sleep, in danger of stumbling and of falling into 
 a bottomless abyss. It was in the month of Septem- 
 ber, 1S14, that he wrote a letter asking the hand of 
 Miss Milbanke. Just as he had finished it, one of 
 his friends entered, who had before expressed himself 
 opposed to the marriage ; he read the letter, and it 
 appeared to him so beautifully written, that he could 
 not bear to see such a perfect composition wasted, and 
 without object. The letter was, therefore, sent to its 
 destination ! Five days of great anxiety passed, and 
 on the 20th of September the Muse of anti-Byronism 
 promised her hand to the poet. Two letters were 
 sent to him, one to his country seat, and the other 
 to London. He became almost mad from excitement 
 and enthusiasm. Already he believed her the mother 
 of future Gracchi. His exalted fancy endowed her 
 with all possible virtues. He was proud to be pre- 
 ferred before six other suitors. And in his triumph 
 
HIS HARRIA GE. 117 
 
 he onl}^ regretted that he did not better deserve so 
 much happiness. 
 
 What a wonderful flexibility there was in his soul ! 
 In childliood he seemed a worn-out and useless beincr 
 from the excess of sentiment ; and in his maturity he 
 was like a youth, who for the first time dreams of the 
 joys of love. He paid without regret a wager of 
 a hundred and fift}^ pounds, which he had laid that 
 he would never marry. He gravely discussed the 
 question of his wedding suit — as to whether he 
 should wear a black coat or a blue one. The second 
 of January, 1S15, was the date fixed for the marriage. 
 One day one of his gardeners saw him digging in the 
 garden, w^earing the ring which had united his parents 
 in that unhappy marriage of which he was the issue. 
 The poet kept it for his own wedding, which w^as still 
 more unfortunate. He rose on his marriage morning 
 in much depression of spirits. To pass the time, he 
 sought, according to his custom, a refuge from trouble 
 in the arms of Mother Xature, and took a long walk 
 in one of those English woods, at this season leafless, 
 cold, and melancholy as death. The day was harsh 
 and unpleasant. Mists hung over the earth and upon 
 his soul. Perhaps in those moments he thought that, 
 like Plato, like Newton, like Michael Angelo, like 
 Calderón, he belonged to the race of the great, 
 solitary sons of earth, of those who, remaining single, 
 are wedded only with the ideal, and from this spiritual 
 union spring their children, that is to say — their 
 
ii8 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 immortal works ; fruitful oiTspring, bringing forth 
 generations of souls progressing with the times. 
 Perhaps no one else could comprehend and feel this 
 immense power of mind, after the bitterness of a life 
 of pleasure, which had left him but the sad memories of 
 passing friendships and of passions rapid as lightning. 
 Lord Byron's love was an ardour of the brain. How 
 often he had met real enchantment, how often 
 he had seen exquisite beauty, on those shores, 
 that like a choir of sirens bathe in the blue waters of 
 the Mediterranean; and true love in those inter- 
 minable horizons of the south, where the play of light 
 produces changes that appear reflections, and golden 
 clouds resplendent in bright illusions ! How often he 
 felt happy in those nights, when the eyes of the 
 women under their black eyelashes shone like the 
 stars of heaven amongst the shadows ! A voice from 
 Heaven should then have warned him, that he was fling- 
 ing himself into life's cold realities, and that the home 
 he so fondly desired would become the winding-sheet 
 of his heart. Some old memory must have brought 
 before him the happy past — the time when on the 
 hill crowned with huge trees he saw the heavens re- 
 flected in his Mary's eyes — she who was afterwards 
 the wife of another but always the bride of his soul ! 
 Perhaps these reflections taught him that happiness, 
 when once lost is never regained, and that true 
 love is never repeated in a lifetime. Sometimes in 
 hasty confusion he would see the shades of other 
 
RESIDES IN LONDON. 119 
 
 women, telling him that one woman was destined to 
 avenge the wrongs of many others. 
 
 However, at the hour appointed he went to the 
 church, and repeated his marriage vows before God. 
 When he uttered the eternal Yes, he trembled, and 
 his limbs almost sunk under him. But he quickly 
 suppressed all appearance of emotion under an air of 
 stoical indifference. The one, however, really impas- 
 sible was his bride. The only emotion evident in that 
 ceremony, was the audible sobbing of Byron's mother- 
 in-law. AYhen the hour of departure arrived, the 
 bridegroom was so absent, that, contrary to all Eng- 
 lish ceremonial on such occasions, he addressed his 
 wife by her family name. Even at first he found her 
 a sort of exacting mistress — as if the shadow of his 
 mother-in-law had been prolonged till it entered his 
 home, and filled his married life with bitterness. 
 
 After a month had expired, Lord Byron dis- 
 covered that he did not love his wife, but that he still 
 esteemed her. Doubtless he waited in hope, trusting 
 that love would come with the birth of an heir. They 
 removed to London, where a large expenditure was 
 required to support the luxury which the pair con- 
 ceived necessary to their position. These expenses 
 greatly embarrassed him ; he was already oppressed by 
 debt, and he became still more hopelessly entangled. 
 His creditors, who had rejoiced to see their debtor 
 married to a wealthy heiress, became importunate 
 when they were made aware that the marriage served 
 
I20 UFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 but to increase liis debts, instead of paying them. 
 In the bouse of a young English lady of rank — rich 
 and accustomed to luxuries and splendours, that in 
 the other parts of Europe belong only to the throne 
 — bailiffs entered with an order to seize even the 
 nuptial bed. Moreover, the incompatibility of temper 
 which existed between them from the first, soon 
 became visible in this unpremeditated union, for such 
 it was, notwithstanding the long preparation. 
 
 Lady Byron had little capacity to govern, and much 
 to be governed. Her regular life and habits openly 
 clashed with the irregularities of her husband. She 
 was offended if he was not present at the solemn hour 
 of tea ; she was in despair because he did not eat after 
 the English fashion; she kept the books and the 
 library under lock and key ; she could not endure his 
 being awake while she slept, nor that he should sleep 
 while she was waking. The light reflected from his 
 eyes when possessed by inspiration terrified her like 
 the glance of a tiger. The incoherent words which 
 issued from his lips in the hours in which he composed 
 his poems, filled her with the impression that he was 
 insane. The diflerent political opinions held by them 
 as to the future of human society, widened the gulf 
 between them. The contempt which Lord Byron ex- 
 pressed for British etiquette appeared to the education 
 and to the temperament of his wife little short of 
 sacrilege. His blunt sayings in the midst of such 
 formality shocked and irritated her. She calculated 
 
LADY BYROXS CHARACTER. 
 
 all her words and actions, and be improvised his own ; 
 she was an advanced scholar in mathematics ; he was 
 a great master of poetry — and naturally the two could 
 not harmonize. Her virtue, severe but cold, could 
 not consent to the moral disorder, nor to the immoral 
 actions described by the poet. She felt she had fallen 
 from the unalterable serenity and dignity of her exist- 
 ence into chaos. Her terror went so far that she 
 consulted lawyers and doctors, instructing them to put 
 searching questions to her husband, in order to be 
 enabled to confine him to a lunatic asylum, though he 
 deserved an Olympus. Her natural reserve and his 
 natural frankness were the occasion of continual 
 jarring. Some of the later adventures of Byron, which 
 passed like shadows across her horizon, drove her to 
 desperation. At last, feeling herself about to become 
 a mother, and cruelly choosing that moment of hope 
 and love — that period in which life has some value 
 and some definite purpose, in which the heart expands 
 with an unknown and pure aifection, in wliich a 
 woman becomes the sanctuary of a new existence — 
 she chose that time of transfiguration to contrive her 
 criminal project of abandoning her husband ! 
 
 She gave birth to a daughter, and was scarcely re- 
 covered when she expressed a wish to visit her parents. 
 Lord Byron consented, and when she had arrived at 
 her father's house she wrote him a letter, to say that 
 her departure was a flight and not a visit, and that 
 they were separated for ever before God and men. 
 
LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 It is not possible to express the indignation with 
 which England regarded her illustrious son. History 
 has no example of similar anger. All the reputations 
 he had wounded, all the jealousies he had sown with 
 his genius, all the old customs he had scorched and 
 ridiculed with his satire, all the privileges he had 
 combated with his eloquence — the Protestant clergy, 
 the British aristocracy, private society, literary men, 
 the Ministers, the Court, the people, so easily de- 
 ceived ; in fine, all English prejudices arose against 
 Lord Byron like so many vipers. The doors of all 
 classes of society were closed against him. The hands 
 which had woven him crowns now recoiled from his 
 touch, as if fearing to be burned with some poison. 
 The street boys flung mud upon him. In the theatres 
 he was hissed. The most obscene libels attributed to 
 him most shameful vices. The daily papers repre- 
 sented him with horrible caricature. Fathers hid 
 their daughters from his basilisk glances. Women, 
 so jealous of the prerogatives of their sex, were dis- 
 mayed on seeing such a monster. To the eyes of 
 society he was a devil illuminated with genius, the 
 better to show he had neither heart nor conscience. 
 For these troubles there was but one remedy ; after 
 having lost his home, he lost his country ; he fled, an 
 exile without glory, a martyr without his crown, un- 
 happy among the most miserable — a fallen angel, 
 covered with the mire of London streets, flung upon 
 his sculptured brow by a people intoxicated with hatred! 
 
 Poet ! mighty poet ! men know not the impossi- 
 
GREAT GENIUS AND GREAT DEFECTS. 123 
 
 bility of having grand qualities, without having also 
 great defects. They know not that all extraordinary 
 virtue, all surpassing merit, is horn of a disproportion 
 between human faculties. They know not that the 
 perfect sense of hearing has a relation with the im- 
 perfect sense of vision ; and, at times, the per- 
 fection of imagination with the imperfection of 
 conscience. They do not reflect that as the organs 
 of animals are proportioned to their destiny in crea- 
 tion, so the faculties of giant minds are proportioned 
 to their destiny in history. Demand of the Creator 
 why the eagle sings not like the nightingale. Ask 
 Him why the horse has not the strength of the bull. 
 Let us not desire to discover too closely the physical 
 fatalities which surround us, and which trouble us 
 within and without our organism. Talent is in the 
 soul, but it throws its influence on the body. All 
 supernatural genius is an internal infirmity. The 
 singing which enchants us, the melody which tran- 
 sports us to the world of dreams, has often been the 
 consequence of an aneurism ; the poem which inspires 
 us with lofty ideas, great aspirations, has been written 
 with bile ; that wondrous work which leaves an in- 
 delible track in history, devours and destroys an organ- 
 ism ; that discourse which awakens a generation to new 
 ideas, is but a nervous crisis ; that powerful intellect, 
 able to weigh the stars, and to trace as on a map the 
 limits of human reason, is for the body but weakness 
 and sterility ; and all genius is a mortal infirmity. 
 Believe not in the impassibility of great men like 
 
124 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 Goethe and Eossini ; believe not that with Olympian 
 indifference they could pass from the torments of life 
 to the heaven of immortality, as if in this world they 
 were of marble, instead of being of the flesh which 
 burns the bones, and of the blood which is mingled 
 with fire. Grenius is a divine infirmity ; genius is a 
 martyrdom. The poet seizes upon the light, the 
 stars, the mountains, the seas, to convert them into 
 ideas, into canticles. The poet dissolves the universe 
 to mingle the colours for his pictures. But he can- 
 not undertake this Titanic work without insuring his 
 own destruction. He cannot go int© the fire without 
 being burned ; he cannot mount to the extreme 
 heights of the atmosphere without being frozen ; he 
 cannot enter the thunder- cloud without receiving in 
 that conductor — his body — the shock of electricity. 
 Those privileged souls which, flinging off the clay of 
 this world, force their way upward till they become 
 like bright stars in the firmament, almost approaching 
 the angels ; those beings — who, from the rock of their 
 own shipwreck, hold forth the light to future genera- 
 tions — have fed the divine splendour burning in the 
 lamp of their own brain with tears from their eyes 
 and with blood from their hearts ! 
 
VISITS WATERLOO. 125 
 
 PART THE FIFTH, 
 
 TTTE are now drawing near the end of Lord Byron's 
 life— a life as short as it was stormy. It 
 became impossible for him to reside in his own 
 country. He travelled to various places, by chance, 
 as it were, as if following the flight of his own way- 
 ward thoughts and desires. An artist as he was, 
 southern climates were those most congenial to his 
 ardent imagination. In the limpid atmosphere, under 
 a brilliant sun, breathing the aroma of flowers, a 
 spectator, if not a sharer, of exalted passions, he 
 satisfied his aspiration to realize poetry in life, or 
 to exalt common life into poetry. He passed from 
 England to Belgium, and from Belgium to Italy. 
 His first visit was to the field of AVaterloo — a sad 
 picture, where the iron sceptre forged by Napoleon I. 
 was broken, and his giant genius forced to succumb 
 to the cannon of the enemy. Lord Byron was natu- 
 rally enamoured of greatness — great beauty, great 
 ideas, great passions, and great crimes. His purely 
 original genius rebelled against all that was vulgar 
 and commonplace. Old, useless customs, imperious 
 
126 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 social laws, tormented liim as the waves and winds 
 torment one shipwrecked. If he had been able, he 
 would have torn his body from the laws of physical 
 gravitation, and his mind from the laws of social 
 gravitation. And in this violent struggle with con- 
 tending forces, so powerful and so necessary, he 
 destroyed both mind and body, drinking in large 
 draughts the sweet poison of eternal dreams, though 
 the cup was deadly. 
 
 He was naturally excited on seeing the battle-field, 
 susrsrestive of the brain wherein, from the cradle 
 tended by the plebeian Letitia Ramolino, had been 
 re-erected the throne of Charles the Great, which from 
 the Alps had spread to the Pyramids, and from the 
 Pyramids to the towers of Notre Dame, covering the 
 world with its shadow. Byron was deeply moved on 
 seeing the spot where this extraordinary genius, 
 whose Herculean strength supported a falling society, 
 had been lost among the smoke of battle raised by 
 the English forces — the place where he showed power 
 almost worthy of a god, to be baffled by the stubborn 
 perseverance of man. 
 
 From Waterloo, where the blood of the defeated 
 troops of Napoleon lay fresh. Lord Byron went to 
 the Rhine, and passing up the river he entered 
 Switzerland. That country is everywhere rich in 
 historic recollections. The greatest men have gone 
 thither to breathe the pure air of the mountains and 
 of liberty. Especially the shores of Lake Leman, 
 
GENEVA. 127 
 
 where Bj-ron remained for some time, are replete with 
 recollections of the men of the eighteenth century — 
 those men whose philosophy was a revolution, and 
 whose revolution shall be the key of our philosophy 
 of history. 
 
 I have visited the house occupied by Lord Byron 
 near Geneva, as I, a humble pilgrim of liberty, always 
 seek those places made famous by heroism or by 
 genius. I saw^, on the border of the lake, on a vine- 
 covered hill, half-hidden in foliage, like a mysterious 
 nest, the modest habitation where so many shadows, 
 that will fill up the annals of the human family, 
 crowded together in his brain. In front, the Jura 
 raises its violet-coloured chain above the forests; 
 from the foot of the Jura to the shores of the lake 
 are stretched meadows of perpetual verdure, whose 
 uniformity is relieved by dark trees and white ham- 
 lets ; below, the tranquil surface of the lake repeating 
 tlie purity of the heavens. At one end Geneva, 
 raising its spires and slated roofs ; at the other, the 
 picturesque villages of the Canton of Yaud ; behind, 
 the immense ridge of the Alps, enveloped, like an 
 army of white and changing phantoms, in a snowy 
 mantle, upon which the golden light throws so many 
 lovely and brilliant colours — a beautiful spot, calm as 
 an eclogue, yet grand, majestic, and in perfect har- 
 mony with the spirit of the poet. 
 
 On those shores many of the great ones of the 
 earth took refuge, and they have bequeathed to 
 
/ 
 
 128 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 humanity ineffaceable traces of themselves. Every 
 stone there speaks of Eonsseau — of that grave and 
 melancholy writer who lent to reality his own sadness — 
 of that eloquent prophet who transformed reality with 
 his aspirations. There Voltaire laboured many years, 
 contemplating a small corner of the lake visible 
 between the dark foliage and the lofty summit of 
 Mont Blanc, seen against the pure sky in the distance. 
 There Gibbon finished his history of the "Decline 
 and Fall of the Eoman Empire" — commencing where 
 the empire was at the height of its power, and con- 
 cluding in the regions from whence the barbarians 
 assailed the empire. With this magnificence of nature, 
 amid these recollections and these spectacles, and 
 with the conversation of Madame de Stael, who then 
 resided on the shore of Lake Leman, Byron, in some 
 measure, amused his thoughts, and tried to forget 
 his ungrateful country. 
 
 But ultimately Italy was the centre to w^hich his 
 ardent nature tended. The passage of the Simplón 
 invited him to the country of the arts. He crossed 
 over and went into Lombardy. In that journey he 
 felt the inspiration which produced " Manfred " — 
 at the roar of torrents bursting from inaccessible 
 heights, and dashing against the rocks ; at the sharp 
 cry of the solitary eagle on the naked crags ; at the 
 sound of broken trees hurled violently down the 
 defiles, and flinging around showers of crystal water 
 like a rain of diamonds ; at the contrast between the 
 
STHEXDEVS IMPRESSION OF BYROX. 129 
 
 deep shadows of the valleys, where the profundity of 
 the abyss is lost and hidden in the darkness ; in sight 
 of the lofty mountain peaks, vvhere the mind ap- 
 proaches the Infinite, and seems renewed by the con- 
 templation of immensity, and is drawn into intimate 
 communion with the vivifying spirit of Nature. 
 
 Lord Byron remained some days at Milan. He 
 compared the beautiful Italian city with our own 
 lovely Seville, and gave the palm of beauty to Seville. 
 In La Scala of Milan, he saw for the first time that 
 fine observer, that acute critic, that scrupulous phy- 
 siologist of Italian society — the famous Sthendel, 
 whose intolerance towards my philosophic convictions, 
 and the literary school to which I belong, cannot 
 conceal from me his real merit. Sthendel afterwards 
 remarked that, having closely observed Lord Byron 
 while he listened entranced to a fine piece of music, 
 he found in the expression of his countenance, in the 
 breadth of his forehead, in the chano-ino- liMit of his 
 eyes, in the curve of his lips, all the signs of great 
 genius. In fact, the Apollo Belvedere did not shoot 
 his arrows with so much majesty and impetus as 
 Byron shot forth the inspiration of his soul from his 
 oceanic e3'es. 
 
 At length he determined to settle in Venice. The 
 lagunes, the sea, the marble palaces, the wondrous 
 pictures, the mysterious gondolas, the nocturnal ad- 
 ventures, the historical recollections, the poetry in 
 action — all these harmonized wonderfully with the 
 
 9 
 
13o LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 state of liis mind and his peculiar genias. Venice 
 was like the external form of his soul — sublime, ro- 
 mantic ; sometimes gay, and sometimes melancholy ; 
 sensual, and yet monastic ; neither a daughter of the 
 earth, nor a child of the heavens ; passing quickly 
 from the disorder of an orgy to the desperation 
 which approaches suicide. The soul of the man 
 and the spirit of the cit}^ comprehended each 
 other. Both suffered and both wept. Both sought 
 forgetfulness in the arms of pleasure. Both sor- 
 rowed for their country. Both doubted the be- 
 nignity of the Almighty, and both cursed the injustice 
 of men. Both plunged into the excesses of life, hoping 
 to find rest in death. Venice was the sea-shell in which, 
 as in a native home, the soul of the poet unfolded. 
 
 He went then to Venice, turning aside to visit the 
 tomb of Juliet, immortalized by the tragedy of Shak- 
 speare. There, in an ill-kept garden, solitary as a 
 ruin ; forsaken, like a heart without love, is the tomb 
 which the pious tradition of the people — always 
 faithful to the worship of martyrs — declares to be the 
 last resting-place of the unfortunate Juliet. "When 
 the lark salutes the coming day, expressing the praise 
 of all creatures by her joyous canticle, she knows not 
 that the stones, though mute, join in her morning 
 hymn to the Creator and the light ; but the poet, who 
 makes himself a part of all time, turns aside to draw 
 a counsel, a souvenir, from that fountain of divine in- 
 spirations. 
 
LIFE IN VENICE. 131 
 
 Arrived at Venice, lie took up his abode in that fair 
 town, where he lived from 1817 to 1819. Only once 
 he left the city of the lagunes to contemplate Eome 
 in her severe majesty, and Naples in her voluptuous 
 gaiety. He soon returned to Venice, where the excess 
 of sorrow and the exuberance of pleasure accommo- 
 dated themselves equally to his genius, distracted by 
 troubles and torn by contending desires. But not 
 even there did his enemies allow him to remain 
 tranquil. During his exile, insults were continually 
 hurled at him across the sea, from his country. It 
 cannot be denied that Lord Byron's life in Venice 
 was a succession of orgies, and of all sorts of disorder. 
 But it is also true that he sought death in pleasure. 
 He swallowed the poison of dissipation, finding it 
 sweet to the palate, though corrosive to the stomach. 
 How often in life we see examples of such suicides ! 
 Powerful emotions, sleeplessness, wine, pleasures, and 
 the bitterness they leave in the soul, end by destroy- 
 ing, as if they were of glass, the most vigorous orga- 
 nizations. To these causes must be added his extreme 
 sensitiveness ; fasting, which he carried almost to the 
 total reduction of his strength • and meditations in- 
 dulged almost to delirious exaltations, in those solemn 
 moments in which the greatness of his soul and the 
 inspiration of his genius were in harmony. 
 
 About this time there was a grand Carnival in 
 Venice. It was the policy of Austria to encourage 
 pleasure, because pleasure destroys the recollection of 
 
 9—2 
 
132 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 liberty. Every tyrant knows that virtue is his 
 enemy — his Juditli. Unhappily, in this, Venice con- 
 spired witli Austria. Even in her degradation lier 
 children danced madly, as if seeking in the dance a 
 fatigue — and in fatigue, death. Many Eastern fana- 
 tics die thus at the feet of their idols. They seek 
 suicide in the cup of their orgies. It is need- 
 less to say how much those grand buildings, so full 
 of souvenirs, contribute to the mad pleasures of the 
 Carnival — those spacious saloons, filled with graceful 
 statues, which stand out from the smiling pictures ; 
 those gondolas, which appear a shadow and a mys- 
 tery; those lustrous dark eyes of the Venetian 
 women, which beam now softly, now severely, through 
 their black masks; the saline air of the lagunes, 
 which offers with the eternal echo of the kiss of their 
 waves a fit accompaniment to the giddiness of the 
 dance, and to the voluptuousness of music. I re- 
 member, one night, at the mouth of the Grand Canal, 
 when the melancholy rays of the moon shed a soft 
 splendour over the scene, I looked upon the islets 
 with their white marble spires, and the palaces 
 with their sculptured walls, extending into the pure 
 and silvered water, and from a distant gondola there 
 came an air from the " Lucretia" of Donizetti ; and 
 with the music there passed before my imagination 
 those Venetian festivals in which the wine-cup and the 
 poisoned bowl w^ent together, and death and pleasure 
 were in the dance. 
 
MARIAXA. 133 
 
 The friends wlio visited Lord Bvron at tliis time, 
 did not recognise him. His wasted form and his 
 pallid face gave him the appearance of a corpse, ani- 
 mated only by the brilliancy of his fatally beautiful 
 eyes. Pleasure was consuming his existence. Among 
 his passing affections was a lovely woman of dark 
 complexion, black eyes, and sanguine temperament. 
 Tall in stature, and robust as a Venus of Titian, she 
 was sensual as a Bacchante ; but capable of love and 
 of self-sacrifice. This was Mariana, the mistress of 
 the house in which Byron lodged ; a married woman 
 and the mother of a family, but ready to leave all 
 for the sake of the poet. Light affections have but 
 little sympathy for profound sentiments, which, even 
 when aware of weaknesses and defects in the beloved 
 object, consider them as an infirmity, worthy of 
 tender care and attention. Byron soon discovered 
 that Mariana was both violent and jealous. One 
 day, while he was sj)eaking to the sister-in-law of 
 Mariana, the latter came in and gave a blow to the 
 poor girl. Another time she sold a jewel which 
 Byron had given her, and which he purchased again, 
 in order to present it to her a second time. Love of 
 this kind is but of short duration, yet nothing is so 
 insatiable as pure love. Sensuality is neither satisfy- 
 ing nor constant. Pleasure, and pleasure only, means 
 disgust and weariness. In the purity and devotion 
 of a real affection, there is the assurance of eternal 
 love. The abyss of the heart can be filled only with 
 
134 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 the infinite. But the voracity of low desires is 
 quickly over. Byron soon left the house and the 
 lady, and went to reside in the Palace Moncenigo, 
 ahout the middle of the Grand Canal of Venice. 
 
 This was the scene of the adventures of Margherita 
 Cogni, the well-known Venetian haker. There are 
 some who have compared her to the Pornarina ; but 
 between the only love of Eaphael (or at least the pre- 
 ferred love), and this fancy of a few days — between 
 that fountain of inspiration, and this source of disgust 
 — there was an immense difference. In Venice there 
 are people of the lower class who sell oysters in 
 the market, and who nevertheless like to have their 
 ears soothed by the Italian translations of the poet, 
 and to listen to stories of his life. Margherita was a 
 woman of the people, in the bad sense of the word ; 
 a woman who could neither read nor write ; a woman 
 accustomed to tyrannize over her family almost in 
 public, who concealed neither a fold of her soul, nor 
 a throb of her heart, and consequently did not trouble 
 herself to put any restraint upon her actions. 
 
 Lord Byron sought with much anxiety a burial- 
 place among those lovely islands. Floating along in 
 his gondola, he went about the Venetian Archipelago 
 to choose a spot where to plant a willow-tree, of which 
 the branches, drooping over the waters, should be a 
 shadow for his tomb, erected under the azure sky of 
 the south, close to the Adriatic. But, as if wishing 
 to hasten his repose in the dreamless bed, he gave 
 himself up to the study of diiferent races, to the 
 
MARGHERITA. 135 
 
 plastic art, to the intoxicating songs of the Carnival, 
 to orgies without intermission. Often turning away 
 weary from a festival, he wandered among the tombs, 
 and met ]\Iargherita, who at this time exercised much 
 influence on his life. 
 
 The boiling Venetian blood flowed in her veins» 
 and excited her passions. She was tall, her shoulders 
 broad, and her arms robust ; her face was handsome 
 and her head vulgar ; her eyes seemed to consume like 
 a flaming fire. She loved almost to folly, but was 
 jealous to madness. She caressed Lord Byron, and 
 she maltreated him. She met him with the smile of 
 an angel, and she struck her nails into him with the 
 ferocity of a tigress. The golden pin with which she 
 confined her hair served her for a stiletto. She was a 
 woman to bring forth a race of gladiators. She might 
 have wrestled with any vigorous Englishman, and 
 have won the victory. Her peculiar eloquence was 
 interlarded with shameful expressions. Her ideas 
 were no clearer than those of a primitive savage. 
 Her passions were as ardent as a giant volcano in 
 eruption. Her character was formed b}^ the wind of 
 the lagunes, and her soul was opened by the soutbern 
 sun ; there was something grand in her whole being, 
 although it was a brutal grandeur. In the Palazzo 
 Moncenigo, Byron had collected horses, numbers of 
 cats and dogs, parrots and all kinds of birds, and this 
 woman ; like a Avild Eve, in a strange paradise, angry 
 with Adam, intoxicated with wine and pleasure. 
 
 But notwithstanding her ferocity, Byron deceived 
 
136 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 her. One day there was a terrible uproar. The parrots 
 uttered indescribable noises, the cats mewed, the dogs 
 barked, the furniture flew in pieces, the Venetian 
 mirrors strewed with a rain of little crystals the pave- 
 ment of the palace — everything was in commotion, as 
 if struck by a hurricane, or shaken by an earthquake. 
 It was caused by Margherita, who had encountered a 
 rival, and had with her a terrible battle, which was 
 sustained on both sides with vigour and heroism. 
 Imagine the fascination exercised by that powerfui 
 nature in the wasted frame of the poet, and his deep 
 disgust. Her glance put new fire in the cold blood 
 of those almost exhausted veins. Her violence and 
 her unexpected blows pleased him like a food tasted 
 for the first time. He laughed at the impassioned 
 letters, written by a public scrivener for a charge of 
 twelve sous apiece, and dictated by the baker's wife 
 on her return to the market with her basket on her 
 head. 
 
 One night, at a masked ball, Lord Byron gave his 
 arm to a lady of respectability, Signora Contarini ; 
 he was covered by a black domino, and quite concealed 
 by his mask. Margherita arrived, insulted the lady, 
 and with loud vociferations snatched away his mask. 
 On another occasion she quarrelled with her husband, 
 whose flesh she tore with her sharp nails. In the 
 middle of the night a loud knocking was heard at the 
 door of Byron's house, when every one was sleeping; 
 at the same time Margherita's husband appeared, and 
 
^' OF THE ^ 
 
 UNIVERSITY I 
 
 OF y 
 
 ^}^:l^^0^ THE LIDO. 137 
 
 demanded his wife. The police interfered, and the 
 woman was brought back by force to her forsaken 
 home. But she soon left it again, and took refuge in 
 the Palazzo Moncenigo, with her lover. 
 
 There she assumed the command of the household, 
 but she exercised her power in a most tyrannical 
 manner. She tried to copy the air of a great lady — 
 wore a splendid dress, a Parisian hat, costly jewels, 
 Flemish lace, and the train of a princess. And in 
 this costume, and wearing gloves, which greatly in- 
 commoded her, she would catch up a stout stick, and, 
 flinging about her arms, apply it all round, from the 
 dog's to the servants. It was wonderful that she 
 made an exception in favour of the master, though 
 nothing prevented her from reviling him. 
 
 Lord B}Ton was very fond of the Lido, and of 
 swimming in the Adriatic. He constantly rode past 
 that beautiful tongue of land which forms the Lido, 
 where the rich vegetation is watered by the sea. 
 When tired of being on horseback, he went to the 
 water, plunging into its depths like a skilful diver. 
 All over Venice he was, as we have said, called " the 
 English fish." One evening the sky became over- 
 cast, the wind arose, tossing about the waves, and 
 Byron was in the sea. Poor Margherita ran to the 
 feet of the Madonna, invoking all the saints, and pro- 
 mising masses, rosaries, and other offerings to the 
 heavens in a strange litany, now and then interrupted 
 by maledictions. When night approached, and the 
 
138 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 poet did not return, the woman remained as if petrified 
 on the marble steps which descended into the Grand 
 Canal, holding out her arms towards the sea, half dead 
 from anguish. But when he returned, she screamed, 
 cursed, and vociferated, saying, "Was this a time to 
 go to the Lido, dog of the Madonna !" 
 
 There was one advantage from the residence of 
 Margherita in the household — economy, though she 
 carried it to excess. She counted on her fingers, but 
 her arithmetic was always correct. Brought up in 
 the market of Venice, she knew the proper price of 
 everything; and as Byron had scarcely any appetite, 
 she bought very little food, often leaving the servants 
 hungry. They, being accustomed to the former mag- 
 nificence of their master, could not endure the strange 
 tyrant who condemned them to forced fasting. Thus 
 there was one plot among them after another to oblige 
 Lord Byron to dismiss her. This was not difficult, 
 for in the excited state of his mind he soon felt con- 
 tempt for the flower whose aroma he had once enjoyed. 
 In loves of this nature novelty is the sole attraction, 
 bat soon comes the sad conviction that there can be 
 nothing new in pleasure already exhausted. To the 
 irritable condition of the poet's mind, the domestic 
 machinations against Margherita caused much uneasi- 
 ness, and to these were added her own follies. She 
 intercepted his letters, and not knowing how to read, 
 she went to the first scrivener, and paid him to read 
 Byron's secrets for her. This, and the aversion which 
 
MARG MERITA'S FURY. 139 
 
 he now felt for her, made Byron decide on ridding 
 himself of Margherita. At the moment of departure 
 she flung herself in a fury, and seized a knife, as if 
 wishing to kill herself. They did not conduct 
 her to the gondola, but dragged her to it. There she 
 wrung: her hands, and roared like a lioness robbed of 
 her cubs, her eyes flashing fire. The night had been 
 chosen for the separation, in order to avoid as much 
 scandal as possible. Suddenly, on turning one of the 
 numerous corners, Margherita threw herself into the 
 water, notwithstanding the intense cold. Wet to the 
 skin and shivering, her long hair hanging on her 
 shoulders, her face deadly pale, her eyes wandering, 
 her lips livid and contracted, convulsive sobs bursting 
 from her bosom, she cast herself at the feet of her 
 lover, imploring pardon. But he was inexorable. 
 
 He had descended nearly to the bottom of the 
 abyss. In such a life it was easy to lose even con- 
 science. After such nights of dissipation reality was 
 more sad, and his heart more desolate. A great 
 change was essential, and this could only be effected 
 by love — a pure love. A beloved companion could 
 calm the tempest of his thoughts with her smile — 
 could purify his immoral life by her example. 
 Nothing is so chaste as a pure affection — it is alike 
 beneficial to the body and the spirit. To love de- 
 votedly, to fix one's heart on a pure-minded woman, 
 to watcli for her glance as for a star, to consider her 
 heart as a refuge, to blend two lives in one which 
 
I40 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 shall be like a reflection of Heaven — this would have 
 been safety to the poet, fallen into the mire of dissi- 
 pation. The struggles of Parliament, the glory of 
 poetry, the enthusiastic admiration of society, distant 
 voyages, and the sublime spectacles of nature — the 
 recollections of history in the places where great 
 scenes have been enacted — Greece with her antiquities, 
 England with her liberty, Spain with her tales of 
 romance, Switzerland with her mountains, Italy with 
 her works of art, and the East with her love-songs — 
 had not been able to satisfy the heart upon which 
 pleasure fell like a poison, and which, in the immen- 
 sity of its suffering, broke forth into poetry. His 
 passionate emotions could alone produce such a sar- 
 casm as " Don Juan." 
 
 The Countess Guiccioli, the pure love of the poet, 
 appeared at this juncture. What gave rise to this 
 passion ? I know not any definition of this love so 
 precise or so profound as that which the psycholo- 
 gical poet, par ■ excellence — Shakspeare — gives of the 
 love between Othello and Desdemona. Othello says, 
 
 " Slie loved me for the dangers I had passed, 
 And I loved her that she did pity them." 
 
 Teresa, as the beautiful Countess Guiccioli was 
 called, saw Lord Byron's sorrow in his face, and 
 resolved to redeem the poet, to snatch him from the 
 abyss, to rekindle inspiration in his soul, and love in 
 his heart — to strengthen him by virtue, and to crown 
 him by a glorious death. Byron was disgusted with 
 
THE COUNTESS GLTCCIOLL 141 
 
 life, and Teresa was scarcely acquainted -with it. 
 Educated in the gloom of the cloister, the notes of 
 the organ, the clouds of incense, the waxen tapers 
 burning at the feet of the Virgin, the litanies of the nuns 
 — all this had filled her mind with the poetry of the 
 convent, with that mystic and undefinable love which, 
 at the first contact with the world, is ready to change 
 into a violent passion when it meets with a suitable 
 object on which to fix itself. 
 
 Her parents had made her miserable. Consulting 
 neither her heart nor her inclination, they took her 
 from the convent to marry a wealthy old nobleman, 
 the Count Guiccioli. Teresa carried the romantic 
 exaltation of her early years, and the vague longing 
 for true love, into the arid soil of a manage de con- 
 venance. This sad position led her to seek consolation 
 in reading, particularly the poetry of her time. This 
 was the period when Madame de Stael and Monsieur 
 de Chateaubriand began to popularize in their works 
 the shallow loves and unhappy attachments which 
 amused that age, and from wdiich neither of them 
 dared to depart; they feared to adhere to the old 
 ideas and to follow the new; they cherished fantastic 
 delusions, which left on the heart their corrosive 
 venom. 
 
 Teresa read and re-read all these works ; her imagi- 
 nation became exalted ; she suffered ; she seemed in a 
 dream to converse with shadows, and wrote verses 
 addressed to these phantoms without form, to these 
 
142 LIFE OF LORD BYRON, 
 
 ideas, without reality and without object, that be- 
 witched her brain, ñlled with the most romantic 
 inspirations. Her hero, the hero of her girhsh fancy, 
 the hero born in the convent, and secretly nurtured 
 in the reality of a cold and cheerless marriage, the 
 ideal hero becoming more real every day as her de- 
 lirium increased — thanks to unceasing and injurious 
 reading — this extraordinary person did not exist, or if 
 he existed, he was Lord Byron — the only one capable 
 of kindling reality with the light of poetry. 
 
 Teresa and Byron were both in Venice at the 
 same time, and did not know each other. Teresa 
 infirm of mind, and Byron infirm of mind and body ; 
 the one eighteen years old, on the threshold of life, 
 the other worn out with dissipation, and, though still 
 young, on the borders of the grave. In 1818 Byroa 
 first saw her, but did not then understand her. She 
 was with her husband, to whom she had not been 
 lono" married, and to Byron she appeared at that time 
 to be one of those numerous women who please the 
 eye for a moment, but who say nothing to the heart. 
 Durin<^ the spring of 1819 they met one night at the 
 house of the Countess Albrizzi, whom Lord Byron 
 called the Stael of Italy. They were both present 
 ao>ainst their wish. Teresa was weary of festivities, 
 and Byron was tired of women. The Count Guiccioli 
 was annoyed because Teresa was at the ball, and the 
 Countess Albrizzi almost forced Byron to be pre- 
 sented to Teresa. They saw and loved each other. 
 
THE COUXT GUICCIOLI. 143 
 
 A mutual glance was sufficient to make those two 
 souls understand each other, and to unite them for 
 ever, neither of them ever remembered which said 
 the first word, or made the first declaration. They 
 were two halves of one soul. Byron, amidst all his 
 vices, had searched for Teresa ; and Teresa, through 
 all her dreams, had sought for Byron. They met hke 
 two shipwrecked creatures tossed by the same wave ; 
 they met without any hope of making their love 
 lawful ; she, wedded to a wealthy old miser, and he 
 to a most intolerant Protestant, who had made them 
 mutually miserable — like two cold brazen walls be- 
 tween two hearts of fire. They passed over these 
 barriers for the sake of each other. 
 
 Nothing is more dispiriting than living with a 
 woman who is always melancholy and despondino-. 
 Many biographers assert that the Count favoured the 
 love of Byron for his wife. I never wish to blacken 
 human nature when I can discover any rational motive 
 for actions that at first sight appear inexplicable. 
 Probably the Count observed that his wife's melan- 
 choly departed with the presence of the poet. And 
 he might also attribute this preference to their mutual 
 love of literature. Delighted to see dissipated a sad- 
 ness which darkened his own life, he was, at first, an 
 innocent accomplice in his own calamity. 
 
 But very quickly he became aware of the real state 
 of the case, and he endeavoured to separate the lovers; 
 but separation, which is a remedy for passing fancies, 
 
144 LIFE OF LORD B YRON. 
 
 is but a stimulant for deep sentiments. The Count 
 quitted Venice, and went with his wife to Eavenna. 
 Her thoughts were continuall}^ with Byron, and she 
 was unable to bear up under the sadness of absence. 
 She became alarmingly ill, and Byron hastened to 
 Eavenna — being summoned to her side, for she was 
 believed to be djdng. On the 8th of June, 1819, he 
 was standing by the bedside of this woman, who was 
 dying of love. On seeing him enter, Teresa revived, 
 as the tender violet expands at the kiss of April. All 
 her physicians agreed that there was no cure for a 
 malady of sadness and languor. The presence of the 
 poet was enough to bring back the colour to her cold 
 cheeks, the light to her eyes, already closing in death. 
 That same day Teresa was able to go into the garden, 
 and leaning on the arm of the poet, under the waving 
 branches of the pines, amongst the bay-trees and 
 myrtles, she spoke of her recollections and of her 
 hopes. 
 
 But the health of Teresa was only re-established 
 at the cost of the Count's happiness. Though Italian 
 manners at that period were extremely lax, it is at all 
 times scandalous to see a husband accompanied by 
 his wife, leaning on the arm of her lover. Guiccioli 
 once took a dagger, intending to stab Byron, who was 
 reading " Corinne" to the Countess under the trees. 
 But his own irresolution, and the composure of his 
 rival, disarmed him. The Count, with difficulty, 
 resigned himself to his part in society, which, though 
 
HIS LETTER TO TERESA. 145 
 
 tolerating evils of this nature, always punished them 
 by malignant glances and whispered observations. 
 
 Byron spoke of an elopement, and Teresa recalled 
 the expedient of Juliet, who, clothed in the costume 
 of the grave, took a narcotic, shut herself up in the 
 family vault, and waited till her lover should, with a 
 look or a kiss sent through the grating, convert the 
 funeral pantheon into a paradise. But notwithstand- 
 ing the romantic nature of Byron, he wished to show 
 his affection in society, in the light of day, in the 
 glitter of the world as well as in the bosom of IS^ature ; 
 as a thing to be proud of, as a virtue in a life till then 
 given up to vices, and henceforth fixed in one passion 
 chiefly nourished by S3'mpathies of mind and simi- 
 larity of taste for intellectual pleasures. 
 
 It is touching to read the lines written by Lord 
 Byron on a blank leaf of the volume of "Corinne," 
 which Teresa left in forgetfulness in a garden in 
 Bologna. That simple love of the heart compared to 
 the hyperbolical love mentioned in tlie book, appears 
 as a lily of the field beside a false flower. He says — 
 
 "Amor mio, — How sweet is this word in 3'our Italian 
 lano-uage ! In a book belonging to you I can write of 
 nothing but my love. In this expression, ' Amor mio,' 
 is comprised my whole existence. I know now that I 
 live, and I fear the future. You will decide my 
 destiny : my fate is in your hands ; you who are but 
 eighteen years old, and who but two years ago quitted 
 the seclusion of the convent. Oh ! if the heavens had 
 
 10 
 
146 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 but given you to me tlien ; or, if I liad never seen 
 you married ! now it is too late. I love you, and 
 you love me — at least, you appear to love me. 
 This will be — no matter what comes — a consolation. 
 Doubtless it is I who love the most, I who can never 
 cease to love. Think of me sometimes, when the sea 
 and the Alps divide us ; but this cannot happen, at 
 least, not unless you command it." 
 
 And after having written this letter, as if he under- 
 stood that being is defined by a comparison with 
 nothingness, and that love from its melancholy is allied 
 to death, he went to visit the cemetery, to study the 
 dreams of the dead in the silence of graves, and the 
 grief of the living in the inscriptions on the tombs. 
 
 Eventually the Count Guiccioli retired, although 
 accidentally, from his house, and left the lovers to- 
 gether. From Bologna they set out for Venice — for 
 the country part of Venice ; to one of those beautiful 
 and distant houses from whence can be seen the Alps 
 and the Adriatic, and between the Alps and the 
 Adriatic, Venice, like an immense fleet of crystal and 
 coral. There Teresa inspired Byron, being at the 
 same time the muse of love and the muse of Italy. 
 There, with her natural eloquence, she described to 
 him the shadow of the past, the hopes of the future, 
 and the sadness of the present. There she inspired 
 him by her smiles and by her tears with prophetic 
 ideas of the restoration of Italy, realized in our days 
 and before our sight as a miracle of the faith of this 
 
SPANISH MORALITY. 147 
 
 age. There she purified him from ephemeral pas- 
 sions, leaving the only passion of true love. She 
 withdrew him from orgies and extravagances which 
 exhausted him, teaching him to employ his nervous 
 activity more usefully in the study of humanity and 
 in the struggle for the people's independence. 
 
 So much happiness could not continue, considering 
 the delicate and difficult position of Teresa's husband, 
 Count Guiccioli. I acknowledge with all the writers 
 of that period, that Italy was then indulgent, too in- 
 dulgent, to breaches of fidelity in married life. What 
 I positively cannot admit with these writers is that 
 the Italians learned this toleration from the Spaniards. 
 " The healer of his ovm honour; for a private wrovg, 
 a secret vengeance,''' is a saying which, teaches all ages 
 the horror with which crimes of this sort inspire the 
 Spaniards. Where the Tetrarcli of Jerusalem was 
 born, there is no room for the Sigisceo of Italy. But 
 notwithstanding Italian toleration, everybody in the 
 case of which I am writing should have been on the 
 side of the husband. Count Guiccioli, blinded by his 
 ruling passion, avarice, forced public opinion to go 
 against him. In the first place, the journey of Teresa 
 and Lord Byron to Venice was made with his consent. 
 Afterwards he wished to constitute himself the agent 
 for receiving the money of the poet, in order to gain 
 in gold what he had lost in honour. In the end came 
 the proceedings for divorce. After the action for 
 divorce, which was lost by the Count, there came a 
 
 10—2 
 
148 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 Pontifical brief pronouncing the separation. Teresa 
 joyfully abandoned her palaces, her equipages, society 
 and riches for the love of the poet. 
 
 About this time Teresa's family were exiled. Her 
 father, Count Uamba, belonged to those powerful pro- 
 vincial Eoraans who may be called the Aragonese of 
 Italy. The love of liberty and of country which 
 prevailed in this family received the common reward 
 of such affections — exile. The Gamba family, to 
 which Teresa returned after her legal widowhood, took 
 refuge in sweet Tuscany, in the solitary town of Pisa, 
 in that convent city, in that cemetery city, so con- 
 genial to great sadness. Lord Byron was also there. 
 
 The chief merit of Teresa was that her love for the 
 poet was not egotistical. She loved his glory more 
 than his person, and more than his glory his virtue. 
 She restored and elevated him, drew him out of the 
 mire, and placed the crown of purity on his brow. 
 And then, when she had recovered this great heart, 
 instead of keeping it all for herself, she gave it to 
 humanity. She perceived that Byron did not belong 
 solely to the order of men who are thinkers, but also 
 that he was one of those capable of action. He was 
 indeed a Grecian hero by virtue of his statuesque 
 features, a Northern poet in right of his lofty senti- 
 ments ; in one hand he bore the lyre, and in the other 
 the sword. Instead of withdrawing him from exalted 
 thoughts and actions, and confining him within the 
 narrow sphere of worldly pleasures, she showed this 
 
GREECE AND ITALY. 149 
 
 Achilles tlie field of battle, and told him it would be 
 more worthy of his heart and his head to struggle for 
 the rights of the people. She preferred to unite his 
 soul with hers on the altars of sacrifice, to the enjoy- 
 ment of vain and idle pleasures, and all the satisfac- 
 tions of self-love and of pride. Teresa awakened in 
 the bosom of Lord Byron the love of virtue and the 
 love of glory which he had so often depreciated and 
 cursed. She taught him to love Greece and Italy — 
 those nations whose men of genius shall be for ever 
 counted amono- the ^reat ones of the world. In fine, 
 she showed him how to die. And teaching him 
 to die for many, instead of living for himself alone, 
 she secured to his name the most glorious of trans- 
 formations, martyrdom, and to his immortality the 
 noblest of all temples — the heart of the people. 
 Teresa would have been herself immortal like Heloise, 
 like Isabel of Segura, like Sappho, if she had pre- 
 served for ever, under the pines of Italy, by the shores 
 of the Arno, the glorious widowhood of the love of 
 Byron. At twenty she was one of the muses, and at 
 sixty-eight she was a wealthy old marchioness who 
 flimg an ill-considered book upon the poet's grave. 
 
 We now approach the end of Lord Byron's career. 
 Here we conclude his life and begin his death. Here 
 the frozen clay of error falls ofi" melted by the fire 
 of faith, and the wings of his soul expand to their 
 utmost extension. Henceforth his life becomes a 
 poem, the poet a hero, the sepulchre an altar, and 
 
I50 LIFE OF L0RD BYRON. 
 
 deatli, immortality ! Here lie bade farewell to the 
 woman so fondly beloved, and betrothed himself to 
 liberty, the eternal spouse of great souls, the fruitful 
 mother of heroes. Here all the clouds which over- 
 shadowed him evaporate, all his vices are forgotten, 
 his doubts are dispersed, his passions have departed, 
 and the hare-brained trifler of London, and the liber- 
 tine of Venice, and the despairing poet, is transformed 
 into one of the martyrs of humanity, redeeming the 
 errors of his life by the holocaust of his death. Many 
 knew how to live better than this man, but few die 
 like him, in travel undertaken in defence of liberty, in 
 a struggle for Grrecian independence, at the feet of 
 that ideal nation, that mother of the arts, the true 
 country of his soul, which will for ever name hiui 
 with Homer, ^schylus, Pindar, Miltiades, and Aris- 
 tides ; those men who are the stars of the horizon 
 of time — Greece will eternally count Byron among 
 her poets and her heroes ! 
 
 The leaves of Lord Byron's life were sadly falling. 
 His daughter, Allegra, a child born in trouble, died at 
 the age of five years. The poet orderedher grave to be 
 made upon the hill of Harrow, on which he had written \ 
 
 his first verses, and had received the pleasant kiss of 
 the pure country breezes. Shelley, the metaphysical 
 poet, like Byron, exiled from his native country, and like 
 him wandering through the world, had just died in a 
 terrible tempest, less stormy than his own perturbed 
 imagination. Bvron took his body and burned it on 
 
Lf^RTY. 151 
 
 a grand funeral pile, upon the sterile sand, on tlie 
 sea-shore ; throwing into that burnt sacrifice q^uan- 
 tities of incense, which mounted in a cloud of smoke 
 to the heavens, like an offering of aspirations and ef 
 orisons, bearing with it the spirit of a poet who be- 
 lieved the heavens to be a vacuum, and always 
 denied that from the body of flesh which perishes 
 could proceed a life lasting for eternity. 
 
 What remained for Byron ? To die also, but to 
 die for an idea, to perish for the faith of his epoch. 
 In the midst of the silence imposed by the Holy 
 Alliance upon Europe, the voice of a people arose 
 demanding liberty. That heroic people was the 
 Spanish nation, the same which ten years before had 
 showed all others how to fight for independence. The 
 voice of Spain had penetrated two sepulchres, that of 
 Greece and that of Italy. The three peninsulas of the 
 Mediterranean, the peninsula of men of genius, the 
 peninsula of warriors, and the peninsula of navi- 
 gators arose at the first whisper of liberty, as if to 
 renew those paradisiacal and historic times, in which 
 the most illustrious citizens lived like a choir of 
 priestesses and muses, illuminating the human con- 
 science with their own light, and tilling the air with 
 their canticles. 
 
 But aU these hopes were fleeting as dreams. Upon 
 Spain fell the misery of the French intervention, and 
 upon Italy that of Austria. The people of Grreece 
 alone remained standing — the men of Thermopylae 
 
152 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 and of Platea, tliose who taught letters to huma- 
 nity, those that have flung the silken cord of the 
 arts around all nations, who have sculptured the 
 human form in its severe heauty, who have revealed 
 the conscience with Socrates, and who still preserve 
 in the ashes of ruin all the warmth of poetic inspi- 
 ration. 
 
 Lord Byron, wdio went over Greece, musing upon 
 the laurels of Apollo on the borders of her rivers, the 
 choir of priestesses of Dodona, the shores of Cephis- 
 sus in the plains consecrated by the traces of Demos- 
 thenes and Plato, the ruined Acropolis where had 
 been converted into shadows the statues of Phidias, 
 the heights ofHybla and of Hymettus, crowned eter- 
 nally by the gods — Byron did not alone meet in that 
 country the recollections which arise like bright in- 
 sects in swarms from the scattered ruins, but he also 
 found powerful races, in whose classic features shone 
 the reflection of ancient inspiration, and whose 
 nervous hands could wield the arms of Epaminoudas 
 and Themistocles ; people heroically determined to 
 sacrifice themselves upon the sepulchre of their fathers, 
 sooner than endure longer to see all their glory dis- 
 honoured in the chains of infamy forged by Turkey 
 for their country, the country of heroic deeds, for 
 their mother, also the mother of genius. 
 
 Let us reflect. Byron was rich, and he renounced 
 his riches; beloved, and he forsook her whom he 
 adored ; a poet, and he laid down his harp young, 
 
GRECIAN INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 and he stifled his passions ; crowned by his genius, and 
 he withdrew from glory : he left all these and went 
 to fiofht and to die for one of the most righteous 
 causes of humanity — the cause of Grecian inde- 
 pendence. While in Italy, on the shores of the 
 Tyrrhene Sea, ucder the shadow of the pine trees, 
 breathing the aroma of orange flowers, beholding the 
 wondrous works of art, in which he learned the per- 
 fection of his style, beloved by a woman who in herself 
 united beauty and talent, he might have let his days 
 run on in contented serenity, singing like a bird near 
 his new nest, in that garden of happiness. 
 
 But no ! He preferred the fight, the stormy sea, 
 the harshness of winds and waters, the field of battle, 
 the shedding of blood, the miasma of pestilence, death 
 for his brothers, a sacrifice for humanity ! Believe in 
 his scepticism, you people of commercial England, you 
 who cursed him, you who, crammed with beefsteak 
 and drunken with beer, belch forth, as Sancho 
 observed, the vapours of your digestion upon the 
 aureole of genius ! His life was evil to you, to whom 
 moral egotism is so easy because you are devoid of 
 passions, and to you a sterile Protestant faith is 
 natural, for you have no imagination. Fliug him from 
 you as unworthy of England, and he will arise with 
 his sword and his lyre, will traverse the divine shores 
 whence sprung the arts, will convert the great among 
 his countrymen, will go to die for Greece, and will 
 have for country all humanity ! 
 
154 I^IFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 We shall sum up his works in a final observation, 
 the climax of this poor history consecrated to one of 
 those men of genius whose writings have given us 
 the most consolation in our sorrow. It was in the 
 month of April, and the day after Easter Sunday. 
 Nature revived with the butterflies, with the lengthen- 
 ing days, with the gentle warmth so delicious in the 
 spring of southern climates. The Church chanted 
 the resurrection of the Saviour. B3^ron foresaw the 
 resuscitation of Greece. Doubtless the struggle, the 
 uncertainty, the clashing against life's impure realities 
 which wore out his soul, the trouble, the pestilential 
 miasma consequent upon the war, exhausted him and 
 made him bend and fall upon the banner of liberty in 
 which he had wrapped himself to die like Cato or like 
 Brutus — under the shadow of the republic. He was 
 scarcely six-and-thirty years old. He .bent before 
 death like a tree loaded with fruit and flowers. It 
 was a lovely morning, and the sun darted his first rays 
 among the last dewdrops, and the birds intoned their 
 chorus, as if Nature consecrated a hymn to the poet's 
 victory. In his delirium he fancied he scaled the walls 
 of Lepanto, and in reality he surmounted those of 
 eternity. He said, " Farewell ! farewell !" as if losing 
 himself on other shores ; and his last word was " Fare- 
 well !" as if consoling his weeping soldiers and his 
 afflicted friends, assuring them of the continuation of 
 his life in other lands. 
 
HIS DEA TH. 
 
 155 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 i FTEE having thus reviewed the life of Lord 
 ■^-^ Byron, let us pause a moment and contemplate 
 this marvellous genius in his connexion with others. 
 As there never was in the world a poet so independent 
 and individual, so never did any life contribute to 
 unfold a character, nor a character to unfold a litera- 
 ture, like that of this noble Englishman, born for 
 happiness and tormented by so many calamities. I 
 do not believe that genius is solely composed of nerves 
 and of blood, of the sap which it absorbs from the 
 earth where it is born, of the sun which illumines 
 and fertilizes its brain. Genius is, above all, a powerful 
 interior individuality, with innate faculties, elevated 
 and enlarged by study and by the clashing of life with 
 a great power : genius is a spiritual creator. All true 
 artists, whatsoever their class and condition, have the 
 wonderful faculty of thinking and of embodying their 
 thoughts ; the lively fancy which impels them to a 
 work as long as the labour of the creative forces of 
 Nature ; the profound capacity for analysis, which 
 makes their ideas like a microscope, with which the 
 
156 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 most minute objects are visible to tliem, though, 
 hidden from the vulgar; the investigating exami- 
 nation which lightens up the most distant object in 
 space as with a telescope ; besides that exquisite sensi- 
 bility by which, in the kindling furnace of the heart, 
 is easily mingled both joy and sorrow. 
 
 Few men have possessed these great faculties in 
 such a large degree as Byron. He raised himself at 
 one flight to the most sublime regions of the spirit, 
 in which all appeared to him expanded and glorified. 
 He descends with an observation acute enough to 
 enable him to relate the smallest peculiarities of life, 
 and to discover the almost imperceptible touches of 
 light and shadow in the universe. He experienced 
 the invincible necessity of producing, of creating, of 
 scattering his writings with the same reckless gene- 
 rosity with which the star pours forth its light, and 
 the nightingale her canticles. He had, above all and 
 before all, sensibility, that extreme susceptibility which 
 is moved and ruffled at the lightest breath, that changes 
 its shades at the least reflection of light, that foresees 
 the future in the universe and in society, and which, 
 being one of the choicest gifts of Nature, is also one 
 of the greatest torments of existence. 
 
 But if he possessed this first and most essential 
 quality of genius — sensibility — he certainly had also 
 those peculiarities of his race, which were to his 
 character as necessary and fundamental as colour to a 
 drawing. The fierv Norman blood flowed wildly in 
 
HIS MENTAL CONDITION. 157 
 
 his veins, Eestlessness was his habitual condition. 
 When lie did not meet with actual troubles in life he 
 formed them in his own mind. When action did not 
 offer him sufficiently violent emotions he sought them 
 in his passions, and if he could not invoke them b}^ 
 his passions he had recourse to his imagination It 
 was a necessity for him to live upon the brink of an 
 abyss, to stand on a tottering pedestal, over a boiling 
 and foaming wave, lashed by the hurricane and stricken 
 by the lightning flashes. His imagination was his 
 continual torture. A darkness which seemed eternal 
 fell upon his soul, so that at times he saw evil in every- 
 thing. He believed himself desolate, and that which 
 appeared the most evil and the most abandoned was 
 himself; hence that irritability, those doubts, those 
 strange contrasts, a fragment of Heaven appearing at 
 the sight of a group of pine- shaped clouds, a suppli- 
 cation coming after a blasphemy, as the soft breeze 
 after the hurricane. 
 
 But he was not only Norman by the race from 
 whence he sprung, but English, perfectly English 
 as the nation in which he was born. AVhat is the 
 peculiar characteristic of the English people ? Per- 
 sonality, individuality. The Englishman insists that 
 the entirety and totality of his person shall be legally 
 sacred, that his house shall be a safe refuge from all 
 his fellows ; that his own conscience shall be the only 
 medium between time and eternity, between the earth 
 and the heavens ; that his property shall be his stand- 
 
158 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 point, and tliat his life shall unfold itself at his own 
 cost and risk, thanks to the spur of his activity, ex- 
 citing his inclinations and feeding the fierceness con- 
 tained in the principle of his own responsibility. 
 Byron, above all men, had a distinct personality. 
 "Whatever impeded the growth, the unfolding of this 
 individuality irritated and wounded him ; faith, laws, 
 customs, limits of nationality, prejudices of race. He 
 desired to live alone with his own conscience, 
 his own reflections, and the imaginings of his own 
 spirit thundering like a god, and almost expect- 
 ing to see natural laws bend before his omnipotent 
 liberty of will. No people ever hated a man as the 
 British people hated Bja-on ; and yet no race was 
 ever more faithfully represented in its characteristic 
 qualities, and, above all, in its haughty individuality, 
 than the English people were represented by Byron. \ 
 But with the Northern and essentially English 
 qualities of which I have spoken, Byron had others 
 which were entirely Southern. Our sun had poured 
 forth his rays on that spirit of the poet, had imprinted 
 on him his fiery seal. His was a British personality 
 wrought in the marble of Paros, under whose seeming 
 immobility the embers of divine warmth were con- 
 cealed. Over these stones waved the red flowers of 
 the oleander, on the borders of torrents, as if to 
 crown him with laurels. 
 
 The combination of different qualities explains the 
 rapid changes in Byron's style, and the formidable 
 
LOVE OF EXCITEMENT. 159 
 
 antithesis of his thoughts. But at the same time, it 
 explains his culminating faculty — the quickest, in- 
 tensest, and most imperious — sensibility. He was 
 totally without the British phlegm. An emotion 
 passed so forcibly through his whole being as to 
 leave behind a burning scar. It appeared as if the 
 social world only com.municated with hiin by means 
 of heated irons, whose contact made him groan, howl 
 like one in torture, writhe and foam like one seized 
 with epilepsy. Light does not so cruelly hurt the 
 eyes which have but just recovered their sight as 
 the society of his time wounded Byron. 
 
 Yet he, nevertheless, loved these emotions. He 
 believed that to live was to feel everything, to ex- 
 perience everything ; to pass through the different 
 gradations of the warmth of universal life ; to plunge 
 heavily in the depth of the ocean like the fishes, to 
 scale the snowy peaks like the eagles, to roll 
 among the dry leaves of autumn, to trample on 
 the snows of winter, to languish under the burning 
 sun of summer, to hover like the butterfly among the 
 spring flowers, to be a pilgrim wandering continually 
 from the Alhambra to the Vatican, from the Vati- 
 can to the Parthenon, from the Parthenon to the 
 Pyramids ; to be the orator who wrestles in the 
 tribune, and the brawler who fights in the streets ; 
 to be the aristocrat, the noble who rejoices in the 
 remembrance of his blazonings, and in the pride of 
 his long descent, and the democrat, the man of the 
 
1 6o LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 people who protests against all tyrannies, and demands 
 complete liberty ; to be by turns a cenobite and an 
 epicure, cliaste and voluptuous ; sceptical and believ- 
 ing ; a criminal and an apostle ; an enemy of huma- 
 nity and a philanthropist ; an angel and a demon ; 
 as if his spirit embraced all things and all ideas ; as 
 if his being was the abstract of all life, his persona- 
 lity the protagonist of the grand scene of the 
 Universe, of the great tragedy of history. 
 / He had also another remarkable quality, he referred 
 the entire world to himself. The great power of cer- 
 tain men of genius to oppose their ideas and their 
 sensations was never shared by Lord Bja'on. He 
 sung what he felt ; the cloud passing over his con- 
 science, the spark touching the harp of his nerves, 
 the love of his heart, the doubt of his mind, the 
 hope of attaining his wishes, according to the state of 
 his health, of happiness, of pleasure, of sorrow, expe- 
 rienced in his life which was his poem. From hence, 
 as Henri Taine has justly observed in his admirable 
 work, " The History of English Literature," the 
 monotony, the uniformity of his characters, who are 
 all of them touched with the same infirmity as the 
 poet. But from this, also, arises the lively colouring, 
 the force of expression, the marvellous aroma of sen- 
 timent, the vigorous reality which breaks forth in 
 Byron's verses, reproducing all the being of the poet in 
 each one of those cadences, which exhibit the beatings 
 of his heart. And nothing so much attracts us — the 
 
A SYMBOL OF HIS EPOCH. -r6i 
 
 cliildreu of an age of over-excited sensibilities— nothing 
 so much attracts us as the pulses of a vivid existence. 
 
 And being thus sensitive, few men are so symbo- 
 lical, few better reflect their epoch. For what was 
 the condition of thought in those first years of this 
 century, which are represented in the works of Lord \ 
 Byron? Uncertainty. We had flung aside the old 
 beliefs, and had not yet adopted the new. "We had 
 passed from liberty to reaction, and from reaction to 
 liberty, by rapid changes. The Eevolution had com- 
 pleted the ruin of a society, and upon these ruins 
 arose the spectre, the skeleton, of the Middle Ages, 
 with the Imperial crown upon its brow, asking for 
 vengeance and for conquests. The people, in their 
 trouble, desired to unite and to mingle all — religion 
 and philosophy, democracy and aristocracy, ancient ( 
 authority and modern constitutions — in the Pandemo- 
 nium of eclecticism and of dogma. The spirit without 
 faith complained of its sterility to the heavens, and 
 wrestled in the coils of the serpent — Doubt. 
 
 From one extremity of Europe to the other there 
 vibrated an incomprehensible genius, which rose from 
 the lowest to the highest, raising a tempest of troubles, 
 which only served to increase the darkness ; a genius, 
 now sombre, now flashing ; from one side, Eobespierre ^^ 
 with his cannon upsetting kings and estabhshing \ 
 despotically the Social Contract with the people; 
 while, on the other side, Charles the Great, anointed 
 by the Pope, surrounded by a horrible mihtary 
 
 11 
 
i62 LIFE OF LORD BY RON. 
 
 feudalism, re-erecting tlirones and privileges, recon- 
 stituting the ancient Holy Roman Empire. The 
 heavens which La Place beheld full of worlds, but 
 void of spirits, were re-peopled by Chateaubriand with 
 angels of talc, whose lips bore not the ancient simple 
 litany, but tlie maxims of a rhetorical academy. 
 English liberty placed itself at the service of the 
 Holy Alliance. He who dug the grave of Poland, 
 half-mad and half-enlightened, imagined himself the 
 Baptist of universal liberty, and died of rage and 
 ambition, without knowing where to go, or what to 
 do with his hundred millions of serfs. Despots 
 invoked the blessing of the Holy Trinity upon the 
 scaffolds of Hungary, of Venice, of Milan, of Naples, 
 of the divine and beautiful Greece, given over to the 
 Grand Turk to satisfy his love of power and of 
 pleasure. All the northern kings promised liberty 
 when they required the blood of the people, and all 
 forgot liberty as soon as the generous blood had pro- 
 duced the day of Waterloo. Literature waned, like 
 everything else, in this universal uprooting, for 
 literature is highly sensitive, and represents the 
 times better than any other social element. It no 
 longer knew whence to draw its inspirations. The 
 fountain of Helicon, which had fertilized the repub- 
 lican spirits of the ancient world, was cursed in the 
 name of liberty ; and Gothic castles, which had beheld 
 serfs trampled in the dust, were rebuilt in the name 
 of liberty; while, at the same time, there passed 
 
A SYMBOL OF HIS EPOCH. 163 
 
 througli the dry bones of the martyrs of liberty, in 
 Greece, in Italy, and in Spain, the galvanic action of 
 rapid revolutions. 
 
 Where shall we seek for the representative of this 
 moral crisis ? Who shall be the Dante of this 
 Inferno, in which circles of fire are entwined with 
 circles of ice? Lord Byron. Eead his poems, and 
 there we shall find the embodiment of the spirit of 
 the age. It seems as if the distracted spirit of his 
 time had brought him its troubles, between insane 
 laughter and heart-broken sobs ; between supplications 
 and blasphemies; between the accents of sublimity 
 and the indecencies of bufibonery ; sometimes intoxi- 
 cated with grand conceptions, and sometimes drunk 
 with wine ; with the cruel tortures which are always 
 produced by the vacillations of doubt and uncer- 
 tainty. 
 
 No one has ever expressed the circumstances of his 
 time so plainly as Lord Byron, who simply described 
 the condition of his own mind. Enclosed in his own 
 independent individuality, impatient of every yoke, 
 incapable of bringing his soul to the direction of 
 thoughts which did not proceed, from his own con- 
 science, he believed that in the bosom of his being was 
 found the principle of his life, of that which could 
 raise him above men, to breathe and live in a freer air, 
 carry his imagination by a supreme effort far from 
 humanity, there to remain immovable as in his centre 
 of gravity in the immense heavens which he beheld full 
 
 11—2 
 
i'64 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 of hope, peopled and re-peopled with the light of his 
 ideas, transforming himself in the infinite as the cold 
 iron is transformed by the contact of fire into a 
 burning mass ; but the mortal clay repressed his 
 flight, and then, turning against himself, he dashed 
 against the confines of his narrow cell as a prisoner 
 bird against its cage, kindling his blood with the 
 violence of his maledictions, striking his claws into 
 his bosom to tear out his heart, and changing himself 
 into a melancholy shadow, like an angel who, with 
 his harp in his hands before the Creator, when the 
 worlds spring forth into being in the immensity of 
 space, should suddenly find himself alone, dumb, 
 exiled, his wings clipped under a funeral shroud of 
 thick darkness in a deserted planet of ice. 
 
 There is no tragedy comparable to the tragedy of 
 Byron's own heart. We must ascend to Jeremiah to 
 meet in universal literature a poet who could like him 
 send his voice from the tombs, repeat like him the elegy 
 of ruin. The sorrow of Thamo, the pilot of Plutarch, 
 in whose ears the god Pan murmured his agony by 
 the Cape Miseno, was less poetical, less profound than 
 the grief of Byron on crossing the shores of Grreece, 
 and beholding her forsaken of the gods, and peopled 
 by slaves. Foscari could not love Venice as Byron 
 loved her, could not feel the lamentation of the weep- 
 ing Adriatic lagune as lie felt and repeated it, when 
 beside the Palace of the Doges, and the historic and 
 sombre Bridge of Sighs, raised like a catafal(jue 
 
HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS. 165 
 
 over the silent canal whose dark green waters flow 
 beneath the city, resembling the outline of a corpse. 
 He wept as the Eoman tribunes wept over Eome's deso- 
 lation. Of ideas he knew but the shadows, of history 
 he felt but the catastrophes of life, he tasted but the 
 bitterness. Our doubts, our sorrows, he touched so 
 pathetically that our hearts overflow at seeing each 
 day more distant the liberty of our soil, more narrow 
 the road of progress, more Utopian our noble aspira- 
 tions towards virtue ; this disenchantment of thousands 
 of men who wished to raise an altar for their theories, 
 and have but erected a scaflbld for themselves, who 
 wished to extend their country throughout the uni- 
 verse, and have only attained exile, that sharp pain 
 like a poignard in all great European reformers, has 
 had its poet in this genius of disenchantment. 
 
 It is true that his position and his family honours 
 contributed much to his success, that is, his hereditary 
 dignity, his nobility, and his seat in the House of 
 Peers. But it is also true that he made his own 
 sorrows those of his age. His was a strange history 
 and genealogy. His uncle had killed one of his rela- 
 tives. His father stole his first wife and deceived his 
 second, the mother of Lord Byron. She died of a 
 stroke of apoplexy, brought on by a fit of passion. 
 The friends to whom the poet had given his first 
 aflections all died young, desolating his youth. The 
 woman for whom he felt his earliest love married 
 another, and the recollection of this childish passion 
 
l66 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 ■filled his heart with bitterness. He scarcely met, on 
 the day that he first entered the House of Lords, any 
 one to receive him and to welcome his rising glory. 
 Criticism was severe upon him. He set out on his 
 travels, and the ruin of his estates obliged him to 
 return again to his country. He became enamoured 
 of a celebrated authoress, and this love was to him a 
 fountain of disgrace and of calamity. He married, 
 and his wife abandoned him. He had a daughter, and 
 this daughter grew up, and was educated far from the 
 heart and the influence of her father. He had a 
 country which should have counted him her pride and 
 glory, and his country cursed him. In Italy he Í 
 became transformed by the ardent kisses of her sun ; | 
 he felt the duty and the necessity of action, took ship { 
 and went to help Greece in her struggle for liberty, 
 and, scarcely arrived there, he died ! 
 
 Can anything be more sad than this history ? This 
 man is like some hero of antiquity, condemned from 
 birth by a cruel fatality. He resembles one of the 
 gladiators of old brought from the Grecian mountains, 
 young and beautiful, with his soul full of poetic fire, 
 and his body a model for the sculptor, distinguished 
 by emperors, caressed by the Eoman ladies, and yet 
 whose destiny it is to divert the people for a day with 
 his death agony between the claws and the teeth of a 
 wild beast ! In vain try to evade the fatality which 
 pursued him, in vain try to fly from his torments and 
 his sadness, like Orestes from the Eumenides. The 
 
HIS MISFORTUNES. 167 
 
 earth is his scaffold, life is his torture, inspiration is a 
 crown of fire, love is an insupportable chain ; each 
 literary jewel which issues from his hands turns against 
 him ; each day brings him a new trouble, every good 
 action turns to a thorn piercing his heart ; his mother 
 treats him with bitterness, his country with abhorrence ; 
 his own friends calumniate him, his own wife refused 
 him her tenderness ; and after having travelled through 
 Europe, and having expended fruitlessly the emotions 
 of his life, he met no other balm for his griefs than a 
 death drank from the cup of heroes, a death at thirty- 
 six, which resembles a noble suicide ! 
 
 Lord Byron cultivated the three kinds of poetry : 
 the lyric, the dramatic, and not to say the epic, I will 
 say, the poem which is really distinct from the epopee. 
 But as his character is eminently subjective, as his 
 personages are all emanations of his own spirit, 
 formed by the exhalations of the sentiments which 
 battled in the ocean of bis heart ; his poetry, the 
 poetry proper and peculiar of his genius, is the lyric 
 poetry. The greatest philosopher of modern times 
 has declared that lyric poetry is the most subjective — 
 the poetry of Lord Byron is the most lyrical with 
 which I am acquainted. He does not represent the 
 world, like Goethe, in itself, in its existence, in 
 its laws and phenomena ; he represents it as 
 it appeared to his soul, such as it seemed in the 
 abyss of his thoughts. He is self-possessed on enter- 
 ing a theatre. Nothing more uniform and mono- 
 
l68 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 tcnous than his dramas ; nothing less dramatic. Each 
 of his characters may be called a choir which intones 
 a hymn, an ode, an elegy. The dialogue has scarcely 
 any animation, because it is one-half of his idea speak- 
 ing with the other half,' a portion of his heart discours- 
 ing with another portion. All his dialogue is con- 
 nected in one thought, each personage disappears in 
 one soul ; every action is blended in one life ; in the 
 thought, the soul, and in the life of Byron. And as 
 one life, be it ever so grand, revolves upon one idea 
 only, his dramas are not suited to the stage, wanting 
 movement and variety. All the grand Oriental poems 
 are of the same order, such as the Book of Job and 
 the Apocalypse, in which immaterial and material 
 beings support harmoniously a dialogue with the in- 
 spired prophet, who beholds them in ecstatic visions, 
 and lends them the rhythm of his own ideas. 
 
 Byron's first poems, those which were so cruelly 
 criticised by the JEdinhurgh Bevieio, scarcely announced 
 the poet, then in the dawn of his fame. They are 
 subjective, but wanting in grandeur. Had he been 
 happy, he would have been lost in the choir of so 
 many poets who have gently rippled for a day the stag- 
 nant lake of common life. Byron, being unhappy, 1 
 distinguished himself among all other poets, as Satan \ 
 is distinguished among all angels. His poetry, some- 
 times tranquil, but always illuminated by a ray of ' 
 lightning, has much that fascinates. The temper of 
 his verses is so stormy, that the attention is not al- 
 
MANFRED AND FAUST COMPARED. 169 
 
 lowed to wander from the sublime confusion. BjTon's 
 grandest poem is " ^lanfred." Henri Taine compares 
 it with " Faust/' and says that " Manfred" is the 
 poem of individuality, and " Faust" the poem of 
 humanity. I should call " Manfred" the poem of sen- 
 timent, and " Faust" the poem of ideas ; " Manfred" 
 the poem of nature, and " Faust" the poem of history. 
 
 Both poems represent the disenchantment which 
 is produced within the limits of human existence. 
 Faust himself is weary after having thought, and Man- 
 fred after having lived. The one dies, as becomes a 
 German doctor, after having studied medicine, alchemy, 
 the theological sciences and philosophy, and having 
 found them but ashes. The other expires after having 
 felt, struggled, and loved in vain ; after having 
 ascended the gigantic ladder formed by the Alps, 
 without finding anything more than the piercing wind 
 eternally moaning, the white frost falling, the pines 
 amid the snow-flakes, the cold desert of crystal fatal 
 to life, the profound abyss where light is extinguished; 
 beneath, men are like insects ; above, the eagles fly in 
 endless circles, breaking the immensity and the 
 silence by their cries of hunger; a spectacle which 
 reminds him of another desolation, the moonlight 
 night in which he trod the ground of the Colosseum, 
 the ruins overgrown with nettles, and heard nothing 
 but owls, whose melancholy cries were an elegy over 
 the ashes of the martyrs and gladiators of the past. 
 
 To dissuade Faust from suicide came the sound 
 
170 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 of the Gothic bell celebrating the morning of the 
 Eesurrection, mingled with the voices of the eccle- 
 siastical choir ; but to save Manfred there was needed 
 the real and powerful hand of a deer-hunter, seizing 
 him upon the verge of a precipice. The one, after 
 having proved the emptiness of real love, invokes 
 Helen, the classic beauty for whom lovely Greece was 
 deluged in blood, and proud Troy was burned ; from 
 whence sprung the refinement of Art, eternal mother 
 of gods and men ! The other, after having also tasted 
 the nothingness of loves and ambitions, longed to 
 behold the nymphs of nature, she who sleeps in 
 everlasting snows, she who weaves her hair in the 
 cataract, she who sighs in the movement of the pine- 
 trees, she who possesses above the clouds a palace of 
 opal, created by the uncertain reflections of the day- 
 dawn, and she who bathes her fair form in the limpid 
 bosom of the ocean, and whose long hair of sea-weed, 
 interlaced with pearls, reposes on pillows of shells and 
 corals. 
 
 So " Faust" went over the East ; with its theogonies 
 saluted the classic statues of antiquity, descended the 
 abyss of human thought, in which the web of material 
 life is woven by original or mother ideas, mounted the 
 cupola of the Gothic church which sends to the heavens 
 the aroma of incense, the hymn of the organ, the 
 vibrating echoes of supplication ; and " Manfred" has 
 passed from the feudal castle to the mountain, from the 
 mountain to the war, from the war to the chase — for 
 
MAX FRED AND FAUST COMPARED. 171 
 
 " Faust" is the tliouglit of universal history, and 
 "Manfred" is the action of universal life. In the 
 poem of the one, all ages speak ; in that of the other, 
 all beings. In the one poem all writings are glanced 
 at, from the Creation of Light in the Bible, to the 
 making of paper-money in the cofifers of the Jews ; 
 in the other poem, we find the essences of all elements, 
 from that which raises the waters to that which draws 
 tears. Between these two poems, the one of which 
 embraces thought and history, while the other com- 
 prises life and nature, there should be a third to com- 
 prehend society and its struggles. Perhaps the age 
 has reserved this great glory to my country — at least, 
 I almost crathered this from the mas^nificent vestibule 
 designed by the hand of Esproceda, and which is called 
 " El Diablo Mundo," a work not perfect, nor finished, 
 as the construction of our society is still imperfect 
 and incomplete. 
 
 The poem of Goethe and that of Lord Byron, both 
 end in death. Both works keep near to the prota- 
 gonist, his inseparable companion — Evil. But Byron, 
 with his remarkably distinct individuality, bears the 
 evil like a cancer in his body and his conscience; 
 carries it shut up in his mind, adhering like a fiery 
 skin to his flesh ; diffused like a corrosive torture, like 
 boiling lead in his blood; painted with all its horrors and 
 deformities in his retina, like two suns of death and 
 darkness, which spoil and devastate. Goethe is a 
 philosopher who observes evil, and accepts it in the 
 
172 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 limit of nature and of human life as an inseparable 
 companion of good, as the antithesis which determines 
 the thesis, as the shadow which follows the light, as 
 the fever which results from the excess of life, as the 
 sting which extracts the honey : as sorrow which is 
 apparent, as doubt which creates, as the negation 
 which defines and affirms. 
 
 Byron feels the evil, and Goethe tJiinh it. In the 
 sphere of sentiment the contradiction of good and 
 evil exists. Byron goes in a stormy cloud where two 
 opposed electricities contend ; both of which shock 
 his nerves with their powerful rays, and kindle his 
 blood with invisible fire. Goethe, immovable as the 
 Jupiter of Phidias, protected by the bronze of human 
 life, placed in the heights of history, sees with indif- 
 ference the evil roll by as a cloud, which obscures 
 certain portions of the earth, while refreshing and 
 invigorating the others ; like a doubt which for a 
 moment disturbs weak spirits, but steels and prepares 
 for the truth those which are vigorous ; like an irony 
 which leaves solemnity for ever with art, and also 
 gives it those various and discordant tones, without 
 which the harmony of beauty could not be attained, 
 those touches of shade without which the colours in 
 the picture of the soul could not be produced. 
 
 When one thinks superficially, when not inclined to 
 the serious study which should enter into our life, we 
 are apt to say, " What use are these poems, ending one 
 in the sepulchre and the other in eternity ?" But we 
 
REFLECTIONS. 
 
 173 
 
 are blind of heart and of spirit, wlien we are offended 
 with these great works of grief and of martyrdom, 
 against these grand poems which for one age are 
 phantasms, and for another are ideas. Without con- 
 tradiction we cannot have the truth, as we cannot 
 have life without labour and struggle. The history 
 of science is a prolonged history of different echoes. 
 So when a genius which demands is born, there 
 appears another which replies. Without the despair 
 of Job, we should not have had the balsam of the 
 Gospel. Without the maledictions of the Prometheus 
 of ^Eschylus, we could not have sat at the banquet 
 of Plato. Without the scepticism of the Sophists, 
 Socrates would not have revealed to us the secrets of 
 the human conscience. Without the irony of Voltaire, 
 who perverted a world, the prophets of another world 
 would not have arisen crowned with new ideas, in the 
 Constituent Assembly to confide to the hurricane and 
 the tempest the divine germ of the rights of man. 
 We enter on the truth by scepticism, by despair, as 
 we enter into life by sorrow, with tears in our eyes 
 and sobs in our bosoms. He who is born and cries 
 not, is born dead. The age which doubts not is an 
 age which asks not ; and we should importune the 
 truth with questions, as we should come to God with 
 supplications. By one of these poems, we have arrived 
 at the knowledge that men, reptiles so feeble to mount 
 or to descend the ladder of life, are one with the 
 universe ; by the other poem, we know that this im- 
 
174 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 palpable and invisible spirit, like tlie breatli of a corpse 
 ■ — this human spirit is yet one with all history, one 
 with all ages, and may aspire to eternity. 
 
 Both poets draw from created things, from clay 
 they extract honey. After having read them, after 
 having agitated your heart with their sorrows, shaken 
 your intelligence with their scepticisms and your faith 
 with their denials, you deduce the moral lesson that 
 neither life nor truth can really be found in grossness, 
 corruption, and discordance : they are there on the eter- 
 nally serene heights of immortal essences ; and as after 
 the shades of night have departed the world becomes 
 renewed, brighter, and more joyous, the sun deepens 
 the colours of the plants and gives voice to the birds ; 
 after having passed in the spirit through those pro- 
 found caverns of thought, you behold, as it were, the 
 face of Grod, unfolding the creative power, giving a 
 living faith with His light, invisible, but penetrating 
 to your soul. In these poems there are two leading 
 ideas, one plunged in obscurit}^, but which is heard 
 in the tempest, like the moaning of impotent creatures 
 wallowing in evil ; and the other, which looks to the 
 light, repeats the harmony of the stars, and keeps the 
 sight fixed in the contemplation of the Supreme God, 
 like Murillo's paintings of the Conception. It will, 
 perhaps, have happened to you in life to pass into a 
 thick cloud when wandering over mountains, to feel 
 the darkness falling like a winding-sheet over your 
 brain, the lightning flashes like the scourge of death 
 
BYRON'S VERSATILE GENIUS. 175 
 
 by your side, and after conquering tlie liill and 
 mounting to the summit, you see the blue heavens 
 above your head, the resplendent sun reflected in the 
 light, pure covering of snow, and on one side the cloud 
 in a rainbow encircling you. It is thus -with great 
 works of art. When Byron's unhappy Manfred has 
 finished his strife with the elements, when his unquiet 
 spirit snatches him towards the invisible world, when 
 alone there remains of him only an immovable mass, 
 I leave the book, my heart oppressed with sorrow, 
 my brain heated by excitement, and, by a natural 
 contradiction in the soul, I behold Immortality, like 
 the Virgin Mother, presenting herself to the dead, 
 now new-born, and showing them with her rosy 
 fingers, like those of the Aurora of Homer, the ethereal 
 mansion of eternity, hidden among the crimson clouds 
 of heaven, and illuminated by the presence of God. 
 
 Lord Byron's was indeed a strange genius — Norman, 
 Saxon, British, individual — and, in spite of all these, 
 universal. When he describes the palace of an 
 Albanian Governor, the marble court, in the centre of 
 which a fountain plays, shaded by cypresses, their dark 
 branches entwined with jasmine and roses ; tlie army 
 of slaves and of soldiers, some Greek, others neqro, 
 all clothed magnificently, fully armed, and strong in 
 their temperance ; when he applies his ear to the wall 
 to listen whether the heart of the poor Mahometan 
 woman beats wildly in the prison of the harem, if 
 she sighs oppressed by silence and solitude, any one 
 
•176 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 would believe lie was reading an Oriental poem. But 
 soon his eyes become suffused, bis heart in commotion, 
 the tempest which hung over tbe cradle of his race 
 persecutes him, the clouds of the North overwhelm 
 him, the wind whistles in his ears, accustomed to the 
 roarin^^ of the waves, to the wild cry of seamev/s; 
 spirits of darkness, like obscene birds of the night, 
 rise in flocks through the dark caverns of his soul, 
 and then, by the lightning flashes of his mind, he 
 describes the day in which the sun did not visit the 
 earth, and men kindled all combustible matter to 
 illumine the obscurity, till they all died buried in 
 ashes ; gigantic recollections of that Scandinavian 
 Apocalypse inspired by the eternal darkness of Polar 
 nights, and of which northern bards have sung. Pre- 
 sently the air becomes clearer, the moon arises, extend- 
 in"' her veil of silvery gauze ; the coasts become visible, 
 and show their outline ; the fine sand appears gilded 
 and adorned with brilliant and opal-dyed shells ; the 
 blue water, lightly rippled by the breeze and moved 
 by the plunging of the dolphins at play, with the light 
 wino-s of the seagull casting a passing reflection ; in 
 the fissures of the valleys the rose-leaf blooms among 
 the stones with the vine and fig-tree ; on the distant 
 horizon the sky and the Mediterranean are blended, 
 each beholding the beauty of the other, and mutually 
 exchanging reflections ; and in that solitude of volup- 
 tuous enchantment Don Juan and Haydée change 
 caverns into palaces, and abandon themselves tc the 
 
POETIC PROGRESS. 177 
 
 infinite happiness of a love inspired by youth and 
 hope, without other witnesses than the roseate dawn, 
 bright as the cheeks of a Grecian maiden on receiving 
 the first kiss of her lover, and who, careless of the 
 future, loses herself in the present, as if love formed 
 the whole of life and will not cease till death. Surely 
 he who describes this must be a Soutliern poet ? 
 
 The course of things has changed ; the whirlwind 
 of events which we can scarcely comprehend impels 
 poets all over the earth to change distinctive poetry — 
 the poetry of race, into universal poetry, the poetry 
 of humanity. Byron was not the only exile who went 
 to ask inspiration from the Alcazar of Seville, the 
 gigantic skeleton of the Colosseum, the ruins of the 
 Pc-ithinon. Chateaubriand travelled from the sepul- 
 chres of Jerusalem, where repose the ruins of ancient 
 society, to the cataract of Niagara, which rocks the 
 cradle of modern society. Goethe went from the 
 forests ol the North — a pilgrim of the religion of art — 
 to the Greek marbles under the triumphal arches of 
 the Vatican. The genius of Victor Hugo seems to 
 have had its cradle in Spain, and to look for its sepul- 
 chre in England, since he is Oriental in his likeness 
 to Calderón, and Western in his resemblance to 
 Shakspeare. Hugo Foseólo, with his Grecian blood 
 and his Italian poetry, sung among the mists of the 
 North Seas, The breezes of the Ehine caressed the 
 infancy of Heine, and the Seine wept his sorrows, as 
 if in his genius alone could meet the two opposing 
 
 12 
 
178 LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 currents, stained witli blood. Mazzini writes liis social 
 prophecies from London. Quinet meditates upon the 
 Apocalypse of the Eevolution on the shores of Leman, 
 and before the Alps, on that small spot of earth called 
 Switzerland, which liberty has converted into a world 
 of faith and hope, into a refuge of virtue and of con- 
 science. x\ll great poets are not merely phantasms 
 which Nature creates in order that tliey may chase 
 away pain and misfortune. This choir of mysterious 
 and of celestial birds, which bring the nourishment of 
 the ideal in their beaks, and the echoes of infinity in 
 their verses, go through the world wafted by all 
 breezes, drinking all the juices of J^Iother Earth, 
 hearing all the poems of historj^ — to form, in ñict, the 
 Iliad of the future — the Iliad of labour instead 
 of war; the Iliad of right instead of the Iliad of 
 privilege, the Iliad of humanity, in which each 
 people shall form a choir and intone a canticle. 
 AYhen a poet of such marked individuality, and of 
 such pure Saxon origin as Byron, was able to turn liis 
 genius from its natural bent and to attain to higher 
 and broader flights than common, what cannot the 
 children of more humanitarian races do and attempt? 
 They are gifted with a more flexible character, and 
 have their consciences more imbued with the sublime 
 conceptions of an ideal brotherhood. The great genius 
 who lived to repeat the aspirations of all peoples, and 
 who died young and unfortunate, among those who 
 were the first imitators of liberty — the true poet of 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 , 179 
 
 history, the artificer of human personality, the revealer 
 of the conscience — deserves to be accounted in the book 
 of human progress between our prophets and martyrs. 
 He often wandered from the right path, but he was 
 tlie echo of an uncertain age. Of him history may 
 write — "I forgive thee, for thou hast loved much." 
 And this age, the commencement of this century, 
 which beheld the Apollo-like head of Byron, crossed 
 with sunbeams and with shadows, could exclaim, 
 " This is my resemblance — this is my symbol !" 
 
 END OF THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 12 — 2 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 
 
Victor Hugo. 
 
 T) OMANCE is certainly one of the most beautiful 
 -*-^ phases of modern intelligence ; although in its 
 tendency it appears to be a revival of the Middle 
 Ages, in its proceedings and its methods it destroys 
 the ancient artistic traditions which ended with the 
 reign of Aristotle in the sphere of art, as Bacon, Luis 
 Vives, and Descartes concluded with the same despotic 
 reign in the region of science. Aristotle held a very 
 singular place in history. A representative of the 
 ancient position, above all before Plato, who repre- 
 sented idealism ; an indefatigable commentator of 
 nature, a believer in experience, a prodigious observer 
 even more than a daring investigator, he became the 
 founder of a theolo":ical school. 'Jlie Moors meta- 
 morphosed him with their dreamy and mystic ideas, 
 and three centuries were barely sufficient to admit of 
 man's becoming acquainted with him. In the sphere 
 of art, Aristotle never preached the three vigorous 
 unities proposed by the masters who profess3d to con- 
 tinue his doctrines, and doubtless classic scholars re- 
 
1 84 VICTOR HUGO, 
 
 spected liis poetic pieces, as the Moors respected his 
 metaph^'sics. And from this threefold adoration of 
 Moorish theologians and classic scholars resulted a 
 fiilse Aristotle, a kind of oracle that imposed his des- 
 potic dogmatism upon reason and ñmcj. The philo- 
 sophical schools of the Eenaissance finished with the 
 Aristotle of the theological schools, and turned to the 
 arts. The Italian poets of the sixteenth century were 
 Aristotelian, so were the first founders of the Spanish 
 theatre, and so was French poetrj^ ; and later, there 
 appeared a Church which held a literary Aristotleism 
 M ith its gospel, which consisted of the works of Boileau, 
 and of these tliree — Corneille, Eacine, and Voltaire. 
 
 The man on the Continent who dared to revolt 
 against this poetic convention, to recover the unde- 
 fined rights of nature, and to defend the spontaneous 
 creation of the imagination, deserves a place among 
 great reformers, among the friends of art and of 
 liberty. This extraordinary man was Lope de Vega, 
 the admiration of all ages for the inexhaustible 
 fecundity of his genius ; capable of creating in the 
 infinite space of moral nature as many types, and as 
 many relations among those types, as material nature 
 can produce in its inextinguishable life. Excluded as 
 he was from all communication with the modern 
 spirit by the native intolerance of the Spanish race, 
 and by the tyrannical policy of the House of 
 Austria, he opened for himself a breathing place — a 
 window, as it were — in the arts, from which he re- 
 
HIS EARLY YEARS. 185 
 
 ceived light from Heaven. Thus, while nothing else 
 seemed to flourish in the country, whilst the profes- 
 sion of arms declined, and population, politics, science 
 and industry decayed, the arts advanced so far as to 
 produce, in the seventeenth century, our first great 
 painter Velasquez, and our first great poet, Calderón. 
 The romantic spirit of the age created the Spanish 
 theatre, with its richness, its animation, its variety, 
 whence we have derived metaphysical ideas of the 
 first magnitude, as in " Life is a Dream ;" perfect 
 social types, as in " The Alcalde of Zalamanca ;" pas- 
 sions as pure as that represented in " The Slave of 
 her Lover ;" tragedies like " The Physician of his 
 Honour ;" and comedies, which so clearly describe life 
 and society, that we still feel delight in their reproduc- 
 tions, since they form, with their beauty and vigour 
 of conception, one of the brightest collections of art 
 in any age. 
 
 To the Latin nation, where romance held its greatest 
 empire, Victor Hugo went in his childhood — to Spain. 
 The warm kiss of our southern sun still burns on his 
 Titanic brow. There is something of the rude harsh- 
 ness of our soil in his genius ; there is much of the 
 hyperbolical part of our character in the great outlines 
 of his works. This journey of Victor Hugo into 
 Spain was analogous to that of Madame de Stael to 
 Grermany. The great authoress brought the ideal 
 romance of the jSI'orth, and the great author the prac- 
 tical romance of the South. The one became inspired 
 
 ^ OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
1 86 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 by the sad and profound dreams of Jean Paul Eichter, 
 and the other by the simple verses of iJomancists, and 
 by the ideas of Calderón, infused in the conscience 
 like those streams of materia cósmica which are called 
 nebulae, and from which, almost continually, a new 
 planet is suspended like a drop of light in the im- 
 mensity of space. 
 
 Victor Hugo returned from Spain disposed to 
 set on fire the temple of the gods of ancient art. 
 Classic poetry reigned in France from the time of 
 Louis XIV. without any interruption. The people 
 in Ninetj^-three ignored the existence of such a glory. 
 But had they been aware of it they would have 
 sought to destroy it, in their eager desire for change. 
 The Academy and the Court were then at Versailles. 
 
 The principles of Victor Hugo's poetry may be 
 summed up thus : — 1 st. That the spirit of the ancient 
 school is to lessen the essential part — the idea, so as 
 to confine it in the narrow mould of petty formality ; 
 we elevate ail idea on all form. 2nd. That tragedy 
 is a dead body without spirit and without blood ; let 
 us substitute for this ossification art and the drama, 
 and give it life. 3rd. Nature loves contrasts, and 
 places light by the side of shadow ; society also loves 
 contrasts, and puts tears and laughter near each other. 
 Let us reproduce in the picture, art, society, and 
 nature ; let us extend life with its contrasts in the 
 theatre. 4th. This separation between art and life 
 proceeds from an aristocratic school, which has pro- 
 
"NOTRE DAME DE PAR/S." 187 
 
 mulgated a code of false laws ; let us substitute for 
 this arbitrary code liberty in art, a genuine inspira- 
 tion, a real conscience. 
 
 These revolutions cannot be made hastily. This 
 reintegration of all being in itself is one of the greatest 
 difficulties ever conquered in history. The ancient 
 world puts morals in positive codes, changing like the 
 course of events and the foundations of societies. 
 Socrates placed the base of morality in the human 
 conscience. The philosophy of the Middle Ages placed 
 the laws of truth in a conception foreign to all life, 
 beyond all reality. Descartes placed the laws of truth 
 in reason. The classic authors put the laws of art 
 in academic codes remote from the inspirations of 
 fancy. Victor Hugo put the laws of art in inspira- 
 tion, in the light which belongs to the spirit. No 
 one can deny it this unfading glory. And from the 
 moment in which he has the first glimmer of an idea, 
 he realizes and makes use of it like a warrior who 
 rushes to conquest. "Notre Dame de Paris" is his poetic 
 spirit in action. Conceived under the shadow of 
 Gothic towers, like a mysterious bird whose nest 
 should be perfumed by incense, before seeking in 
 space the aroma of universal life in the infinite, it is 
 ready to expand its wings and fly towards the heavens. 
 Quasimodo was romantic art, grotesque and hideous 
 materially ; but beautiful in that he was life's essence, 
 in the moral part which looks to eternity, in the re- 
 cesses of the spirit. Captain Febo was classic art, 
 
188 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 beautiful in person, empty in being, without a spiirk 
 of the divine lij^ht which is concentrated in that focus 
 of moral life called Quasimodo. La Esmeralda, lovely 
 in form and in spirit, is the art of the future ; that 
 which will come forth from the battle and proceed 
 from the union of two ideas, from the synthesis of 
 two contrasts produced by human reason — which 
 society receives with its' great mechanisms, unique 
 and capable of combining with all its powers. Febo 
 loved Esmeralda with the sensual and passing passion 
 of antiquity ; Quasimodo with the profound love of 
 the spirit, for whom the sepulchre is the cradle of 
 true life. Claude Frollo is the spirit of the middle 
 age, which desires to kindle the new life, the new 
 art, but who, detained in the darkness by his beliefs 
 and his vows, dies tormented by the inextinguishable 
 thirst of pleasure, by the desperation of unsatisfied 
 desire, by the warfare of an unregulated nature 
 with the sting of excessive voluptuousness, which 
 consumes him in its fires. Modern art is poetry in 
 action. 
 
 It became essential to take the new school to his 
 battlefield, the theatre. It was for this he wrote 
 "Hernani." From thenceforth his dramatic pieces 
 were inspired by the spirit of the Spanish theatre. It 
 is a statue chiselled from the same quarry as " Garcia 
 del Castañar" and " L'homme riche d' Alcalá." E,uy 
 Gomez de Silva is valiant, generous, noble, but im- 
 placable as the father of the Cid. Doña Sol is the 
 
AS A DRAMATIC POET. 189 
 
 beautiful Castilian, whose light, whose idol, whose ^ 
 only and exclusive passion is love, in which she con- 
 centrates her whole existence. The two feeblest 
 personages in the drama, in my opinion, are 
 Charles V. and Hernani. The former, on feeling 
 the imperial crown upon his brow, becomes changed 
 in character ; and the latter also changes when the 
 Order of the Golden Fleece is placed upon his neck. 
 There is certainly in this a great want of poetic logic, 
 and of that logic which is the more severe and in- 
 flexible, because it unfolds itself by the regions of the 
 absolute. In art, in the greatest elevations of the 
 spirit, the air is more pure, as it is on mountains, which 
 are the highest points of our planet. An internal 
 change would have been more logical than this sudden 
 chano-e, owing to external accidents. 
 
 In reality Victor Hugo, who is the first poet of his 
 time, is not the first dramatic poet. Sometimes his 
 genius is too great, sometimes his wings are too much 
 expanded to find free action in the small enclosure of 
 a theatre. But while acknowledging a certain infe- 
 riority in Victor Hugo as a dramatic poet, I cannot 
 deny the merit of his works. What elevation of sen- 
 timent ! what profundity of ideas ! what accents of 
 passion ! what marvellous harmony in those verses 
 which are made in a language so flexible, so sonorous, 
 and so robust as the Spanish, the immortal language 
 of romance ! And when " Hernani'' appeared, it was 
 wondered at, like a comet, and announced a war in 
 
I90 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 the heavens of poetry. The Pleiades of young roman- 
 cists apphmded it as the central point towards which 
 eventually they should concentrate all their forces. 
 The classic writers arose against that continual 
 hyperbole, against that contempt of all academical 
 conventions, against those personages whose greatness 
 they called extravagance, exaggeration, the result of a 
 wandering and inflamed imagination. Each repre- 
 sentation was a battle. The hissing obliged the 
 performers frequently to interrupt the dialogue. 
 Madame Mars did not dare to repeat the verses 
 as the poet had written them, and trembled before 
 those audacious innovations as violations of all the 
 acknowledged rules of good taste. Even Lemaitre 
 could not understand why people gave money in the 
 pay-office and hisses in the theatre ; rushing to support 
 them by purchasing tickets of entrance, and then 
 condemning the performance with protests and 
 tamults. Victor Hugo remained unmoved in the 
 midst of the tempest, with his thoughts bent on the 
 necessity of reform, and his eyes fixed on the eternal 
 justice of the future. If he had been present, as I 
 was, at the later representation of his drama ; if he 
 had beheld the audience profoundly moved, giving to 
 him something more than applause — a tribute of tears ; 
 if he had listened to the beatings of those hearts 
 which relieved themselves in an enthusiastic burst of 
 emotion, he would have seen that after thirty-five 
 years of struggle the red comet had been changed into 
 
HIS PERSONAL APPEARAXCE. 191 
 
 a planet, inhabited by tlie souls of the new generation. 
 And he, from that fair isle where his companions are 
 the unfathomable ocean and his own conscience, on 
 hearing the echoes of the applause borne by the breeze, 
 saw the image of immortalit}^, so dear to genius, 
 shedding a drop of honey into the bitter cup of his 
 exile ! 
 
 But while speaking of his works I have insensibly 
 forgotten to speak of the poet himself I wish to 
 make use of this disorder, which, if it is contrary to 
 artistic rules, in compensation takes from both writer 
 and reader some of the fatigue which usually accom- 
 panies labour. Victor Hugo's face is bright and ani- 
 mated, like his mind ; his head is large and spherical ; 
 his forehead broad, like a heaven destined to contain 
 many stars ; his eyes small, but deep as the abyss of his 
 thoughts ; his nose aquiline, his beard is snowy white, 
 and his whole expression indicates the culminating 
 qualities of his spirit : athletic powers, indomitable 
 energy, the countenance of a warrior, who retains his 
 Olympian serenity in the midst of the rudest shocks of 
 battle. On presenting a master-work to the public 
 instead of the laurel crown so dear to an author, he 
 was met with hissing. This would have overcome one 
 less vigorous than the soul moulded in the bronze 
 reserved for the greatest human intelligences ; but 
 Victor Hugo bore it unflinchingly. 
 
 He has not the grace, harmony, nor proportion of 
 those poets who have studied antiquity, and who have 
 
192 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 souglit to reproduce in tlieir verses the marbles of 
 Paros. On the contrary, it is evident that his models 
 were taken from the exaggerated though sublime lite- 
 rature of the East ; and that his favourite study has 
 always been the poets, particularly the Book of Isaiah. 
 From hence those brief sentences, those sudden flashes 
 of a style whicii resembles lightning, those unexpected 
 antitheses, those touching contrasts, those melodies of 
 the idyll — sweet as honey, yet cutting as the edge of 
 a sword. For these reasons the classic school of Grer- 
 many never admired Victor Hugo ; on the contrary, 
 it totally opposed his views, though he undertook a 
 revolution equal in point of fact to the revolution of 
 the romantic school in France. Goethe could not 
 read " Notre Dame de Paris ;" he found it inflated, 
 disproportioned, hyperbolical, false, removed from the 
 eternal laws of reality, contrary to the strict harmo- 
 nies of art. And Henri Heine, though he has greatly 
 admired French literature, says that Victor Hugo was 
 deficient in the three grand qualities of French genius 
 — taste, grace, and clearness. On these points I will 
 not contend. But genius is varied as nature. You 
 will not search for the serenity of Eaphael in the 
 Titanic w^orks of Michael Angelo ; you do not seek 
 in the Book of Job for the tender elegy of the (Edipus 
 of Sophocles. But you will not refuse a tribute 
 of approbation to the genius of a great author because 
 though wanting in some qualities, he has, instead of 
 them, others still more sublime. 
 
PERFECTION AX IMPOSSIBILITY. 193 
 
 Great qualities cannot exist if not accompanied by 
 great defects, for tlie light of the soul is only made 
 visible by shadows. Imagine a perfect spirit possessed 
 of all conceivable powers in a complete harmony and 
 a just equilibrium — and what you would have in 
 reality would be either a weak and infirm creature, a 
 being with reason but without reality ; or a verj^ ordi- 
 nary individual, without any of those strong touches, 
 those extraordinary and peculiar qualities, which cha- 
 racterize genius. Victor Hugo is great, sublime, 
 serene as the Moses of ]\Iichael Angelo, which appears 
 seated on the cmpis of the earth, resting after an 
 athletic labour, but disposed to continue, like the 
 Creator who cast by a word the golden halo of the first 
 hght upon chaos. 
 
 Let us describe his life in a few words. Son of a 
 General of the Empire, Bonapartism was during some 
 time more than a political belief in Victor Hugo — it 
 was a poetical conviction. The poet of strength 
 should worship the genius of strength ; the athlete 
 of poetry should bow before the gladiator of war. 
 He was filled with a delirious enthusiasm at the 
 tempest of blood and fire which spread from the 
 Alpine peaks to the Pyramids, and which swept from 
 the Kremlin to Cadiz, sov/ing in its course death for 
 that generation in a hundred battles, and the breath 
 of life for future generations in the principles of the 
 Revolution ! 
 
 Moreover, Victor Hugo was for some period a 
 
 13 
 
194 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 Legitimist, because of the education he received from a 
 tender mother, who belonged to one of those French 
 families ever faithful to ancient traditions. He shows 
 the condition of his mind in an ode dedicated to the 
 consecration of Charles the Tenth, that last glimpse of 
 the antique monarchy then about to expire. When his 
 mother died his genius was lost in his sorrow. In his 
 grief he cut out of an obscure rock a deep cavern, 
 where, like a new Cyclops, he made with his hammer 
 a deformed statue, the sight of which drew from his 
 breast heart-rending sighs. It was " The Han of Ice- 
 land," the first apparition of the ethics of ugliness, as 
 many writers call the canons of romance. That sudden 
 apparition in the midst of the correct forms of David, 
 of the measured st3de of Chateaubriand, and of the 
 works of Madame de Stael, different kinds of art at 
 that time in fashion, must have produced the same 
 effect as the invasion of the barbarians, the sons of 
 the forest and of nature, in the last scenes of the 
 Empire. They came naked, when Oriental customs 
 had clothed the lords of the earth with heavy silken 
 mantles, and with heavier gold crowns; they shouted 
 with their brazen lungs, while the smoke of orgies 
 deprived the Romans of their voices, so that they 
 could scarcely chant the song of their pleasui'es. 
 
 At the age of twenty Victor Hugo married a young 
 girl of fifteen, who brought love to his heart, peace 
 and joy to his home ; a ray of light in the tempests 
 of his soul reflected from the heavens upon the griefs 
 of his life — an angel who often became his guide in 
 
HIS PARISIAN HOME. 195 
 
 the bitter hours when he found the world a desert — a 
 wife who sought from virtue the secret of happiness, 
 a mother who kept for herself the aloes of existence, 
 and divided the honey among her children. 
 
 They resided in the street of Notre Dame des 
 Champs in Paris, among luxuriant trees, in a small 
 house artistically furnished, where beautiful children 
 pla3Td, where the wiie divided tender words and sweet 
 smiles among numerous friends, where birds warbled 
 in the garden, and poets sang in the salon. That 
 was a sacred les^ion. Tlie men who afterwards intel- 
 lectually directed France, swore to put down the idols 
 and the powers of the classics. Afterwards, many of 
 the friends who at that time formed the legion of 
 innovators, abandoned Victor Hugo, but he alone 
 refused honours, whilst those who exiled him sought 
 honours, crosses, gold, places in the Senate, and pen- 
 sions from the Eevenue. 
 
 In 1830 Victor Hugo established himself in the 
 Place Eoyale, where he reigned for the space of 
 twenty-two years. His house was like the tabernacle 
 of his genius. The sentiment of colour, the culture 
 of art, a taste for contrasts, manifested themselves in 
 that tapestry-covered salon, filled with arms, statues, 
 urns, and with pictures, which gave enchantment to 
 the sight and elevated the place into a spiritual temple. 
 
 There met together the romantic spirits of the age. 
 Tlie most celebrated lyric poets, novelists, dramatists, 
 critics, went to receive the word of command, the 
 
 13—2 
 
196 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 signal for combat, counsel for a work, applause after a 
 victory. There the words of their enemies were 
 repeated, whom they proposed to persecute, to annihi- 
 late by force of talents, of grace, of ingenuity, using 
 all kind of intellectual arms, indefatigable in a 
 struggle, and determined to hoist at all cost the 
 standard of victory. 
 
 Victor Hugo attempted everything, for to him so 
 much was possible. As a historian he admirably 
 sketched the character of Mirabeau, a genius whom 
 he somewhat resembles in his ambition for tempestuous 
 phrases and Cyclopean descriptions. As a critic, he 
 wrote the Introduction of Cromwell, which was the 
 poetic gospel of the new school, a gospel dictated 
 with the inspiration of a prophet, sustained with the 
 impetuosity of a warrior. As a novelist, he wrote 
 those wonderful pages of " Notre Dame de Paris," in 
 which we see the death of the Middle Age and the 
 dawn of the Eenaissance, in which the novel some- 
 times takes the grandeur of the epopee, in which the 
 genius of Victor Hugo at sight of the press coming 
 from the earth armed against the Gothic cathedrals, 
 which incline as the cedars before the hurricane, begins 
 to unfold, his wings to fly from the refuge of his 
 ancient beliefs, and to place himself on the arid and vol- 
 canic rock lighted by the ray of the Eevolution, where 
 is found wi'itten the decalogue of the rights of man. 
 
 It is common to all reforms to excite great hatred, 
 and the inheritance of all reformers is to have bitter 
 
UNPOPULARITY OF REFORMERS. 197 
 
 enemies. The lovers of the ancient school cannot 
 tolerate the perilous novelties of the poet. To them 
 his language does not appear to be French, his stj'le 
 is not literary, his versification is not dramatic, his 
 personages are not theatrical types. They look with 
 repugnance on the rehabilitation of Thisbe by filial 
 piety, of Lucretia Borgia by the holy virtue of 
 maternity, of Marion Delorme by love. That 
 rawness of expression, that simplicity of type, that 
 turning to the world and to nature, after the dryness 
 of the characters and of the conventional language of 
 the classic school, appear a series of daring offences, 
 of buifoonery, of literary heresies, which revolt against 
 all prejudices, and wound one's sensibilities — in a word, 
 those habits of thought which have become a second 
 nature. 
 
 But the great poet, without heeding these arrows, 
 which rebounded from his bosom of bronze, continued 
 to give glorious days to his country and immortal 
 works to letters. In his most valuable books, whicli are 
 Lis collections of lyric poetry, we can never sufficiently 
 admire the flexibility of his genius. By the side of 
 the epopee, the idyl ; near the combat of heroes, the 
 play of children ; after the beatings of a heart which 
 is bursting with sorrow, the rays of a star bathed in 
 eternal light ; beside the metaphysical, impalpable idea 
 which proceeds from a volcano of passions, the butterfly 
 of summer, which flutters among the petals and the 
 aroma of flowers. 
 
198 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 The genius of Victor Hugo is especially visible in 
 the animated and varied picture he draws of Naples ; 
 where the vine twines her garlands and hangs in 
 rich clusters from the poplar; and the lemon-tree 
 contrasts its emerald verdure with the fainter green of 
 the olive ; and the Eastern heavens, which shine like 
 tlie serene look of angels, covering the painful recol- 
 lections of antique tyrannies, and a city of enchant- 
 ment, of brightness, and of beauty rises by the side 
 of other cities, corpses, shrouded in petrified ashes as 
 in a winding-sheet ; and above the azure sea, rise — like 
 Nereids crowned with pearls and flowers — islets as 
 beautiful as antique statues, and as gladsome as 
 the antique Naiads ; whilst in the midst of this festival 
 appears Vesuvius, with its cone of lava like a funeral 
 catafalque, always sending from its dark bosom the 
 sound of eternal warning. 
 
 Advancing with the age, there came a transforma- 
 tion in the spirit of the poet. The dreams of the 
 Middle Asres fled from his soul, and left an entrance to 
 the ideas of our age. The oratorical genius, not less 
 uneasy and not less admirable than the poetic genius, 
 boiled in his conscience, and struggled to issue from 
 his lips in torrents of grand ideas clothed in majestic 
 language. The ancient monarchy, after having been 
 decapitated on the scaffold of the Place de la Revolu- 
 tion, after having long remained like an immovable 
 trunli, having many times sought a new existence, 
 sometimes enduring a co?//^ c^'í'/a/ like that of the ISth 
 
AS AN ORATOR. 199 
 
 Brumaire — again in foreign interventions, like that 
 of 1815 — agfain in the barricades of 1830 — the ancient 
 monarchy fell again, and vanished like a shadow in the 
 person of Louis Philippe. The people regained their 
 sovereignty with the Republic and universal [male] 
 suifrage. 
 
 The most eminent men in France were sent to the 
 Assembly. It was impossible for the people to forget 
 their great poet. Victor Hugo entered the Assembly, 
 and from thenceforth devoted his burning and pro- 
 phetic words to the cause of the people. Tlie dis- 
 courses of the great writer were marked by the same 
 characteristics as his verses — force, enthusiasm, won- 
 derful antithesis, astonishing inspiration. But many 
 persons who heard hira at that time have assured me 
 that in his mouth glowing words lose much of their 
 energy, and that, neither for the manner of pronouncing 
 them, nor for intonation, does Victor Hugo merit the 
 name of orator ! I cannot judge, for I never heard 
 him. But no matter how they may have been 
 delivered, his speeches, whether well or ill spoken, 
 will remain in French literature as models of the 
 truest eloquence. 
 
 The coup d'état drove him from France. With 
 his liberty he lost his country. From that time he 
 wandered through strange lands, lonely and desolate ; 
 for exile, which is always accompanied by melancholy, 
 is doubly sad for those who have once enjoyed a great 
 popularity, who from having been honoured and 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 beloved, are compelled to pass their remaining years 
 in silence and retirement. Then the genius of Juvenal 
 awakened in Victor Hugo. His satire became cutting 
 and bitter. The grandiloquence of the prophets seemed 
 united to the grace of Heine, and produced satirical 
 pieces, sometimes in prose and sometimes in verse, 
 which merit a place beside the compositions of Dante, 
 near the gloomy figures of the condemned which 
 Michael Angelo left intoning an eternal Bies ira on 
 the walls of the Sistine Chapel. 
 
 At length he decided to settle in one of the islands 
 of the Northern Ocean, under the wáng of English 
 liberty, in face of that beloved Trance whose coasts 
 may be seen from the flowery shore which the waves 
 surround with their white foam and salute with their 
 ceaseless music. There he has written in tranquillity, 
 and with an inspiration which seems inexhaustible, 
 those splendid poems called " Les Miserables," as " The 
 Legend of the Age/' more or less feeble in some parts, 
 but grandiose and colossal taken as a wdiole : w^here 
 the most beautiful figures of the past and the loveliest 
 ideas of the future pass in prophetic visions, sketched 
 with the firm fingers of genius, and with that warmth 
 of colouring which is the secret of artistic power, and 
 accompanied by the music of verses engraved eternally 
 on the human memory, as breathing the aroma of 
 immortality reserved for true poetry. 
 
 Our age is an age of prose. The pressing necessity 
 to create for ourselves a better society than that 
 
''LA FRIERE POUR TO US." 20 r 
 
 enjoyed by our fathers, and to completely subordinate 
 Nature to our dominion ; tliese reasons have caused 
 all the activity of our time to expend itself in politics 
 and in industry. Those men who, like Victor Hugo, 
 raise their souls to the horizon of the beautiful, will 
 be in the future as admirable as the Sphinxes of the 
 Desert are at present ; they teach us that in the midst 
 of ruin, in the midst of the troubles which encompass 
 us, we may always preserve as an inextinguishable 
 light the artistic inspiration in the human con- 
 science. 
 
 We should not conclude the biography of the great 
 French poet without speaking of one of these inspired 
 poems, which is sweet and tender as the breezes which 
 kiss the valleys of Provence, in which favoured land 
 Victor Hugo was born ; a prayer, energetic and gran- 
 diloquent, now rapid as the rushing of the waves 
 which break against the rocks of Jersey, now pro- 
 phetic, patriotic, sublime as the voice of genius, as 
 the echo of the holy ideas that surge in the mind of 
 the poet and scatter themselves in sonorous verses, 
 which are a torrent of faith, of charity, and of love. 
 "La Prih-e Pour Tuus" is perhaps one of Victor 
 Hugo's compositions in which the most brilHant 
 qualities are pre-eminent, and in which we admire the 
 Christian poet, the friend of the people, the loving 
 father, the apostle of humanity, who asks his daughter 
 to pray for all the unfortunate. These verses have 
 been translated into Castilian by the poet Andrés 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 Bello, and in the translation they lose nothing of 
 the brilliance of the images and the rhythmical har- 
 mony ; so that we may say of this work, as Lamar- 
 tine said to an English poet who had translated one 
 of his " Contemplations" — '' I admire myself in your 
 verses." 
 
ALEXANDER DUMAS. 
 
Alexander Duaías. 
 
 T WOULD not believe any one who told me lie bad 
 taken up a book of Alexander Dumas and laid 
 it down in disgust and weariness. No one would do 
 this. Dumas may be wanting in art, in style, in 
 taste, in ideas, but never in graceful language. This 
 extraordinary writer, while always interesting his 
 readers, seldom obliges them to reflect. In the 
 depths of our souls there remains a drop of the 
 honey of innocence, and a cherished memory of the 
 delights of childhood. No matter how much we 
 have grown in reason and experience, the fables we 
 loved to hear in infancy retain a (iharm for our riper 
 j-ears. You may have travelled all over gastronomic 
 Europe ; you may have sat at the first tables, and 
 partaken of the rarest and most exquisite dishes; 
 you may have lived in that great kitchen, that 
 Babylonian warehouse, called Paris, and on tasting 
 the familiar food of your native land you feel a 
 keenness of appetite like that awakened by the fresh 
 air of the country. Perhaps you have beheld the 
 
2o6 ALEXANDER DUMAS. 
 
 greatest natural spectacles of Europe — Vesuvius, 
 which sends its volumes of smoke to the heavens ; 
 the fall of the Rhine, which flings up its foamy 
 showers ; the summit of Mont Blanc, with its eternal 
 snows, and over which the sun casts a rosy light ; 
 the Black Forest, with its long rows of dark pine- 
 trees, where the shadows and the silence invite to 
 meditation — yet in the recesses of your memory there 
 is a spot, sacred as a sanctuary, which treasures the 
 land where your early years were passed ; the tree, 
 which lent its shade to your cradle ; the place where 
 your heart first opened to love ; or that part of 
 the heavens under which you breathed your first 
 prayers. 
 
 We say that life is sad, 3'et we cherish the recol- 
 lection of our early years. To the natural curiosity 
 of cliildren, which continues through all our lives in 
 some degree ; to the desire of being entertained, and 
 of being separated from the daily realities of life, the 
 pen of Alexander Dumas was always directed, and so 
 successfully, that his works form in themselves not 
 only a library, but a literature. When he was at 
 the summit of his fame, at the period when his 
 imagination was in such vigour that he was publishing 
 ten stories at the same time, filling the magazines of 
 Europe and America, and startling the press by 
 showering his fertile pages like snowflakes from a 
 winter cloud, I read " The Three Musketeers," 
 clumsily translated into Spanish, and published in 
 
HIS LIFE-LIKE CHARACTERS. 207 
 
 what was then a most important journal, El He- 
 raldo. I can never forget the impression left upon 
 my mind by the reading of that book. The 
 characters are life-like, and stand out in such high 
 relief, that I seemed to see them, to speak to them, 
 to distinguish their features and manners, and even 
 to compare them with real persons among my 
 acquaintances. So absorbing was my interest in the 
 story, that I watched for each new number with 
 feverish impatience to read the end of these adventures, 
 as if the}'- were intimately connected witli some one 
 beloved, with my former friends, with my nearest 
 relations, with my own soul. 
 
 I am not able to judge of the imperfections of the 
 
 style because of my own imperfect studies, and of the 
 
 very indifferent manner in which the work has been 
 
 translated, I was not then aware that an intelligence 
 
 so exalted should have furnished ideas more profound, 
 
 and compositions more perfect. I needed, above all, 
 
 the opportunity of comparing, and consequently of 
 
 judging correctly. But that exciting narrative ; that 
 
 flashing style ; those personages, so boldly described ; 
 
 those scenes, so marvellously woven together; that 
 
 ever-increasing interest in the story — all this worked 
 
 upon my imagination, and by the magic of art the 
 
 fictitious world was changed into the world of truth, 
 
 and poetry became as real as society or as nature. 
 
 It must, however, be admitted that we need not 
 expect to find in Alexander Dumas that which we 
 
2o8 ALEXANDER DUMAS. 
 
 meet with in poets and in writers of the first order — 
 ideas. Those analyses of the human heart, which 
 convert a novel of Balzac into a philosopliical work, 
 are opposed to the lightness of Duraas. Balzac 
 enters into descriptions of life like a naturalist into 
 the fields, with his microscope and his instrument for 
 examining insects in his hands, and with a fixed 
 resolution to study. Dumas comes like a satyr into 
 the meadows, with the determination to repose in the 
 shade, to chase the nymphs, to feast upon grapes, to 
 drink wine to intoxication, to laugh even to delirium, 
 and to amuse himself and grow giddy with Bacchanalian 
 verses. This is truly a rare phenomenon. This 
 man, who is wanting in profundity of thought, is 
 also deficient in poetic inspiration. We must not 
 seek in his writings those highly- coloured pictures 
 and those powerful intonations which are traced by 
 Lord Byron, nor the immortal irony with which 
 Henri Heine laughed at his time. To have been 
 o-ifted wáth the poetic fire of the one, Dumas must 
 have had more genius ; and to have had the uncer- 
 tainties of the other, more talent. His is perhaps a 
 remarkable individuahty ; without suitable ideas, 
 without relevancy of style ; the creator of a world and 
 of personages, which sometimes resemble the world 
 and the personages moved by the machinery of an 
 oro-an for the amusement of children ; but he is never- 
 theless always elegant and enchanting, capable of 
 writing a hundred striking and highly dramatic stories, 
 
WITHOUT SELF-RESPECT. 209 
 
 without either descriptions or reflections, and with 
 the most slender of arguments. 
 
 I have said that Dumas was a distinct individuality, 
 and this word completely describes the man. So 
 excessive were his conceit and egotism that he never 
 troubled himself to conform to tlie society in which he 
 lived. Without contradicting its ideas he contra- 
 dicted its habits. He believed that everything was 
 permissible to genius, when in reality all is for- 
 bidden to it, since the sword of envy is continual!}' 
 pointed at its shortcomings. He imagined that 
 thougli deficient in self-respect he could inspire 
 respect in others. He considered life as a matter of 
 small importance, the events of which could be made 
 to turn at his pleasure, as plots, dramas, histories, and 
 romances were constructed by his pen. He never sought 
 to conceal his fickleness, his low deligfhts, nor his ill- 
 temper, and did not scruple to expose his private . 
 affairs and his opinions. He collected around him a 
 little court of parasites, whom he fancied would 
 extend his fame ; but, on the contrary, they maligned 
 and degraded him. He ¡was garrulous, foppish, 
 feeble, and untruthful, telling many false stories of 
 his travels, to make his own life seem like a romance ; 
 and wasted, in injuring his reputation after this 
 fashion, more talent than would have been required 
 to immortalize himself. In many respects childish, 
 society treated him like a child badly brought up. 
 And with those surpassing talents which the French 
 
 14 
 
ALEXANDER DUMAS. 
 
 possess for caricature, a satirical publication once re- 
 presented liim with a great lump on his curly head, 
 a tambourine in his hand, and a baby's feeding-cloth 
 under his chin, saying, " Here is a child who gives 
 much anxiety — to his son." It was a sharp dash of 
 Attic salt, for his son was really much troubled by 
 his follies. 
 
 In many ways he carried his imprudences to 
 excess. There was at that time in the Parisian 
 theatres a celebrated actress, whose chief talent was 
 silence. Being unable to affect her audience with 
 the charms of language, she tried to please them 
 with her eyes, her limbs, and her graceful attitudes. 
 It became necessary for this mute young person to 
 learn French, in order to revive the interest of the 
 Prench people, who were already tired of her move- 
 ments and monotonous exercises, which principally 
 consisted in being fastened to a barebacked horse 
 (like one of Lord Byron's heroes), and going no 
 farther than from the front of the stage to behind the 
 scenes. To learn the language, the actress had 
 recourse to Alexander Dumas ; and after some days, 
 on the shelves of all the photographers appeared 
 photographs, apparently taken from life, which in- 
 formed the Parisian public that Alexander Dumas 
 gave French lessons in his shirt-sleeves, with his 
 pupil on his knee. The affair caused much scandal, 
 though Paris is not very easily scandalized. His 
 family, consisting of his son, a very grave person, and 
 
BARON BRISSE. 211 
 
 of his daug-liter, who writes devout and holy books — 
 in fact, all his relations, were thrown into great 
 trouble. His children insisted upon their father 
 taking up the matter, and bringing an action against 
 the daring artist. The photographs were condemned, 
 as contrary to good morals. But Dumas was con- 
 demned also, for the photographer produced a letter 
 from him from Frankfort, asking for the photo- 
 graphs, in order to spread the story throughout all 
 Germany. 
 
 Everything in this world passes away, and, like 
 all else, the glory of Baron Brisse has departed. 
 Xot long ago he was the protagonist of Paris, the 
 man in the fashion, certainly more read than any other 
 author. His works resembled those of Victor Huofo. 
 in that they were written in short sentences; but 
 these sentences were receipts for cookery, directions 
 for the kitchen, a sublime chemistry of sauces. This 
 illustrious personage, who appeared daily in the 
 periodicals and in the theatres, reminded one of those 
 men of the Eoman Empire who went from banquet 
 to banquet, using a feather to provoke vomiting, after 
 which they returned to eat again, crowned with 
 flowers. In order to facilitate the evaporations of 
 the wine they devoured great quantities of food ; 
 amongst other dishes, they favoured the eels of the 
 patrician tanks, fed upon the flesh of their slaves, 
 raising digestion to the heights of a philosophical 
 system, gorging and drinking without truce or ter- 
 
 14—2 
 
ALEXANDER DUMAS. 
 
 mination, till the day in which they were pierced hy 
 the swords of the barbarians. 1 was wrong — Baron 
 Brisse was merely ridiculous, not wicked. Grirardin, 
 who at one time tried to excuse him in La Liberté, 
 afterwards treated him wdth much contempt on 
 ascertaining that, trading on the reputation given to 
 him by that journal, he begged hundreds of bottles of 
 wine from the vineyard owners, cows and oxen from 
 graziers, food from hotels, and refreshment from the 
 cafés. In consequence of this he reigned only for 
 a year. And Dumas, the great Dumas, the gifted 
 novelist, the illustrious writer, lyric poet, dramatic 
 author, one of the glories of France, one of the highest 
 reputations of the age, envied the fame of Brisse, 
 and wrote vigorous articles to prove that he himself 
 was a much better cook ! 
 
 And he who professed to be the Plutarch of Gari- 
 baldi, who pretended to have placed a stone on the 
 great work of Italian independence, tells us that he 
 did not visit Italy to admire the pictures, nor to 
 study the secrets of the plastic art in the outlines of 
 beautiful statuary, nor to breathe the perfumed air 
 from the Alpine heights, nor to watch the play of light 
 among the waves of the Adriatic — but in order to 
 improve his knowledge of cookery, to expend the 
 flower of his genius upon the method of preparing 
 Neapolitan macaroni. And descending from dignity . 
 to buffoonery, he offered his books and periodicals as 
 a prize to whoever would take tickets for a masked 
 
HIS FALSE CONCEPTION OF LIFE. 213 
 
 ball, Xever did an enemy rob another of his fame 
 with the insane pleasure with which Alexander Dumas 
 stripped himself of his literary crown. 
 
 All these faults proceeded from numerous mistakes, 
 and an erroneous conception of life. Dumas imagined 
 that genius could follow one pathway and life an- 
 other, without mutual injury. He fancied that the 
 ideal could reign above in higher regions, in infinity, 
 without illuminating, without giving vitality to those 
 daily actions whose thread forms the whole web of 
 our existence. And a man of genius ought to feel 
 his own power, and elevate himself to an almost 
 sacred position. In truth, evil mingles continuall}' 
 in all our actions, in every work of our existence ; 
 and although in small portions, it corrupts and 
 poisons it as if with a corrosive virus, and the intel- 
 ligence is deeply penetrated with this uneasiness ; 
 the distinction is soon lost between good and evil, 
 the sensibility becomes deadened, and the whole life 
 of the man is given up to the force of his own imagi- 
 nation. He receives no new light upon his actions, 
 for poet and poem, artist and his work, are enveloped 
 in the stupefying vapours of vice, which ruin his 
 judgment. To be untruthful in a book of travels, 
 to falsify fact in a historical work, appears at first 
 sight but a light matter ; yet it is much more serious 
 when we reflect on its frequency, and on the enfee- 
 bling efiect it has on one's mental powers. And, 
 without doubt, a deliberate falsehood deprives a book 
 
214 ALEXANDER DUMAS. 
 
 of all authority, as proving the immorality of the 
 writer. Such a work is useless, or worse than use- 
 less, though it may be a laboured creation of thought, 
 though it may send forth rays which flash from the 
 brain through a great effort, if they do not bear with 
 them some of the light of conscience — a higher mora- 
 lity in the customs of society, a little consolation for 
 the troubles of existence. I do not say that art is a 
 moral work like a sermon, or useful as a teaching. 
 Art has for its principal object the realization of a 
 beautiful conception. But let us not forget that art 
 is no exception from the general laws of life, nor is it 
 a wandering comet, separated from the infinite orbit 
 of justice. In this, as in all cases, evil eventually 
 produces deformity. 
 
 Everybody believed he had a right to cast a stone 
 at the triumphal car of Alexander Dumas when he 
 entered as a conqueror by the via sacra of literature. 
 This would have actually happened in the ancient 
 world, if, when the people anxiously expected the 
 coming of a conqueror — one of their own heroes — 
 instead of seeing him enter clothed with a purple 
 mantle, and wearing the crown of laurels, they had 
 beheld him in the garb of a harlequin, and with an 
 ape upon his shoulder ! 
 
 Victor Hugo understands far better the nature of 
 genius, and the character of the public. He from an 
 island carved out a sepulchre which is a throne of 
 glory, and from thence he shot forth the lightnings 
 
HIS XUMEROUS WORKS. 215 
 
 OÍ' his genius, heard the applause brought him by 
 the waves, and beheld, while living, the glorious 
 spectacle of his own immortality. 
 
 But even if Dumas had been gifted with the pro- 
 found genius of Calderón, united to the facility of 
 Lope, ihe lofty thoughts of Shakspeare, and the 
 flowinf>- languasre of Petrarch, the world would think 
 him a buffoon, not from any want of inteUigence, but 
 from the errors of his own life. The journalists used 
 every day to say something about Dumas in their 
 lightest pages ; and the gamins of Paris called him 
 familiarly " uncle Dumas." And yet this man filled 
 an entire generation with his works. He wrote a 
 library with his pen, created types which we carry in 
 our retinas, and profoundly affected us in the theatre 
 with the overwhelming ambition of Darlington, with 
 the brutal passion of Antony, with the dream of 
 Catherine Howard in her pantheon, and the ven- 
 tanee of Christina of Sweden at Fontainebleau ; 
 pictures full of Kght and of shadow, pictures which 
 forcibly represent the boldest types of the romantic 
 school. 
 
 He was a man who always remained a child, one 
 who compromised in that war of giants the struggle 
 for the poetry of nature against the poetry of the 
 academy, breaking the chains of all literary codes, and 
 loudly proclaiming liberty; ardent and daring even 
 to folly, like a hero in the war of his age against 
 past ages ; an enthusiast in his opinions, even to the 
 
2i6 ALEXANDER DUMAS. 
 
 weaving of crowns of laurel for his rivals and liis 
 enemies. A lover of the drama, he proved himself 
 able to reanimate the theatre. To accomplish this 
 purpose he chose pieces of lively interest, characters 
 of a strongly marked individuality, descriptions of 
 unbridled passions, which though without the arti- 
 ficial rules of poetic conventionality, followed the in- 
 spirations of fancy in its native purity, and were 
 powerful enough to awaken artistic attention. And 
 in this struggle he had, as in all literary battles, to 
 sustain implacable hatred. In material wars they 
 discharge cannons, and shed blood ; in these artistic 
 contests they disperse calumnies, and slay reputations. 
 'Jims it is no marvel that Dumas was so much calum- 
 niated. The incomprehensible puerilities of his life 
 much injured the prestige of his talent. The fever of 
 creatina; took vio-our from his creations. He was 
 extremely grand superficially, but shallow in reality. 
 In his eagerness to produce literary works he brought 
 them out imperfect. Lope de Yega also acted in this 
 fashion ; but Lope de Vega was born in another age, 
 and with another genius. The work for humanity in his 
 time was not so grand as it is at present, and not so 
 much overcome with its own gravity. Suffering 
 himself to be carried away by his own inspiration, he 
 erected figures, personifications, characters, immortal 
 individualities. His numerous stories still serve for 
 materials for the theatre. In looking at his inex- 
 haustible conceptions, they seem like a virgin forest. 
 
HIS PARENTAGE. 217 
 
 notwithstanding that tliree centuries have passed, 
 during which his successors have been cutting them 
 down. Lope left thousands of sketches, which his 
 followers have converted into pictures ; thousands of 
 stones scarcely polished from whence wonderful statues 
 have been chiselled. But besides. Lope as a great 
 poet, possessed in a high degree the ñiculty of combi- 
 nation. His ideas were interwoven in verses of a light- 
 ness and a wonderful brilliancy. They were like clear- 
 set diamonds, which shot forth sparkles of all colours. 
 Dumas came into the world too late to possess so 
 great a fecundity, which alone belongs to primitive 
 epochs, during which, above all other necessities, is 
 felt the necessity of producing and creating. Dumas 
 has not left us new types ; on the contrary, he has 
 remade the old ones. Dumas did not imagine argu- 
 ments ; he took and adopted them. Dumas did not 
 conceive the perfect plot, which of itself alone so 
 often constitutes a poem. 
 
 Dumas was born the 24th of July, 1802. His 
 grandfather, the Marquis Dary, married a negress 
 called Trinnette Dumas. The fruit of this union was 
 the father of the poet, a mulatto. There was cer- 
 tainly in the blood — in the restless genius, in the 
 fecundity of the novelist's imagination — something of 
 the characteristics of his grandmother. And of course, 
 living in an age which cried out with so much con- 
 temptuous pride against Dumas for his singularities, 
 his enemies did not fail to observe on the conditions 
 
2l8 ALEXANDER DUMAS. 
 
 of his race and the colour of his blood. One day 
 Balzac, who was continually pursued by his creditors, 
 complained to an editor who was paying him poorly 
 for a book. The other said, " I pay you the same as I 
 pay Dumas." On which Balzac retorted angrily, " I 
 will have nothing. Keep your money, and give me 
 back my manuscript, since you have dared to place 
 me on a level with that mulatto." 
 
 In fact, Dumas showed in his person many of the 
 characteristics of the negro race. He was tall, cor- 
 pulent, nervous, formed for Herculean labours. His 
 complexion was dark and pale, almost of copper- 
 colour, and his hair curly. He had projecting eyes, 
 a narrow forehead, open nostrils, and thick lips. 
 Self-satisfaction was strongly marked on his counte- 
 nance ; there was irony in his glance and in his smile, 
 something infantile in his whole bearing and his 
 manner, a sort of puerility in his old age, like one of 
 those fruits which never arrive at maturity. And he 
 was the son of a man who led the life of a hero — a 
 life of struggles and of personal sacrifices. The father 
 of Alexander Dumas was at the wars of the French 
 Eepublic in 1793. The revolutionary hurricane had 
 passed over France, awakening the strongest passions 
 and infusing heroic greatness into the souls of the 
 generation of that epoch. The country and liberty 
 renewed on the banks of the Rhine the marvels of 
 Salamis and of Platssa. The soldiers, almost without 
 food and clothing, intoxicated with the divine idea of 
 
HIS HEROIC FATHER. 219 
 
 justice, excited themselves to a mad enthusiasm with 
 the song of liberty which then resounded in all 
 quarters, set out for the frontier to encounter the 
 regular troops, strong, disciplined, directed by kings 
 and nobles, who appeared to be invincible in their 
 severe majesty. The courage of the people was in- 
 disputable, their determination unflinching, and their 
 victory was the miracle of the age. With them the 
 jather of Dumas received the baptism of blood, and 
 entered into the rank of heroes. Eising from one grade 
 to another, and proving his valour in every battle, he 
 was advanced to the post of General, and became one 
 of the companions of Hoche. In the time of the 
 Empire he retired from the army, and lived and died 
 in poverty at the beginning of this centur3\ Alex- 
 ander Dumas never knew his father. He was born in 
 1SÜ.2, and his father died in IS06. At so tender an 
 age it is impossible to preserve the recollection and 
 the image of those who are most beloved ; and doubt- 
 less_^ the man born in the free air of America, nurtured 
 among the rude clamours of battle, vigorous as a tree 
 of the Xew World rooted in the soil of Europe— a 
 contemporary of great epochs and a witness of mighty 
 actions — a hero in those camps from whence proceeded 
 a new idea and a new existence — faithful to a most 
 noble cause, withdrew in a season of servile obedience 
 and of luxury, when camps were like towns and 
 soldiers like ordinary citizens — withdrew from this 
 inglorious life of inaction, living in poverty, being 
 
220 ALEXANDER DUMAS. 
 
 faithful to his convictions, and clying in sad loneli- 
 ness, almost an exile, preserving the worship of his 
 recollections. The hrave father of Dumas, had he 
 lived, would have been a hviug example and a lesson 
 which would have inspired the poet with nobler 
 thoughts, and led him to higher aspirations. 
 
 The early part of his life was devoted to the culti- 
 vation and development of his muscular strength and 
 his naturally powerful physique. He was a good 
 horseman, skilled in the use of fire-arms, and 
 active in the chase ; a lover of all bodily exercises, 
 much addicted to a wandering life in the country, 
 where he contracted that poetic vigour which after- 
 wards took possession of his mind ; and it was thus 
 he preserved the perfect health for which he was 
 remarkable. 
 
 Dumas soon felt the desire to be known, which is 
 common to most men of talent, and at the age of 
 eighteen he became a clerk in the office of a notary. 
 A friend of his, a Parisian, wlio discovered his tastes 
 and capabilities, advised him to make the theatre his 
 profession. Dumas wrote several short pieces, which 
 were sent to Paris, and refused by all the theatres. 
 Not discouraged by these failures, he went to the 
 great capital. His friends procured him letters of in- 
 troduction to influential persons, amongst them to 
 the generals of the Empire, and others, adherents of 
 the Restoration. Nobody took any notice of him 
 except General Foy, who, seeing the youth had a very 
 
THE STRUGGLES OF GEXIUS. 
 
 favourable testimonial, procured him an appointment 
 in the household of the Duke of Orleans, with an 
 annual salary of twelve hundred francs. " To-da}' I 
 live upon my letter," said Dumas ; " to-morrow I will 
 live after my own fashion." And soon he offered a 
 new dramatic work to the Ambigú. Being associated 
 with others in this first- accepted piece, he only re- 
 ceived for his own share four francs for the price of 
 representation. Not long after he presented another 
 drama to the Gymnasium, and for this he gained two 
 more francs. 
 
 It is impossible to describe or to imagine how 
 much a young man of ability suffers during struggles 
 of tliis nature. He is aware that he carries the world 
 in his brain, a poem in his language, a great glory in 
 his life, possibly new light for his epoch, and honour 
 for his country. And yet he is unable to attract public 
 attention towards himself, cannot even fix that of his 
 own friends. He has but an obscure name, to which 
 nobody listens. If he dares to show any talent in 
 conversation, he is taken for a pedant. He lays his 
 manuscript upon the table of an editor, or the director 
 of a theatre, and they will not even look at it. He 
 becomes discouraged in the struggle, is exhausted by 
 lieart-sickness and despair, often begins to doubt him- 
 self, to lose all faith in his own powers, and in his 
 depression and disappointment reaches the point 
 whicli annihilates his hopes, and is the suicide of his 
 genius. What a stormy life is that of letters ! A 
 
ALEXANDER DUMAS. 
 
 Herculean labour to open a pathway ; a Titanic 
 wrestle for existence. The world's justice, universal 
 appreciation, is not attained by victory, as on the field 
 of battle ; it is won by death, as in martyrdom ! 
 
 Dumas had previously written a drama of" great 
 interest, " Christina of Sweden." ilis detractors said 
 he took it from some celebrated German memoirs ; 
 but the dramatic author must gather his arguments 
 from history and romances;, as the sculptor takes his 
 stone from the bosom of nature. Baron Taylor was 
 then manager of the Theatre Franjáis. Few men in 
 Paris have been so celebrated as this Baron Taylor, 
 and for several years I endeavoured to investigate the 
 cause of this celebrity, without being able to ascer- 
 tain it. I asked many persons connected with the 
 press, with the Grovernment, and also men of let- 
 ters, and no one was able to satisfy my curiosity. 
 Everybody acknowledged that he was celebrated, but 
 no one was aware of the reason of his reputation. 
 There was no literary banquet without his presidency, 
 no burial without his discourse, no first representation 
 except under his auspices, no festival or rejoicing 
 without his presence. Baron Taylor laid his protect- 
 ing hand over the head of young Dumas, and pro- 
 mised to produce his drama in the Theatre Franjáis. 
 But just at this time there was a funeral, and, as I 
 have said, there could be no funeral of importance 
 without the presence of Baron Taylor — certainly no 
 academic funeral. It was then proposed to bury the 
 
ENTHUSIASM. 
 
 223 
 
 ohelisk of Luxor, hewn from the stones of the first 
 volcanic days of Creation, enriched with hieroglypliics 
 which preserve the early secrets of antique civiliza- 
 tion, gilded by the sun of the desert, sadly placed as 
 a tree transplanted on the gloomy banks of the Seine, 
 under the winding-sheet of eternal clouds ; and as the 
 funeral cortege was to accompany the great corpse 
 from the Nile to the Seine, it was impossible for 
 Baron Taylor to be absent on such an occasion. 
 Then Dumas saw all his hopes vanish of a represen- 
 tation in the Theatre Franjáis. A dramatic author 
 said to him, " Do not fancy you can have your works 
 represented w^hile you are without fortune." It was 
 a great cruelty towards the young man, and a real 
 injustice to the poet. At length, in the followinn- 
 season, "Henri Trois"was represented. 
 
 Then came the days of July ; Dumas was twent}-- 
 eight years of age. His impressionable nerves 
 became more irritable than nsual. His enthusiasm 
 burned in his heart. Eecollections of his early 
 Republican education thronged upon his memorj-. 
 The warrior's life tempted and seduced him, as it was 
 natural that the idea of greatness should take pos- 
 session of the soul of a son of nature, accustomed to 
 the liberty of the fields. Dumas heard the booming 
 of the cannon, the whistling of the balls, the sounding 
 of the attack, the shouting of the multitude ; and he 
 rushed into the street determined to struggle to the 
 utmost, like a hunter accustomed to fatigue. There 
 
224 ALEXANDER DUMAS. 
 
 are maii}^ who attribute the almost incredible heroism 
 of Dumas to political ambition. I do not share this 
 belief. If he had had political ambition, instead of 
 the wild and irregular habits of an artist, his manners 
 would have been marked by the decent gravity which 
 becomes deep thinkers. If Dumas had been really 
 ambitious, he would have commenced by putting his 
 own house in order, and thus proving his capacity for 
 ruling a republic. I have always believed that men 
 of great imagination are not suited for the govern- 
 ment of the State. Certain qualities are only pos- 
 sessed at the expense of others ; the lion cannot have 
 the voice of the nightingale ; and as bodies contain 
 organs in harmony with the ministry of nature, so 
 talents have faculties in harmony with their social 
 ministry. When one ascends to metaphysical heights 
 in the sublime regions of eternal harmony, and is 
 moved by the living source of inspirations — bathed 
 in the pure dew of ideas, and accustomed to things 
 higher and nobler than those of earth, on suddenly 
 descending to the lower spheres one stumbles 
 against all obstacles, and a grain of sand appears an 
 insurmountable barrier. Imagination, sentiment — ■ 
 those flashing inspirations, those lightning ideas, 
 which overwhelm the organism, and shake it with its 
 mysterious electricity — if one be a great poet, a great 
 writer, or a great orator ; if one have something of 
 the divine, something of the artist in one's nature, 
 these qualities will not serve for earthly subjects, for 
 
SOCIETY NEEDS REFORMATION. 225 
 
 the dreary realities of political life. Wings are 
 created for the immensity of the air. On the earth 
 they but embarrass the footsteps ; they circumscribe 
 the pathway. Plato wrote his " Eepublic," but can 
 we be sure he would have been able to govern it ? 
 Demosthenes could inflame a legion with his 
 eloquence, but can we think he could have directed 
 it with his tactics? If each individual would but 
 cultivate his predominating qualities ; if he would but 
 strive for that step on the social ladder which is most 
 suited to his ability ; if he would employ his aptitudes 
 and his activity in those objects for which they were 
 created, the world would be a marvel, a chorus of 
 inefíable harmonies, a return to the blissful days of 
 Eden, Society has much need of reformation in these 
 matters. Instead of appreciating so very highly 
 certain social employments, and despising others as 
 contemptible, it should esteem them all equally, for 
 all contribute to the well-being of the world we 
 inhabit, and to the happiness of the human family. 
 Men ought only to abhor vice and to punish crime. 
 They should regard among the most useful and 
 honourable of social employments that of the labourer, 
 who fertilizes the earth, and eats bread in the sweat 
 of his brow, as so much more noble than a life of 
 wealthy idleness, wasted in sports, dances, banquets, 
 and horse races? I believe, then, that Dumas, 
 knowing himself to be a Poet, did not aspire to be 
 a Minister of State. 
 
 15 
 
226 ALEXANDER DUMAS. 
 
 The theatre and romance were naturally the vast 
 field of his mental activity. He has been reproached 
 with having had coUaborateurs in both departments ; 
 but I declare that all these coUaborateurs lost their 
 brilliancy when they separated from Dumas. And I 
 must add, that all of them united do not weigh in 
 the literary balances of Europe half as much as 
 Dumas weighed alone. And as for plagiarism, we 
 should observe that originality becomes every day more 
 difficult on account of the literary riches we acquire 
 by inheritance, and the great activity of the human 
 intelligence during the three last ages of the increasing 
 reign of liberty of conscience. But as to this accusa- 
 tion of plagiarism, Dumas defended himself in a 
 manner the responsibilit}^ of which I leave to him, 
 and the appreciation of which I leave to his readers. 
 
 On one occasion Dumas said, " Observe that a 
 pirate robs, and that Alexander conquers. In the 
 long run the thief and the hero do the same thing ; 
 but humanity rewards the robber with a gibbet, and 
 places a crown of laurel on the head of the hero. 
 The same thing happens in literature : everything 
 has been already discovered; there is no new 
 Columbus, because there are no new worlds. We 
 have travelled all over the world, and we have not 
 found a new continent ; in like manner, unknown 
 regions can no longer exist in the immensity of 
 human knowledge. We all live in a well-known 
 land ; we ail copy, only that as there are pirates and 
 
ACCUSED OF PLAGIARISM. 227 
 
 heroes, so in literature there are plagiarists and 
 conquerors. I have not robbed, I have conquered." 
 
 The number of those who have pretended to have 
 had a share in the works of Alexander Dumas is 
 almost unlimited. If any credit could be given to 
 his enemies, a single feather would not be left in the 
 wings on which he soared to so high a reputation. I 
 have before me the libel of the pious Mirecourt upon 
 Dumas — Mirecourt," one of the most orthodox of 
 Frenchmen. Here it is : — " Delanone is the author 
 of ' ííapoleon,' signed by Alexander Dumas ; Gerard 
 Nerval andGauthier werethe authors of 'Charles YII. ;' 
 Emile Souvestre the author of 'Antony;' Aniceto 
 Bourgeois the author of ' Theresa/ ' Angela,' and 
 ' Catherine Howard •' Thealon and Courcy the authors 
 of ' Kean ;' the Count Walewski the author of 
 ' Mademoiselle de Belle Isle ;' Leuven and Brunswick 
 the authors of ' Les Demoiselles de Saint Cyr ;' Paul 
 Meurice of 'Ascanio ;' Mallefille of 'Les Deux Dianes ■' 
 Macquet of 'Le Cavalier de Armenthal,' of 'Les 
 Trois Mousquetaires' and of ' La Reine Marguerite ;' 
 Conilhac of ' Les Mémoires d'un Médecin.' " But 
 we should never finish if we attempted to enumerate 
 the works of Dumas, and those of the many said to 
 be his literar}^ assistants. 
 
 For such a task we should require a folio volume ; 
 add to this a list of the most ruinous lawsuits that 
 have ever occurred in the memory of French tribunals. 
 Gaillardet writes a drama ent'.tled " La Tour de 
 
 15 — 2 
 
ALEXANDER DUMAS. 
 
 Nesle ;" as plot, as argument, as a creation of types 
 and personages, the drama is a work of merit ; but 
 the dáiouement is indiíFerently written, and, above all, 
 there is in this drama, notwithstanding its interesting 
 situations and warmth of style, evidence of great 
 inexperience, of much want of theatrical knowledge. 
 Jules Janin, the critic of Le Journal des Dcbafs, 
 attempted to correct it ; but Jules Janin, who knew 
 how to criticize, did not know how to create. He 
 was about to throw away the drama, when Dumas 
 took it in hand, regulated it, polished it, flung over it 
 the golden powder with which he adorned his peculiar 
 style, and the result was a drama which was received 
 enthusiastically. But in consequence of this there 
 followed a lawsuit. Macquet pretended that he 
 wrote " Les Trois Mousquetaires." A new lawsuit. 
 One coUahorateur demanded seventy thousand francs. 
 Another lawsuit. Dumas founded the historic theatre, 
 which he thought he could support with his historic 
 pieces ; the speculation fails, and the creditors fall on 
 him like flies. A lawsuit follows. Merlsem accuses 
 him of literary falsehood, in having published in his 
 periodical, Le Caucase, a kind of plagiarism of his 
 books. This also resulted in a lawsuit. It would 
 be impossible to exaggerate the scandals which 
 accompanied these lawsuits. 
 
 Alexander Dumas did not go unpunished for the 
 two gravest faults of his life^ — two faults for which it 
 would have been most difficult to atone. The first 
 
HIS FRIVOLITY AXD IMPRUDENCE. 229 
 
 vvas, to take life as a continual jest. Life is itself so 
 grave a matter tliat whoever falsifies it becomes 
 corrupt. This great gift of life must not be received 
 as false money ; on the contrary, we should accept it 
 as a metal which we are bound to purify in the fire of 
 conscience, and to refine eternally. Each one of us 
 should endeavour to elevate his own life, so that it 
 should be a model for the lives of others. And when, 
 after all this striving, a man has succeeded in thus 
 elevating himself, his life becomes like a lighthouse, 
 that cannot be hidden or extinguished — a star, to 
 which all others turn as to a centre ; but nobody 
 can feel any respect for a person whose conduct is not 
 worthy of esteem. 
 
 One day Alexander Dumas presented himself at a 
 ball given by the Duke of Orleans, with a lady whom 
 he had no right to introduce into such society. The 
 Duke said, " I believe, M. Dumas, you have brought 
 your wife to my house?" To escape from such an 
 embarrassing position, which would have betrayed 
 ignorance of, or an indifference to, all social propriety, 
 and in order not to fall into disgrace with the Duke, 
 Dumas was obliged to marry. But he immediately 
 separated from his wife, promising her five hundred 
 francs a month for income. This, however, he never 
 paid ; and one day the woman went to him and com- 
 plained of this neglect. " Ah !" he said, " so you do 
 not find five hundred sufficient ? Then I will allow 
 you one thousand." Of course, according to his 
 
230 ALEXANDER DUMAS. 
 
 manner of performing his promises, lie miglit have 
 given her a million daily without difficulty. 
 
 At another time he quarrelled with Louis Philippe, 
 because he put off giving him that red boidon of the 
 Legion, for which Frenchmen would make almost any 
 sacrifice. Dumas wrote some bitter epigrams against 
 his ancient protector, which, as may be supposed, 
 deprived him of the King's favour. He afterwards 
 petitioned the Duke of Orleans to intercede for him. 
 One day, when Louis Philippe was at the Trianon, his 
 eldest son concealed the poet behind a curtain. When 
 the King passed, the Duke of Orleans withdrew the 
 curtain, and Alexander Dumas appeared kneeling, with 
 his hands folded in supplication. " Schoolboy, school- 
 boy," said Louis Philippe, pulling him sharply by the 
 ear. Alas ! is it for this that God gives a glowing 
 imagination, and places a lyxQ in the hands of those 
 privileged beings we call poets ! 
 
 I have said that informality was one of the faults 
 of Dumas, and now I must add that a commercial 
 spirit was the other. I do not believe he was the 
 plagiarist his enemies assert. I do not say that all 
 his works were written, during his thirty years of 
 activity, by coUaborateurs. On the contrary, I have 
 already observed, that separated from him his coUa- 
 borateurs achieved nothing brilliant. Perhaps comets 
 are loose hairs from the sun, which fall from his fiery 
 head ; when united to the great focus, they form with 
 him, the light ; separated from the fountain of light, 
 
BRILLIANCY OF HIS WRITINGS. 231 
 
 they are but wandering filaments, materia cosmicUt 
 which soon vanish — a gas, a splendour, nothing. But 
 Dumas did not content himself with producing, he 
 was not satisfied without creating, and living with 
 his creations. He desired to realize an extravagant 
 luxury, such as Providence scarcely ever permits to 
 persons of great geniu,s who possess so much wealth 
 in their own intelligence. This obliged him to make 
 enormous outlays. To meet these expenses he 
 was forced to enter into obligations, and these obliga- 
 tions led him to absurd associations. From these 
 associations many supposed he received his light ; but 
 they were in reality but atoms in that whirlwind 
 which I will not call ideas, but fantastic creations. 
 The sublime privilege of genius should be to aspire 
 not to gold, but to glory ; not to ephemeral enjoy- 
 ments, but to immortality. 
 
 Probably but few men have been born with so 
 many and such brilliant qualities as Alexander Dumas. 
 His dramas are somewhat deficient in finish, but they 
 are highly interesting. His novels contain nothing 
 ideal, but much that is enchanting. Had he taken 
 time for reflection, he would have produced some per- 
 fect work. With such great rapidity this was impos- 
 sible. His creations are meteors when they might 
 have been stars. Here we find a poet of a wonderful 
 imagination, of an extraordinary power, fallen in the 
 mire of the Parisian streets ; punished for not having 
 considered life as a reality, art as a religion, genius as 
 
232 ALEXANDER DUMAS. 
 
 a ministry, the world as a tribunal, and history, that 
 conscience of humanity, as a judge. 
 
 We should remember that the earth is a temple 
 filled by the Almighty, that each individual is a 
 priest, that each profession bears a divine character; 
 that we should employ all our powers in the develop- 
 ment of great ideas, and that responsibility grows in 
 the same proportion as merit, in the measure in which 
 the sovereign faculties increase, in the way in which 
 applause and glory become greater. If there is a 
 life replete with moral lessons, it is surely that of 
 Alexander Dumas. His punishment was a great and 
 salutary warning. 
 
EMILE GIRARDIN. 
 
EMILE GiRARDlN. 
 
 TT7HEN I take a newspaper in my hand, and glance 
 ' * over its columns ; when I consider the diversity 
 of its matter, and the riches of its contents, I cannot 
 help feeling a rapturous pride in my epoch, and a 
 thrill of compassion towards the ages which were 
 unacquainted with this powerful channel for human 
 intelligence, this most extraordinary of human 
 creations. 
 
 I can comprehend societies without steam engines, 
 without the electric telegraph, without the thousand 
 marvels which modern industry has sown in the 
 triumphal path of progress, adorned by so many 
 immortal monuments. But I cannot understand a 
 society without this immense volume of the daily 
 press, in which is registered by a legion of writers, 
 who should be held in honour by the people, our 
 troubles, our vacillations, our apprehensions, and the 
 degree of perfection at which we have arrived in the 
 work of reaUzing an ideal of justice upon the face of 
 the earth. 
 
236 EMILE GIRARDIN. 
 
 I can understand the monastic life, even to the 
 isolation of a man who renounces the intellectual 
 pleasures of society and the delight to be found in 
 family affection, in order to consecrate himself to 
 religion, to science, to charity, to meditation, to 
 idleness, if he will, in one of those moral islands which 
 we call monasteries. But I cannot understand this 
 man resigning the reading of newspapers, giving up 
 his daily co-operation in thought with the brain of 
 all humanity, his sympathy with the hearts of his 
 fellows, the mingling of his life with the great ocean 
 of human existence, his interest in the agitation of 
 its waves by the breath of new ideas. The ancient 
 Chinese had a powerful institution — that of historians. 
 Shut up in a palace surrounded by gardens, the 
 Chinese historians devoted themselves in silence to 
 the task of writing down daily events, with the severe 
 majesty of the judges of those times, of the dispensers 
 of immortality. Beside the celestial dynasty of 
 Emperors was placed this severe dynasty of tribunals. 
 They formed something more than a magistracy, they 
 were a priesthood, and they dealt with all as if they 
 were the representatives of the human conscience, 
 and the emissaries of the divine justice. Their 
 ministry consisted in engraving on immortal pages, 
 to be preserved as the heritage of generations, the 
 most important acts of the Empire. No people ever 
 honoured their priesthood as the Chinese, who have 
 lived in perpetual infancy, honoured these historians. 
 
NEWSPAPERS. 237 
 
 I think that modern peoples ought in a similar 
 manner to honour their journalists. For these excep- 
 tional witnesses know what rajs "of light cross each 
 other on our horizon ; these public judges prescribe 
 rules which form the judgment of the human con- 
 science upon all actions. The passion of parties is of 
 small importance ; without it perhaps we should not 
 be able to comprehend this prodigious work, which, 
 like all human works, necessitates the steam of a 
 great passion to set it in motion. The studied silence 
 upon some subjects matters little, nor the partiality 
 shown on others, nor the injustice, even to falsehood, 
 so often manifested ; for from this battle of spiritual 
 forces results the total life, as from the shadows we 
 perceive the harmony of a picture. It w^ould be 
 better if we had not these evils, so we should be more 
 happy if we had not either physical infirmities or 
 moral misfortunes ; but it is as difficult to rectify 
 society as nature, and its laws are as complicated as 
 tlie mechanical laws of the universe, and at times as 
 fatal. And it is a fatality of the social organism that 
 progress encounters obstacles in the great efforts 
 designed to advance it ; the past, with its errors, rises 
 acrainst all kinds of advancement, and makes the 
 utmost efforts to destroy it. But from the cloudy 
 and intricate world of falsehood arises a luminQus 
 ether, which forms the world of truth. However, if 
 all the different institutions, of which people are so 
 proud, were one day called to judgment, and if each 
 
238 EMILE GIRARDIN. 
 
 of them showed both the good and the evil they have 
 done, perhaps not one of them could retire from the 
 trial as pare as the press, and none would more 
 justly merit a blessing from humanity. 
 
 "What a wonderful work is a newspaper — a work of 
 art and science ! Six ages have not been enough to 
 complete the Cathedral of Cologne, and one day suf- 
 fices to finish the immense labour of a newspaper. 
 We are unable to measure the degrees of life, of light, 
 of progress, that are to be found in each leaf of the 
 immortal book which forms the press. We find in a 
 journal everything, from the notices relating to the 
 most obscure individuals, to the speech which is deli- 
 vered from the highest tribunal, and which afi'ects all 
 intelligences; from the passing thought excited by 
 the account of a ball, to the criticism on those works 
 of art destined to immortality. This marvellous sheet 
 is the encyclopaedia of our time ; an encyclopaedia 
 which necessitates an incalculable knowledge — a know- 
 ledge whose power our generation cannot deny — a 
 knowledge which is as the condensation of the 
 learning of a century. 
 
 When I picture to myself Athens, I fancy her re- 
 splendent with her legions of sculptors and poets; 
 with her assemblies where each discourse was a hymn, 
 with her singers, with that theatre whence were 
 visible the bright waves of the Mediterranean, wdth 
 those processions in which Grecian virgins, crowned 
 with flowers, danced to the music of the citherns; 
 
DICrNITY OF JOURNALISM. 239 
 
 with those statues, which almost realized the perfect 
 idea of plastic beauty ; with those Olympic games, in 
 which snowy steeds drew in gilded cars the players 
 armed with lances, as Jupiter with his lightning; 
 with her schools, in which were taught at the same 
 time, metaphysics, gymnastics, music, and geometry ; 
 with all her life, which was the divine worship of art 
 and beauty ! But, alas ! all that luxury and civiliza- 
 tion saddens me. It was worthless, in that it had no 
 newspapers ; and for sake of the newspaper let us 
 cease to be inhabitants of a city, and be citizens of 
 the world. 
 
 Labourers of the press, modest and obscure writers ! 
 You have never been able to measure the great im- 
 portance of your occupation, because you hve in the 
 midst of it, and consider it almost as a portion of your 
 own being. But, alas I without 3'ou the most illus- 
 trious personages would be lost, the most glorious 
 works would be as bells sounding in space. You bear 
 to each individual the sorrows of all others ; you 
 bring to the afflicted the hopes of all humanity. 
 Your pens are like the electric wires, which unite the 
 most distant regions of our planet. Your ideas re- 
 semble the atoms of air in which our souls respire ; 
 they are the moral atmosphere of the globe. It is 
 necessary to weigh well all the gravity of such a 
 ministry in order to exercise it with becoming gran- 
 deur and dignity. It is one of the most sublime 
 works of which the human understanding is cu- 
 
240 EMILE GIRARDIN. 
 
 pable. Let us speak of one of the soldiers of the 
 press. 
 
 Near the Arc de I'Etoile, in the Avenue du Eoi de 
 Eome, there is a magnificent house, inhabited by one 
 of the first journalists in the world. His name is 
 Emile Girardin, and I shall endeavour to describe 
 him in this imperfect and incomplete sketch. After 
 having portrayed his life, I shall describe the writer 
 I have known in the capital of the world, where his 
 writings are approved by some, condemned by others, 
 but are universally interesting. Emile Girardin is 
 remarkable for having done two very difficult things ; 
 he has called public attention to himself, and after 
 having strongly attracted it, he has fixed it perma- 
 nently. Let us narrate his history. 
 
 His birth was singular. He neither knows the 
 year nor the day in which he entered the world, being 
 the child of unlawful love. When in his daily battles 
 with the pen this misfortune was cruelly flung in his 
 face, he, who in this matter was blameless, said to 
 the Imperial journalists, " Truly my mother was not 
 the only great lady who in the time of the first 
 Empire had children which did not belong to her 
 husband." He himself is uncertain whether he was 
 born in 1802 or in 1806 ; whether his name is Emile 
 Girardin or Emile Celamothe. France takes great 
 interest in all her illustrious men. But this does not 
 prevent them from being annoyed ; on the contrary, 
 the smallest actions of their private lives are publicly 
 
HIS PARENTS. 241 
 
 discussed. Proudlion desired a law of habeas corpus 
 which should protect homes from the entrance of 
 bailiffs, if not a law of habeas animam which should 
 protect private lives from the attacks of biographers. 
 
 Girardin is now sixtj-six years of age, and is in his 
 work what Thiers was in the Assembly, for he has 
 preserved all his youthful fire, all his constancy, 
 all his talent for improvisation, all his energy in 
 labour. 
 
 His education suffered from the misfortune of his 
 origin. One of the greatest evils of illegitimate con- 
 nexions is the necessity of hiding the children — the 
 great pride of the heart, the most precious treasures 
 of holy and lawful affection. A child, which is the 
 glory of a virtuous mother, is changed by immoral 
 parents into a source of remorse in the conscience, 
 and of dishonour before society. 
 
 The parents of Girardin concealed their son in a 
 small house on the Boulevard des Invalides, which 
 was then an exterior suburb of Paris. There he was 
 educated, on the banks of the Seine, among the beau- 
 tiful avenues which adorn the neighbourhood of the 
 city, and the sombre but majestic monuments which 
 record the history of France. 
 
 He passed his first years in a strange school — what 
 may be called a house of baby-boarders. A good 
 woman, Madame Choisel, nursed children confided to 
 her by wealthy families. Some of them were legiti- 
 mate, which is not singular, since French mothei 
 
 16 
 
242 EMI LE GIRAR DIN. 
 
 have contracted the detestable habit of deputing to 
 others the holy task of the rearing of their offspring. 
 Madame Choisel never admitted more than ten little 
 boarders. In the same house there was this boy and 
 a "-irl, the afterwards celebrated Teresa Caburrus, 
 a woman of extraordinary beauty, whose grace and 
 talents had so much influence on the events of the 
 beginning of this century, and whose artifices so 
 much contributed to the fall of the Eepublic. 
 
 The life of the boy Emile was then happy. His 
 parents procured him whatever could satisfy his 
 childish desires. They seldom visited him, but they 
 showed him much affection oq those rare occasions, 
 though they concealed his name and his abode. Some- 
 times a young lady of rare beauty went to see him, 
 in a carriage lined with crimson satin, and lavished 
 upon him her caresses often mingled with tears. 
 Sometimes a tall young soldier, of distinguished ap- 
 pearance and severe countenance, who recommended 
 the boy to the heads of the establishment with soli- 
 citude and an air of imperious protection. 
 
 Madame Choisel and her husband naturally wished 
 to penetrate the mystery which surrounded the child's 
 cradle ; but the city is large, and the investigation 
 of afí'airs of this nature is difficult. And at that time 
 the society was not founded which now exists, with 
 suitable organization, offices, and advertisements in 
 the papers, the business of which consists in ascer- 
 taining the particulars of other people's lives, and in 
 
HIS CHILDHOOD. 243 
 
 paying agents to follow those persons whom some 
 friend or enemy 1ms an interest in concealing. 
 
 The noble pair who felt so much anxiety for Girardin 
 put gold into his hands, but often left sorrow in his 
 innocent heart. The good Madame Choisel burned 
 with impatience to discover the name and position of 
 these mysterious personages. And as there is no 
 place which is unfilled, so there is no doubt which is 
 not resolved, no secret which is not eventually dis- 
 covered in society, where justice is, in the end, the 
 prevailing power in the ceaseless mechanism of the 
 universe. At last the lady disappeared altogether. 
 Emile was left without the brightness of tha eyes 
 which kindled hope in his soul, without the kiss of 
 those lips which left upon his own the sweetness of 
 maternal love, so needed in childhood. This moral 
 eclipse darkened his early years. And later, when the 
 mysteries of life were made clear to his intelligence, 
 he thought that some new fault had restrained his 
 mother from visiting the child of her first error. As to 
 the soldier, he still went occasionally to visit his son, 
 but never alluded by a word to the absence of the lady. 
 
 Who was this tall military man who had the man- 
 ners of a prince ? Girardin did not know, and the 
 owners of the house in which he lived were in equal 
 ignorance. 
 
 o 
 
 At last the mystery was solved. In the suburbs 
 of Paris there is a royal residence rising upon a 
 wooded hill on the banks of the Beine, which looks at 
 
 IG— 2 
 
244 EMILE GIRARDIN. 
 
 that part like a river of Switzerland, from its graceful 
 windings, its broken-up borders, and its bright waters. 
 Marie Antoinette bought this beautiful country man- 
 sion, and the purchase of St. Cloud was as fatal to 
 the dynasty as the purchase of the Queen's cele- 
 brated necklace. Napoleon the First and Napoleon 
 the Third both enjoyed this palace of St. Cloud, 
 which from its vicinity to Paris unites the advantages 
 of the capital and the pleasures of the country. 
 
 One day, when Monsieur Choisel was passing 
 through the shady avenues of St. Cloud, he saw the 
 Emperor's carriage approaching. Everywhere there 
 is a natural curiosity to see the Chief of a State — him 
 who holds in his hand the rights of men and the 
 happiness of the people. It was still more natural to 
 wait and contemplate that extraordinary genius who, 
 over heaps of corpses, had mounted the ruined steps 
 of the French throne, and placed himself on its 
 summit, with the eagle of Jupiter on his sceptre, the 
 laurels of Caesar on his brow, the mantle of Char- 
 lemagne on his shoulders, the dictatorship in his 
 hands, the world for an audience, kings for lacqueys, 
 and for a slave — Victory. At the carriage door of 
 Napoleon the First there was the mysterious pro- 
 tector of Emile, who was a General in the Array, and 
 who filled the pompous position of Chief Huntsman 
 in those Byzantine dignities with which the first 
 Napoleon delighted to compose his Court. From that 
 
COUNTRY LIFE. 24$ 
 
 period ]\Ionsieur and Madame Clioisel called their 
 young ward " Baron." 
 
 But the proximity of his father to the Emperor was 
 likely to be fatal to the future journalist. Napoleon, 
 who considered his troops as an embellishment, and 
 who regulated alike diplomatic treaties between 
 nations and matrimonial alliances between the 
 families of his partisans, insisted on the marriage of 
 the Chief Huntsman. This was the greatest mis- 
 fortune of Emile Girardin. Marriage caused that 
 Chief Huntsman to forget the son of his early affec- 
 tions. The boarding-house became the abode of an 
 Egyptian veteran ; former caresses were changed into 
 cruelties ; luxury gave place to poverty ; and at the 
 age of fourteen, shut up in a poor cottage and with- 
 out any liberty, the afterwards brilliant writer seemed 
 dying of sadness and debility, like a bird without air, 
 or a flower without sunshine. His life was saved by 
 a journey to Normandy. The keen air gave vigour 
 to the enfeebled frame. He beheld the toil of the 
 tillers of the earth, and hardened the hands destined 
 to direct one of the lightest, most flexible, and most 
 delicate pens in all modern literature. 
 
 After four years Girardin abandoned the life of the 
 country — a life of labour, rudeness, and poverty, but 
 beneficial to his health. When he laid down his 
 spade he took up a book ; and in his few leisure 
 moments he wandered into the woods, reading as he 
 
246 EMILE CÍRARDIN. 
 
 walked. He was entirely self-educated ; hence arose 
 those qualities which have never deserted him — the 
 independence which he carried to caprice^ and the 
 self-satisfaction which amounted to egotism. 
 
 He soon broke through the servitude of his life in 
 the country ; for being a man with a real vocation, 
 he felt himself too feeble for labour in the field, but 
 strong to work intellectually. At the age of eighteen 
 he left Normandy, and went to Paris. The peasant 
 lad, by a miracle of his own will, was to be changed 
 into a writer. Paris is an ocean where much is 
 suffocated, but where also those who are skilful social 
 sailors steer safely among the waves and winds. His 
 first idea was to seek his father, and for this purpose 
 he went to the abode of his childhood. Madame 
 Choisel was unable to give him any information. 
 He then went to see the veteran who had sometimes 
 ill- treated him, the soldier of the Pyramids. He 
 advised him not to raise a scandal. After a series of 
 bitter disappointments he cultivated the truty excep- 
 tional faculties with which he had been gifted by 
 nature — talents for the arts of writing and com- 
 position, which he carried to an extraordinary 
 degree. 
 
 That year, 1824, was the epoch of the Eestoration — • 
 a rule half absolute, half parliamentary — and at that 
 period the Palais Eoyal was the centre of Paris. 
 This immense building was always crowded with 
 
HIS FIRST BOOK. 247 
 
 people, filled with shops, cafés, gaming-houses, and 
 idlers ; it was a sort of Babylon of labour, and also 
 of vice. To the indecencies of the place were, how- 
 ever, added reading-rooms and libraries, where the 
 young literary men assembled. In this centre of 
 ideas Girardin began to expand the faculties needful 
 for his moral strusfa-les. 
 
 At last he met his father, who had lived in obscurity 
 during the adversities of the Empire. Although 
 since his marriage he had been so cruelly neglectful 
 of his son, he was not insensible to the appeal of the 
 youth to the heart of his father. Nature recovered 
 her voice and her rights. The General found for his 
 son a position in the office of one of the Ministers of 
 the Eestoration. Then Eraile Girardin wrote a book, 
 which was partly a history of his own life, and to 
 which he gave his own name — " Emile." It has 
 throughout an accent of bitterness, a mocking scep- 
 ticism, a spitefulness, a contempt for the most cur- 
 rent and most admitted maxims and principles, that 
 must give an unfavourable idea of the author, and 
 this so much the more as he has brought forward all 
 these theories as the code of rules for morality in 
 practical life. 
 
 Girardin does not belong to the number of those 
 men who have an ideal in their consciences, which 
 they endeavour to realize by strict morality, and at a 
 great cost in their lives. Girardin has always looked 
 
248 EMILE GIRARDIN. 
 
 more to the real than to the ideal ; and rather than 
 the combination of moral laws, he has regarded those 
 mechanical forces of society by which so frequently 
 enter crime, error, and injustice. He was not born 
 with one of those easy temperaments destined to 
 worship the imaginary or the platonic ; he was born for 
 battle, and in the battle he has often been stained 
 with mire and blood. 
 
 To live and struggle in a city so material as Paris, 
 and in a society so egotistical as that of his time, 
 money was essential. To possess a fortune — a 
 splendid fortune such as he desired — the labour of a 
 writer would not suffice ; commerce alone could 
 supply this necessity. The temple of gold is the 
 Bourse ; the Bourse is the heavens from which fall the 
 silver raindrops of sudden fortune. Girardin collected 
 together some small savings which his father had 
 intended for his majority, left the office in which he 
 had been engaged, entered that of an agent of the 
 Bourse^ and thus proudly reached the door of the 
 temple of fortune. But he was ill received ; Fortune 
 turned her back upon him, and he was ruined. Then 
 he retired and sought his father, who coldly rejected 
 him. He knew not where to seek an asylum. The 
 army surgeons declared his constitution too feeble for 
 military service. Then, without name, without pro- 
 tection, without fortune, without friends, without 
 family ; unable to follow the honourable career of a 
 soldier, disenchanted with his dearest illusions, dis- 
 
HIS FIRST NEWSPAPER. 249 
 
 appointed in his most cherished aspirations ; wounded 
 in heart and mind, abandoned to the bufFetings of 
 fortune in the great city of Paris, where solitude in 
 the midst of tumult is more sad than the solitude of 
 the desert, there came into his mind, like a cloud that 
 should cover his future, like a refuge from the 
 storm — the terrible idea of suicide. 
 
 To combat with a great example the desperate 
 resolve of suicide — to comprehend by a great example 
 the miracles of the will, we have but to remember the 
 poor youth so nearly shipwrecked in the year 1824, 
 whose eloquence now flashes over Paris, and whose 
 writings have a thousand times excited all Europe. 
 His first desire was to possess a name, and for the 
 future he signed " Emile Girardin." His second 
 resolution was to engrave this name in the annals of 
 the press; he wrote a book. His third resolution 
 was to gain for himself an of&cial position, which 
 is often a ladder on which to ascend to rank and 
 fortune. 
 
 Then he thought he would found a newspaper, 
 without money and without contributors — a news- 
 paper destined to reproduce and condense the contents 
 of other journals. He gave this weekly sheet the 
 name of Le Larron. As the result of his first efi'orts 
 in the press, he had to fight two duels. In one he 
 was wounded ; in the other he gave full satisfaction 
 to his adversary on the field — it was his brother. 
 Though both were of the same blood, sons of the 
 
2SO EMILE GIRARDIN. 
 
 same mother, they did not know each other, from 
 their difference of name. Then he renounced the 
 editorship of his first newspaper. 
 
 Eut he was born for the press, and he could never 
 abandon his field of battle. The Restoration was 
 losing itself daily in reactionary shadows, and 
 Girardin established an opposition journal, which h«d 
 distinguished patrons in the Court, amongst those 
 members of the Royal Family who saw the power of 
 the dynasty expending itself against the rocks of un- 
 disciplined and retrograde politics. Girardin's news- 
 paper, with a strenuous opposition, contributed to 
 hasten the catastrophe. Nothing was saved of the 
 ancient monarchy. One of the members of the Royal 
 Family was placed on the throne, saluted by the tam- 
 bours of the National Militia; one who recognised 
 the dogma of the people's sovereignty, written on the 
 barricades with Republican blood. 
 
 The era inaugurated by the Revolution of 1830 
 may be called the mercantile epoch. The ancient 
 regime was overturned, and the new one was not yet 
 victorious ; it seated itself on the throne of the sove- 
 reign, and profaned the altar of justice. All rights 
 were bought and sold as in a vile auction. The /rot^c 
 was the number, the measure, and the ideal of all 
 things. Money was the only monarch of that utili- 
 tarian society. If one wished to be an elector, he 
 must give gold ; to be a deputy, gold ; to be a 
 senator, gold ; to be a juror, gold : and the gold. 
 
THE BENEFIT OF ASSOCIATION. 251 
 
 which is from its nature incorruptible, is a social cor- 
 ruptor when it fills the place of conscience, when it 
 becomes the onl}^ dispenser of right. Girarclin then 
 established a newspaper of useful knowledge, at four 
 francs a year — a journal which was the germ of the 
 press, which on account of its cheapness we may call 
 general, that later and on a larger scale was invented 
 by the same journalist. At the same time he showed 
 his great economic and administrative abilities, found- 
 ing aid societies among the labourers, agricultural 
 banks, and professional schools for the poor. He 
 convinced the numerous subscribers to his Review, 
 that by adding another franc to the four francs paid 
 annually, they should, by the invincible power of 
 association, be able to effect those marvels, of the force 
 of which Fourier had so extreme an opinion as to 
 declare, that if the world would give up the isolation 
 so common among individuals, among classes, among 
 nations, a.mong races, which is at present its principle 
 of war and its law of hatred, and would enter freely 
 into the harmony of association, it would be able to 
 pay with the produce of hens' eggs the National 
 Debt of England. 
 
 But Girardin was soon disenchanted with these 
 humanitarian dreams. His capital idea was to amass 
 a colossal fortune which should give him a gigantic 
 influence. Then he armed, so to speak, a society to 
 establish another and a greater journal. La MusSe des 
 Families. He was the inventor of those monstrous 
 
252 EMILE GIRARDIN. 
 
 advertisements with huge letters and gaudy pictures, 
 with notes of admiration and interrogation, which 
 occupy the corners of the capital of the world, which 
 every trade and business has copied in a greater or 
 less degree, and which gave him the title of " bill- 
 poster," or "placard man," With these means he 
 published an almanac, called T Almanack de France, 
 which brought him a large profit. Then he fought 
 his third duel with an editor who accused him of 
 having betrayed the Government. 
 
 Time passed on, and in the year 1S36 Girardin 
 established La Presse, a purely commercial under- 
 taking, although advocating a political principle. It 
 was half the price of other newspapers, and contained 
 double the amount of printed matter. The entire 
 press was ready to destroy him on this account. One 
 cannot provoke the anger of newspapers without 
 raising up enemies. One cannot create such formi- 
 dable enemies without exposing oneself to a dangerous 
 struggle. The journals began to fling their darts at 
 Girardin. Among these journals was one which had 
 risen above all the others by its honourable reputation 
 and its stoical character, edited by the illustrious and 
 never-sufficiently-mourned Carrel, who spent his entire 
 life in the defence of liberty, both by the sword and 
 the pen. Girardin and Carrel fought a duel, and 
 Girardin killed the most popular tribune of Trance. 
 This death has cast a dark shadow upon the life of 
 Girardin, and has for ever separated him from the 
 
QUARREL WITH BERGERON. 253 
 
 French Eepublican pcarty. His bullet wounded the 
 heart of all the youth of France, and pierced the front 
 of the Liberal press. 
 
 After that he fought no more duels. One day he 
 called the writer Bergeron a regicide. The latter 
 went to the theatre (where the director of La Presse 
 happened to be with his wife, the beautiful and 
 spirifueUe Delphine Gay), he entered the next box, 
 which was unoccupied, in the middle of the represen- 
 tation, and, attracting the attention of the audience 
 by a loud qvj, gave Girardin a violent blow, awaiting 
 a return with crossed arms and threatening gestures. 
 Girardin arose slowly from his seat, placed himself on 
 the other side of the box, far from the attacks of his 
 adversary, and sat down quietly as if nothing had 
 happened, remaining till the close of the performance. 
 The next day he brought his quarrel before the tri- 
 bunal. 
 
 La Presse never had a sufficiently fixed colour, 
 never a strongly defined opinion ; it turned to all 
 winds from a false idea, from a false conception which 
 Girardin holds of life, and another erroneous concep- 
 tion and idea which he entertains of politics. Girardin 
 forgets that writers, orators, publicists are only great 
 when they convert their whole lives into stars which 
 revolve around a grand idea. From that they receive 
 their light, from thai their power, from that their true 
 existence ; for this idea is their sun. But when writers, 
 when orators become the centre of their own universe, 
 
254 EMILE GIRARDIN. 
 
 when they only value politics for the lustre reflected 
 upon themselves, and ideas merely because of the 
 brilliance they impart, then they lose the right to be 
 public teachers ; they forget the service of humanity, 
 which is their only title of glory, their only pledge 
 of immortality. 
 
 Wherefore wish for the gift of eloquent language? 
 To display it as a courtezan displays a necklace of 
 pearls and diamonds? Why desire the power of the 
 pen? To attain a position which is more easily 
 arrived at by even the lowest commerce ? Oh ! no. 
 The pen and the tongue should serve humanity, 
 should convey another ray of light to the focus of 
 the human conscience, should bear another stream 
 to the ocean of intelligence. 
 
 Girardin's false political conception has a double 
 aspect — it is of action and of doctrine. Girardin 
 desires such a complete independence that he will not 
 ally himself to parties, so that they owe him nothing, 
 and he owes nothing to parties. This is a fatal error. 
 In politics we can do nothing alone and abandoned ; 
 we require the sacred legion of those who believe as 
 we believe, of those who think as we think. Philo- 
 sophy is a science more speculative than practical, 
 and certainly great philosophers have always founded 
 a school. Well, political schools are parties — they are 
 armies which require discipline, abnegation, sacrifices 
 for principle. It is only thus that those plants of a 
 
HIS POLITICAL ERRORS. 
 
 255 
 
 new life can flourish which are so difficult to accli- 
 matize in the world. 
 
 Girardin's conception of political ideas is not less 
 erroneous than his conception of political conduct. 
 He sa^^s he loves liberty, and I believe it. But he 
 for<:^ets that we cannot demand liberty from powers 
 which are alone founded on its destruction — which 
 are alone supported by its ruins. If Girardin had 
 reflected that liberty has its suitable forms and 
 ideas, he would not have supported the candidature 
 of Xapolcon Bonaparte to the Presidency ; he would 
 not have demanded liberty from the Empire. The 
 Bonapartes have no traditions of liberty except tra- 
 ditions of Dictatorship. How is it that a man who 
 foresees so much does not comprehend this simple 
 truth? 
 
 So the political career of Girardin has been like the 
 web of Penelope. He has laboured, like the Hebrew 
 of antiquity, seven years for Leah and another seven 
 years for Eachel. He has fought for the Empire and 
 for Liberty. But at the end of his days he is left 
 without either Leah or Bachel. He is deprived both 
 of the Empire and of Liberty. 
 
 Few men have been possessed of more brilliant 
 qualities, few have occupied a more exalted position. 
 Editor of La Fresse during the Monarchy of July 
 and the Republic, also editor of La Presse and of 
 La Lihertc under the Empire, his pen has cried so 
 
2S6 EMILE GIRARDIN. 
 
 loudly on the paper that it has been heard amidst 
 the fury of the tempest, amidst the clamour of the 
 battle, being certainly one of the most animated 
 organs of this immense mechanism of modern society. 
 But this is not sufficient. To make any intellectual 
 structure durable, above all the inspiration of faith is 
 wanted; to arrive at the choir of immortals, above 
 all the heroism of faith is essential. 
 
DANIEL MANIN 
 
 17 
 
Daniel Manin. 
 
 TT/'HEN I arrived in Paris, one of my first impulses 
 was to visit the spot where repose the ashes of 
 all those who have obtained any worship from my heart 
 or my intelligence. Great men lose much when be- 
 held closely, in life's sad realities, where the mingling 
 of a thousand little accidents lowers the moral stature, 
 which imagination always lifts among clouds of glory. 
 But in death all merit is acknowledged, and all great- 
 ness is justly measured. As the wind disperses dust, 
 so death clears our vision, and enables us to see much 
 which has been hitherto concealed. 
 
 The human race has a genuine reverence and admi- 
 ration for great virtues. The thought of being for- 
 gotten, which so often accompanies that of death, 
 does not trouble those men who have deserved well 
 of their country and of humanity. Whatever there 
 is in them which is changeable or accidental, caused 
 sometimes by physical ailments which cast a sombre 
 shade over their ideas ; sometimes by the fiery glow 
 which hot blood imparts to their opinions ; sometimes 
 
 17 — 2 
 
26o DANIEL MANIN. 
 
 by disorders of the nerves — those ever-vibrating 
 chords of human life ; all this is dissipated in death, 
 which carries with it all doubts, vacillations, and de- 
 partures from the right path of life. 
 
 Injustice, hatred, and envy never cease to torment 
 the living — even the best, for these are, like other 
 troubles, the penalties of perfection. Labour is im- 
 possible without strength ; life without sorrow ; glory 
 without drawing by its own heat from the mine of 
 the earth the black vapours of envy. But death is a 
 transfiguration ; the tomb is a Tabor ; the shades 
 which seem so gloomy when we behold them with 
 the eyes of flesh, are eternal splendours when seen 
 with the eyes of the intelligence. Decomposition, 
 ruin, cold, darkness, the sepulchre, are for souls as 
 the circle of shadows in which nature is enveloped, to 
 make more visible the stars of night. 
 
 Thinking thus, my first visit was naturally to the 
 dead, those whose memory I revered. Among them 
 was one whose battles in the city of Oriental dreams 
 and Greek poetry had attracted my attention from 
 childhood. And, although then a boy, I had diviiied 
 in the relation of the events which appeared daily in 
 the Journals of 1848 the eminent qualities of that 
 tribune of independence, of that dictator of liberty. 
 
 And what days those were of 1848 ! AVe live much 
 in these times. Every post brings us a new surprise and 
 a new hope. The spirit glows like a heaven crossed by 
 innumerable meteors in a night of summer. It seems 
 
COMPARED WITH THE ANCIENTS. 261 
 
 as if the universal judgment is about to be celebrated, 
 as if God is coming in the clouds armed with justice, 
 placing on his right the elect, the people ; and on his 
 left, among the condemned, tyrants. Warsaw, Pesth, 
 Milan, Naples, Florence arose from their winding- 
 sheets and turned to the light. But among these 
 cities there was none whose life had been so illustrious 
 as that of Venice, and whose death had been so much 
 deplored. 
 
 And among the numerous tribunes, heroes and 
 martyrs, which the ardour of that creative age pro- 
 duced, there was none of such perfect integrity as 
 Manin. He appears like the personification of severe 
 justice arisen in the city of legends. He seems to 
 have in his character the conscience of the juriscon- 
 sults of ancient Eome, and the patriotism of Grrecian 
 heroes: as if the spirit of the lost Eomans, who 
 escaped the barbarians, and the lost Greeks who 
 escaped the Turks, had taken refuge among the 
 lagunes of his country. But to the grand qualities of 
 the antique character, Manin unites laws of life and 
 of conduct, which can alone engender the moral prin- 
 ciples of modern philosophy. To arrive at good by 
 the means of good ; to rule human nature by ideas 
 more than by compulsion ; to govern a people as the 
 conscience governs life ; awakening in them, with the 
 voice of duty, a perfect morality ; never to sully a 
 great cause by a crime, not even for the welfare 
 of the country — these are the saving principles of 
 
202 DANIEL MANIN. 
 
 Manin's politics. Unite to the energy of Danton 
 the conscientiousness of Socrates, and you will have 
 the dictator of the lagunes — the man of Venice in 
 1848— Daniel Manin. 
 
 I visited his tomb in the cemetery Montmartre in 
 Paris, by the pale light of funereal heavens, during 
 the dismal days of November, when nature is wrapped 
 in dead leaves, when the swallows quit this scene of 
 general mourning, when the busy hum of insects has 
 ceased, and when the heavens weep. He reposes in 
 the tomb of Ary Scheffer, the melancholy painter of 
 the Beatrice of Dante, revived by his brush, with her 
 eyes lost in the contemplation of celestial truth, and 
 her heart beating under her white tunic, the holy 
 personification of Italy. I could have asked those 
 sepulchral stones if within them lay also faith, valour, 
 political integrity, all the public virtues which are so 
 much required in our generation to reconquer the 
 good. The silence replied to my unspoken question, 
 and led me to meditation. To enable us to separate 
 from all society, we must have a point of support, 
 which is an idea ; and a force, which is the energetic 
 will of certain men. Manin acquired this moral great- 
 ness which is his glory and his title to immortality, 
 as he identified himself with the desire which passed 
 from the rocks of Thermopylse to the sacred walls of 
 Saragossa, as an immense bas-relief on the altars 
 of patriotism — the idea of national independence. 
 Talent, virtue, language, science, family affection, the 
 
RESPECT PAID TO HIS TOMB. 263 
 
 respect inspired by a noble life, were so many other 
 Torces placed by this man at the service of his country'. 
 He sacrificed to this cause his fortune, his happiness, 
 the dear companion of his life, the sweet daughter of 
 his heart, his home, his country; he lived in the 
 darkness of Paris, and died young and broken- 
 hearted : but he sowed in these furrows of sorrow, 
 watered by the blood of his soul, immortality for 
 himself and glory for his country. 
 
 Some time ago, Paris, that capital of the European 
 Continent, wished to exhibit the deep feeling inspired 
 by the independence of Italy. And remembering 
 that it contained an Italian treasure — the bones of 
 the great patriot — it went, on the day of the comme- 
 moration of the dead, to carry crowns of everlastings 
 to the tomb of Manin ; groups of writers and of 
 workmen — the moral and the material army of liberty 
 bent their heads in silence before the stones which 
 covered those honoured remains. In vain the police 
 endeavoured to prevent this manifestation. Paris 
 showed that she had not lost the antique worship for 
 Italy, which had moved her to send, hke a Spartan 
 mother, her beloved sons to die at the foot of the Alps 
 for Italian liberty. The day in which the great city 
 w^as to lose this deposit confided to her hospitality 
 was one of general mourning, destined to demonstrate 
 as in all solemn moments, how many deep thinkers 
 among the multitude this town conceals beneath its 
 apparent indifference, as Mount Etna hides its fires 
 
264 DANIEL MANIN. 
 
 ■under its snowy mantle. The bones of Mania were 
 furtively taken from French earth and conducted to' 
 the Italian frontier. A commission of those Erench 
 writers who had deeply moved the conscience of 
 Europe in favour of Italy, followed the remains of 
 the hero, in its journey to his country. It presented 
 a magnificent spectacle in the defiles of Savoy, among 
 the alpine declivities, on the borders of precipices, 
 among seas of snow ; this funeral cortege which lost 
 itself in the clouds of the mountains, accompanied by 
 the prolonged lamentation, formed by the movement 
 of the air among the pine trees, or the falling of 
 cascades from the rocks. I have never been able to 
 see a great mountain with its hills, from whose luxu- 
 riant slopes come the streams which fertilize the 
 fields ; with its girdle of woods and its pyramid of 
 snow, without regarding it as a great monument raised 
 by the Almighty, on which is inefíaceably engraved 
 the recollection of eternal things. And if anything 
 is eternal in the world it is heroism, it is sacrifice. 
 
 Death is cold and implacable. The bones of the 
 hero did not stir in his coffin when it passed under the 
 clouds of the Alps, or into the bosom of Italy, on feel- 
 ing the soft air of the valleys, the rays of the southern 
 sun, the echo of that language as melodious as the 
 purest inspirations of music. It was observed that 
 neither Piedmont nor Lombardy manifested the 
 enthusiasm due to the remains of the hero. After the 
 misfortunes of Italy, the provincial and the municipal 
 
V ^ °'' / 
 
 THE FUNERAL PROCESSION. 265 
 
 spirits of the country awakened but slowly. The 
 history of old and of new governments has taught us 
 how difficult is the establishment of liberty, and how 
 little durable it is if it be founded while local institu- 
 tions do not exist with their separate life and inde- 
 pendent organisms, such as those of the municipality 
 and the province. Notwithstanding that the im- 
 perious necessities of the times, and the irresistible 
 force of circumstances have forced Italy to become an 
 Empire, she always preserves the federative principle 
 in the essence of her political organism. But this 
 should not be a reason for regarding her nationality 
 with indifference, for the country has been built upon 
 the bones of many martyrs, and is splendidly adorned 
 with the crown of genius. We cannot then forget a 
 man whose glory is so universal that he belongs to 
 all humanity, though his lustre is more particularly 
 reflected upon Italy. 
 
 But as the hearse drew near to Venice, an air of 
 sympathy and enthusiasm passed through the towns 
 and villages. The crowns which by-gone ages decreed 
 to heroism, the palms of martyrdom were showered 
 upon the coffin of Manin. The multitude ran to the 
 borders of the railroad to do homage to the most 
 sacred thing on earth — the remains of an organism 
 which had contained the principles of virtue and of 
 genius. In Peschiera — formerly a nail in the cross 
 of Italy — the soldiers saluted from the walls and mas- 
 sive bastions, the triumphal procession of the dictator. 
 
266 DANIEL MANIN. 
 
 Trulj, nothing so much predisposes to heroism as the 
 example of martyrdom. When wars or struggles for 
 independence are spoken of, Spain, never wear}^ of 
 sacrifices, is always mentioned. And our ancestors^ 
 the powerful Castilians, when they went to expel the 
 Saracens from the enchanting gardens of Valencia, 
 bore at the head of their army the body of the Cid, 
 which though cold and still in death gained battles by 
 the recollection of the virtues and of the glory which 
 it excited. 
 
 In Verona, when the bodj^ of Manin passed, the 
 people flung themselves upon the funeral car, to detain 
 for a little time in their fields those ashes so dear to 
 their country. At last they arrived at the mouth of 
 the great lagune, where presides the lion of Mark ; of 
 that lagune which is the emerald set in the wedding 
 ring which unites the mysterious East with the land of 
 the West. There the bier touched the soil made 
 famous by the glory of the man whose remains it en- 
 closed. By the side of the coffin were borne those of 
 the wife of Manin, and of his daughter Emilia. A 
 pale and tremulous youth mounted on a mule and 
 clothed in mourning, with sorrow in his face and tears 
 in his eyes, came slowly forward in the midst of a 
 general silence only interruj)ted by sobs, to kiss the 
 three coffins. It was the son of Manin, who since 
 the last war of independence had suffered from the 
 pain of an Austrian gunshot wound, received in the 
 field of Brescia, where he fought to accomplish the last 
 
PROGRESS. 267 
 
 wish of his father by the side of Garibaldi, seeking to 
 crown Italian liberty with the eastern diadem, called 
 Venice. 
 
 It is said that poetry is dead in our time. But does 
 not all this appear like the reading of a page from 
 Grecian poetry ; is it not remindful of those great 
 days of Thermopylae, of Platea, of Salarais, of w^iich 
 Herodotus has written and Pindar suno- ? Is it not 
 like to that which has been described b}' yEschylus in 
 his dramatic pieces, wliich is still repeated by the 
 chisel in those bas-reliefs desio-ned to be shrines to 
 the two greatest ideas of human excellence — those of 
 liberty and of patriotism ? Sorrow is not extinguished 
 in the world; the infinite thirst for justice is not 
 slaked, and is insatiable. Our children will labour, as 
 did our fathers, as we labour ourselves, to erect this 
 work of progress that will never be finished as space is 
 never finished, but is infinite as the universe. And 
 future generations will read with wonder in their 
 struggles for the conquest of better worlds the history 
 of all these exiles, of all these martyrs who have 
 known how tu renounce the caresses of fortune, the 
 pleasures of the day, the affections of family, the 
 delights of home, because thej' craved above all to 
 mount a step higher in the infinite ladder by which 
 humanity ascends wdth so much effort to its transfigu- 
 ration in the bosom of justice. 
 
 Truly Venice deserves all the sacrifices made upon 
 her altars by Manin. This city, which is unique in 
 
268 DANIEL MANIN. 
 
 the world, rises on the moving sand of the lagunes, 
 changing as the flowing waters, yet constant in her 
 unwearied efforts to present her offerings in the temple 
 of civilization. Peopled by the Latin race which fled 
 from the invasion of Attila, and by the Grreeks who 
 took refuge from the Byzantine despotism and the 
 scimitars of the Turks ; given up to labour during 
 the darkness of the Middle Ages when the rest of the 
 world was devoted to the cloister and enslaved by 
 superstition ; owning rich fleets of vessels which came 
 in laden with the products of all countries, and bore 
 in their swelling sails the airs of distant regions ; 
 with the Adriatic in the foreground, the green fields 
 around, and the snow-crowned Alps in the distance ; 
 furrowed by those canals into which the sparkling sea 
 pours its foaming flood, repeating beneath the dark 
 walls of its palaces the wondrous play of light from 
 the incomparable heavens ; showing long lines of 
 marvellous workmanship from the delicate tracery of 
 Moorish architecture to the pure severity of Grecian 
 columns ; from Bj'Zantine arches whose massive gran- 
 deur seems eternal, to Gothic cupolas whose light chi- 
 selling is lifted towards the heavens ; by her arts, by 
 her riches, by her lagunes peopled with ships, by 
 her ancient glory, Venice is one of the first of cities. 
 
 Venice decayed by slow degrees. Her aristocracy, 
 like all privileged bodies, lost all political feeling when 
 the period of right arrived — the time of democrac3^ 
 Her commerce lost its ancient importance when the 
 
NAPOLEON. 269 
 
 Portuguese doubled the Cape, and the Spaniards dis- 
 covered America. The revolution found her aris- 
 tocracy on its throne of the lagunes like a mummy in 
 the Pyramids of the desert. One day Bonaparte 
 entered Venice. The future military dictator of the 
 plebeians was met with the hatred of the mercantile 
 nobles, like that which Scjdla felt on the soil of Athens 
 for the Greek democracy. And after having robbed 
 them of the Lion of Mark, which he sent to the Inva- 
 lides in Paris, and of the four horses taken from the 
 portal of the great Basilica, and placed by him on the 
 Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, he delivered up to 
 Austria the remains of the Oriental city, like the wreck 
 of a vessel rotting on a sandbank. The last of the 
 Doges, the Augustus of that Pome of the Seas, sold in 
 the nineteenth century for a fallow deer to the Germans, 
 shrunk from taking an oath to Austria, as if he heard 
 the voice of past generations, and already tasted upon 
 his lips the gall of ignominy reserved for him by 
 history. But Napoleon was cast in the bronze of 
 destiny. His words were decrees. His treaties were 
 the basis of a new Europe. That man who was so 
 perfectly acquainted with the mathematics of strategy 
 was quite ignorant of other and higher mathematics — 
 the astronomy of nations. He rent in pieces with 
 his spurs the map of the Continent, and with the 
 fragments he endeavoured to form new countries. 
 Nothing was ever more arbitrary than the delivery of 
 Venice to Austria. Those who, like Noah in the Ark, 
 
270 DANIEL MANIN. 
 
 saved themselves in the lagunes from the incursions of 
 the Huns in the fifth century, were to fall in a later 
 age at the feet of the Croats, Nothing could be more 
 antagonistic than the Venetian genius and the 
 Austrian genius, nothing more opposed than the 
 Oriental city, like Venus surrounded with doves, and 
 that vast brutal empire supported by bayonets. Napo- 
 leon imprisoned Venice. 
 
 But it is impossible to measure, even in thought, 
 the point to which the resignation of a people will 
 arrive. No one can estimate the numerous devices of 
 despotism, nor the resources of obedience. It is 
 frightful to calculate the burdens which tyranny will 
 heap on the shoulders of a people. Every race has 
 had an Egyptian bondage, and all have wanted a 
 Moses. 
 
 The man destined to save Venice was Daniel Manin. 
 In his life and in his death all future generations will 
 learn to believe that history acknowledges and sympa- 
 thizes with all great sacrifices. No one should despair, 
 like the last Eoman in the last night of the ancient 
 Eoman liberty. No effort that is made for good is 
 lost. No great idea sown in the conscience is sterile. 
 Thomas More, amidst the clamour of war in the six- 
 teenth century, fancied in Utopia the religious peace 
 of Protestant and Catholic nations. But the Utopia 
 of the sixteenth century was the international pact of 
 the seventeenth century, written in the Peace of West- 
 phalia. And Manin left his country, lived in sorrow 
 
A MARTYR'S REIVARD. 271 
 
 and retirement, beheld the death, first of his loved wife 
 then of his daughter : lost by sad degrees all the 
 branches of the tree of his existence, died in exile, 
 slept ten years in an ungrateful foreign soil, and after- 
 wards Venice set the bones of the martyr in the 
 diadem of her glory. "We can advance to highest 
 virtue only by the path of disinterestedness, without 
 looking for recompense, without even hoping for the 
 satisfaction of seeing our work accomplished ; for even 
 this legitimate gratification is a luxury unworthy of 
 the grand moral austerity which is exacted by all 
 apostleship. But the laws of moral nature cannot fail 
 of accomplishment any more than the laws of physi- 
 cal nature / and I, who am certain of immortality, I, 
 who do not believe that death is complete and eternal, 
 I comprehend the reward reserved to the martyr, I 
 behold him dwelling in spirit in independent Venice, 
 feeling in his bones the warmth of life at the caress of 
 the breeze rising from the lagunes, entering like an in- 
 visible and beneficent genius into its home freed from 
 oppressors, hearing the loving words of his family, 
 mingling his spirit in a divine effusion of faith witli 
 the spirit of the present and of coming generations 
 whose chains are broken, and rejoicing in his sacrifice 
 and sufferings. 
 
 Perhaps we should say nothing of the life of this 
 man. All interest disappears beside these words — ^lie 
 lived and died for his country. But let us briefly 
 consider some actions of his life. Manin was born 
 
272 DANIEL MANIN. 
 
 six years after Austria received from the liands of 
 Bonaparte the dead body of Venice. He belongs by 
 blood to that Israelitish race which has always been 
 so tenacious of its belief, a race of exiles and of pro- 
 phets. In his childhood Venice passed from the pos- 
 session of the French Empire to that of the Austrian 
 Empire, according to the usages of war between des- 
 pots. After 1815 Venice fell into the grave opened 
 by Austria, and the lagunes of St. Mark ceased not 
 to confide to the winds the eternal lamentation of a 
 city in serfdom. Manin heard daily from the lips of 
 his father (an advocate, who was also his teacher), a 
 double malediction against Austria which enslaved 
 Venice, and against Napoleon who had delivered her 
 into captivity. The moral atmosphere by which he 
 was surrounded developed the natural strength of his 
 character, and filled him with an undying hatred of 
 tyranny. 
 
 Jurisprudence and philosophy were his favourite 
 studies. At seventeen years of age he was already a 
 doctor of laws. In 1830 he opened his career of advo- 
 cate in the district of Mestre, at the entrance of the 
 lagunes. In the same year, the shock of the French 
 revolution passed through Venice, like galvanism 
 through a corpse. Manin, who did not wish to connect 
 himself with secret societies, thought by seizing the 
 arsenal to emancipate his country. But the revolu- 
 tion was like a flash of lightning in Italy. Venice 
 took no action, and Manin concealed his desires and 
 
HIS IMPRISONMENT IN SPIELBERG. 273 
 
 his projects in the depths of his soul. Seven years 
 later he endeavoured to convert a railway company 
 into a band of patriots. This Society was dispersed 
 hy order of the Government, but it left a bond of 
 moral union among the Venetians. In 1847 a 
 scientific congress was assembled. There spoke the 
 orator without a tribune, the advocate without a 
 cause, the patriot without a country. With great 
 ability he converted economic questions into poli- 
 tical questions, and with utterances of the most un- 
 questionable logic, he darted sharp arrows at the 
 heart of tyranny. Austria preserved a shadow of 
 popular representation, in order to conceal by this 
 means the fetters of the people. Manin wrote a 
 kind of memorial, which was apparently an invocation 
 to this shadow, but in reality an appeal to the people. 
 Afterwards, in connexion with Tomasseo, he edited a 
 protest against a publication of that time. As was to 
 be expected, he could not approach a tiger ever so 
 gently, without being exposed to his claws. ]\Ianin 
 was arrested. There was no substantial charge against 
 him. His motto had been legality and publicity. 
 The advocate had not yei developed into the tribune. 
 The judges absolved him from crime, but the police put 
 him in prison as dangerous. Spielberg, with all the 
 horrors of expatriation added to those of captivity, was 
 henceforth his abode. 
 
 Soon after this great events occurred. The word 
 " liberty" was spoken by the Pope. A new hojDC, 
 
 18 
 
274 DANIEL MANIN. 
 
 infinite and universal, dawned in all hearts. Ancient 
 and modern Eome seemed reconciled, the Tribunes 
 and the Popes to be united ; liberty and the Church 
 to form together a new moral world ; and it appeared 
 that the social promises of the Gospel were accom- 
 plished in a day, uniting the people in the bosom of 
 humanity, and humanity in the belief in One God. 
 That which the painters of the Eenaissance had done 
 in the sphere of art, and with the world of the past, 
 the union of two entities, the connexion of the Chris- 
 tian idea with the pagan idea, was to be the work of 
 Pius IX. in the social and religious sphere, in the 
 world of the future — the union of two beliefs and of 
 two dogmas, the reconciliation of faith with reason 
 and modern liberty, in the eternal precepts of the 
 Gospel — all this was to be accomplished. These as- 
 pirations thrilled through Europe, raising a flood of 
 new ideas. Italian patriots imagined that Italy would 
 not only recover from her long humiliation, but that 
 she would claim the predominant moral government 
 of the world, through her Councils and her Popes, as 
 in classic ages by lisr Senate and her Ca3sars. Gari- 
 baldi returned from America, determined to serve 
 under the banner of Liberty and of the Gospel. Cities 
 which had long been at variance, restored the trophies 
 which recorded their ancient victories over each other, 
 wishing to confound all old antipathies in the love of 
 country. Above the federalism of the provinces 
 arose the unity of the national soul. And a touching 
 
MANIN AND TOMASSEO LIBERATED. 275 
 
 ceremony was solemnized in a cliurcli in Venice. 
 There were two societies so much at variance that 
 many times they reddened in their quarrels the waters 
 of the lagunes. Both went to a church, and kneeling, 
 implored pardon of Heaven for their fratricidal con- 
 duct. And when the priest praised God and dis- 
 missed them, and the bells rang out in melody, the 
 chiefs of those two bodies advanced, and holding each 
 other's hand before the altar, swore an eternal recon- 
 ciliation for the love of their country, and in the hope 
 of her approaching liberty. 
 
 But the time of struggle had not yet come for 
 Venice. Manin was of opinion that this important 
 event must be preceded by two others of equal 
 gravity — by a revolution in Paris, and another in 
 Vienna. These two events took place as he antici- 
 pated. The Austrian authorities so much dreaded 
 tlie echo of the battle at Vienna, that they liberated 
 Manin and Tomasseo who had been imprisoned for 
 heading the agitation. This state of affairs could not 
 continue without great peril to the country. One 
 morning: Manin called his son to his side, and took 
 leave of his wife and daughter. Then he set out for 
 the arsenal, intending to drive the Austrians from 
 Venice. His efforts were crowned with success. 
 Venice was free on the twenty-second of March, 1848. 
 The lagunes resounded with cries of jubilant rejoic- 
 ing for the city now free as the winds, which so long 
 had borne to the waves her lamentations. 
 
 lb— 2 
 
76 DANIEL MANIN. 
 
 Maiiin proclaimed the Eepublic. This form of 
 government had many advantages for Venice. It was 
 the tradition of centuries. It was a record of the 
 time when the city was united to the Adriatic in 
 happy nuptials. She united two things which are 
 rarely seen together, the rewards of commerce and the 
 inspiration of the arts. Her senate was equal to that 
 ofancientEome in grandeur, and for its brilliancy and 
 prestige it resembled the House of Lords in England. 
 Her re])utation was sacred in all the provinces with 
 which she formed contracts, and was vigorous till the 
 day of her decline. And her power was so respectable, 
 that before Charles the Great there was existing a 
 federation of seventy-two islands presided over by 
 twelve greater islands, whose vessels carried to her 
 shores the germs of modern commerce. 
 
 Venice is situated at the entrance of the Hellenic 
 seas, and before her is the garland of islands which 
 stretch as far as Asia, from whence have come to 
 conquer and embellish the moral world philosophers, 
 poets, sculptors, and others famous in art and litera- 
 ture. It was natural that, newly risen from her bed 
 of ashes, Venice should attempt to found a federation 
 after the manner of antiquity, where liberty should 
 reign supreme, and the law be the realization of right, 
 and the constant pride of the citizens, each of whom 
 should be master of himself; natural that she should 
 convert them into heroes ; a nation wherein the artistic 
 democracy of Athens should be united to the wealth 
 
PROCLAIMS THE VENETIAN REPUBLIC. 277 
 
 and grandeur of Carthage, and to the struggles of 
 the sailors amid the waves ; the propaganda by the 
 people of all new ideas and discoveries thus continuing 
 the traditions of those Italian cities of the Middle 
 Ages ; of Florence, which invented bills of exchange 
 and wrote the pages of the Divine Comedy ; of Genoa, 
 which founded the banking system and inspired 
 Columbus with his poetic dreams ; of Aosta, which 
 brought forth followers of the great metaphysician, 
 St. Anselmo ; of all, in fine, who left a track in the 
 future whose lustre shall not be extinguished whilst 
 there remains in the human conscience the worship of 
 great thoughts and the respect of glory ; a historic 
 footprint in which Venice can read her enduring power 
 over the Adriatic, the resuscitation of her ancient 
 institutions without the revival of her aristocracy, and 
 give to the world an example of the Grreek coalition 
 which taught us the arts, literature, and heroism. 
 
 Manin, then, proclaimed the Venetian Republic. 
 His first thought was like his first desire — to leave 
 the Dictatorship at the point in which the revolution 
 had triumphed. Venice without Austrians was a 
 thing so great as to satisfy a hero and to immortalize 
 a life. But he was unable to relinquish the command 
 of the city. The perils which encompassed Venice at 
 the establishment of her independence were far less 
 than those which were essential to her defence. Italy 
 desired her liberty and hated Austria; but she was 
 not acquainted with the political measures the most * 
 
278 DANIEL MANIN. 
 
 suitable to cany out this great design ; she knew not 
 with what stones to erect the altar of the country. 
 This nation, which has been distinguished among all 
 others for her political genius, was like one intoxicated, 
 overcome by the old wine of her recollections in the 
 festival of her new existence. She already clamoured 
 because Pius IX. led her to make war upon Austria. 
 She followed the King of Naples, who abandoned her 
 in the most solemn and critical moment. She confided 
 herself to Charles Albert, who was more anxious to 
 save his feudal territories than to benefit Italy. Even 
 in the question as to whether she should or should 
 not call in foreign aid she vacillated. Whilst one 
 political party desired to summon French intervention, 
 another rejected the proposal, so that Italy, like the 
 captain of antiquity, knew how to conquer, but did 
 not know how to profit by her victory. 
 
 The clear and practical intelligence of Manin at 
 once perceived the supreme necessities of the situation : 
 on one hand, an alliance of Austria and Eussia ; to be 
 checked on the other by an alliance of France and 
 Italy. But Charles Albert did not favour this idea, 
 because he feared an inevitable result — the reclamation 
 of Savoy by France as the price of her alliance and 
 as a compensation for the aggrandizement of Italy. 
 Educated in antiquated notions which he had alwaj'S 
 followed, but foretelling, with the far-seeing ambition 
 of his race, the benefits to be derived from the new, 
 he doubted in those moments in which confidence is 
 
ENGLAND REFUSES SUPPORT. 279 
 
 most useful and energy most essential. Manin turned 
 to England, demanding her acknowledgment and her 
 moral support in the counsels of the workl ; but Lord 
 l^almerston feared to favour the Republican propa- 
 ganda by the acknowledgment of Venice, a propaganda 
 detestable in his ej^es, first, because he w^as an English- 
 man, and secondly, because he did not wish to coun- 
 tenance disaffection in Ireland. 
 
 It is inconceivable that France was deaf to the 
 invocation of Manin. The French Republic, tliat 
 wished to outshine the Roman Republic, refused to 
 recognise the Republic of Venice in its cradle. La- 
 martine, wlio was at that time at the head of the 
 Government of France, and who had so often written 
 tender and enchanting pages upon Italy, scarcely 
 seemed to inhale the aroma of poetry which arose from 
 the free lagunes, and which seemed to fill with azure 
 clouds of incense the temple of her glory. He treated 
 Italy as he himself acknowledges he treated Graziella. 
 He contented himself with lavishing incoherent words 
 upon her altar, like Hamlet upon the shrine of Ophelia, 
 who died through his fault. Venice remained alone in 
 the world. Then the Republican city was delivered 
 up to the Constitutional Monarchy of Piedmont, and 
 ^lanin, who would not be counted among courtiers, 
 quitted the government of his country. 
 
 But the alliance did not hold. Manin had foreseen 
 its incoherence. A handful of gold, thrown as if to a 
 beggar, and 1400 soldiers, were given by Charles 
 
28o DANIEL MANIN. 
 
 Albert for the loveliest of liis provinces — Yenetia. 
 At the end of a few days the King suffered a defeat, 
 and his first act was to abandon his new dominions, 
 drawn to him by liberty, in order to preserve the old, 
 which were the heritag^e of feudalism. Charles Albert 
 undertook to abandon Lombardy and Venetia, leaving 
 both regions under the protection of Austria. Venice 
 never sanctioned this act. The Republic reappeared 
 amid the lagunes, and Manin reappeared in the Govern- 
 ment. If unable to secure the independence of his 
 country, he was determined to save her honour. 
 
 The Assembly met, and Manin was declared Presi- 
 dent of the Triumvirate, the dignity of a Dictatorship 
 being indispensable in the midst of such grave perils. 
 Manin requested the Assembly to give him a vote of 
 confidence, and they gave it by acclamation. He 
 requested the citizens to bring to the Bank all their 
 gold and silver, to exchange them for receipts bearing 
 large interest, and all Venice brought her jewels with 
 heroic cheerfulness. He sent Tomasseo to France to 
 demand her intervention in favour of Venetian liberty. 
 In his febrile agitation, and with his fervid imagi- 
 nation, Venice still appeared the refuge of Italian 
 liberty. He hoped to make of her what Spain made 
 of a very similar city in the War of Independence ; 
 what Spain made of Cadiz, the bulwark from whence 
 the Italian flag could extend her maternal shadow, 
 like a great hope, over the whole peninsula. A loan 
 of ten milHons of francs was decreed by Manin for the 
 
REFUSES A SALARY. 281 
 
 succour of Northern Italy, and subscribed by the 
 inhabitants, who deprived themselves of food to give 
 succour to their country. Eighty-five thousand francs 
 were dispersed dail}', and the usual receipts were but 
 two hundred thousand per month. Eut whatever 
 were his economic operations or his loans, the most 
 wealthy proprietors of Venice became poor in order to 
 bring him the gold necessary for the safety of the 
 country. One day he summoned the Assembly to 
 sanction his financial projects. The Assembly desired 
 to decree salaries to the individuals composing the 
 Government, especially to the President of the Re- 
 public. " I will not accept it," said Manin. " I will 
 live on my own resources. When they are exhausted 
 I will apply to my friends ; but I will never accept a 
 salary from my country while I see her, as to-day, 
 reduced to ask alms to ransom herself from servitude." 
 Yet these great qualities of an honourable man and 
 a skilful economist were not sufficient. Venice needed 
 a soldier, Charles Albert had recovered from his first 
 debility. Hungary had shaken off the yoke of Austria. 
 Piedmont established associations to save and defend 
 the city, which was the capital from whence issued 
 Italian nationality. England proposed that Austria 
 should concede to Venice the title of a free city, though 
 she refused to give her the title of an Italian city. 
 Manin wished to prove that she merited the crown 
 with which European opinion rewarded her, and 
 commanded a sally against Mestre, the key of the 
 
282 DANIEL MANIN. 
 
 lagunos, the point of union with the mainland, a spot 
 on which the Austrians had taken shelter. 
 
 The Austrians were ejected from Jusina, from the 
 fortified station of Mano-liera, and from their refug-e 
 of Mestre, leaving in the hands of the Venetians five 
 hundred prisoners and six pieces of artillery, and 
 with the sad loss of more than two hundred dead. 
 Hugo Bassi, a young priest, a friend of Garibaldi, 
 was there. In one hand he carried the host, and in 
 the other his banner ; his forehead bore the stamp 
 of virtue, on his lips was the eloquence of faith ; 
 wounded and bleeding he ran among the legions of 
 liberty to comfort and sustain them, reminding them 
 that sacrifices for the country elevate those capable 
 of them to the height of religious martyrs in the 
 eyes of the Eternal. Even boys were admirably 
 distinguished. Two children of ten years were beating 
 a drum. One of them fell wounded ; his companion 
 took him upon his shoulders and continued sounding 
 the attack. The Italian flag fell from a boat into 
 the water, a marine flung himself into the canal, drew 
 it out, mounted to the topmast, crying, amongst a 
 shower of bullets, "Viva Italia!" It is certain that 
 from the 23rd March, 1848, on which day Venice 
 declared herself free, to the 29th October of the same 
 year in which she obtained such signal victories, the 
 life of Venice was a continual self-sacrifice — a holo- 
 caust to Italy. The union of all in these sacrifices 
 had awakened the idea of human equality in that 
 
ADDRESSES THE PEOPLE. 283 
 
 ancient land of aristocracy. Poor gondoliers were 
 elected to the National Assembly. One of these, 
 Grossi, spoke like an orator of antiquity. His com- 
 panions opened little subscriptions among themselves 
 in order to frive him the wag-es he daily lost in his 
 noble occupation of serving his country-. 
 
 A new Assembly was convened and declared the 
 cessation of the dictatorship of the 17th February, 
 1849. As the Assembly showed som.e slowness in 
 the constitution of the new authority, and some of 
 the members manifested tendencies opposed to the 
 policy of Manin, the people loudly protested against 
 these changes. But Manin took his sword, went to 
 the Giant's Steps, and told the people they could enter 
 if they would and outrage the majesty of the 
 Assembly, but they must pass over his dead body 
 and that of his son, whom he kept by his side to 
 teach him to die for the law, after having taught him 
 to fight for liberty. Certainly one may say in review- 
 ing the life of this man, and considering his actions, 
 that he realized the ideal of times hidden in that 
 shadowy future when society shall be governed by 
 conscience, for morality was his sole code, absolute 
 justice his centre of gravity. 
 
 But a terible hour arrived, an hour in which all 
 hope of liberty departed. The last days of March, 
 1849, beheld the fatal field of Novara. Eussia drew 
 Hungary into the quarrel. France gave herself up 
 to a reaction, which ended in the foundation of the 
 
28| DANIEL MANIN. 
 
 Empire. Austria was enabled to narrow the position 
 of Venice, to enclose her in the sraallest circle of her 
 miserable martyrdom. Manin implored the Assembly 
 to resist at all cost, if necessary. The Assembly 
 assented. Manin ascended to the highest point of 
 the tower of St. Mark, and there, in the presence 
 of the Alps and of the sea, under the pure rays of the 
 glorious sun, illuminating the sad spectacle of human 
 sorrows, among the grove of columns, of domes, of 
 pinnacles, which compose an aerial harmony whose 
 beauty is increased by the fleecy clouds which hang 
 over the lagunes and the play of light repeated in 
 the waters ; near the heavens, like an appeal to the 
 eternal justice, he unrolled tlie red banner which 
 declared the resolution of the city to defend herself 
 to the last sooner than consent to new indignities. 
 But nothing availed. Abandoned by the world, 
 without allies, reduced in numbers, dying of famine, 
 fired, bombarded, besieged by an army of 45,000 ; 
 encompassed by a powerful fleet, which deprived her 
 of the possibility of foreign aid ; her food and ammu- 
 nition exhausted, the fishermen's quarter reduced 
 to ruins, the cholera raging with a terrible violence, 
 as if willing to help the besiegers — Manin had to 
 choose between the two horrible extremes, either to 
 deliver up Venice to the invader, or to blot her out 
 from the world, flinging her like a corpse into her 
 lagunes, and destroying the marvels of her arts in a 
 horrible suicide. 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN THEOLOGY. 285 
 
 The Assembly and the people preferred death. Manin 
 wished to preserve Venice for the world, Venice for her 
 children, Venice for the arts, Venice for the future, 
 Venice for liberty. In proceeding thus Manin was the 
 man of his time, and, like the prophets of Israel, 
 prepared for the future. The suicide of Brutus was 
 conceived by the sentiment of desperation which 
 existed in the bosom of ancient societies. When an 
 institution was uprooted its life was destroyed, 
 Nobod}^ believed that justice would revisit the earth. 
 An implacable theology considered her as dwelling 
 eternally in the heavens. Even patriotism encouraged 
 this idea, which has been transmitted from generation 
 to generation to our time like a sacred inheritance. 
 When life is shut up in the narrow circle of a privi- 
 lege or of a city, people are apt to conceive that life 
 is finished with the circumstances of existence, with the 
 roof which covers it. So the ancients committed 
 suicide ; Cato at the feet of the law, Brutus at the 
 close of the republic, Nero at the end of the Empire, 
 Cleopatra at the departure of her greatness, Demos- 
 thenes at the fail of his country. Both the good and 
 the bad destroyed themselves, when the principal ob- 
 ject of their lives departed. And the same thing 
 occurred with cities. Without denying the heroism 
 of Tyre, of Jerusalem, of Sagunta, of Carthage, of 
 Numantia, we understand heroism of this nature 
 among peoples who blindly adore the irresistible force 
 of destiny, when they possess neither the hope nor the 
 
286 DANIEL MANIN. 
 
 sentiment of progress ; when they imagine the victory 
 of their enemies to be an eternal supremacy; when with 
 the violated boundary of their country they associate 
 their gods, their homes, their laws, liberty, the soul, 
 their entire existence. But in the modern world, in 
 this world of unity and of justice, where all outrages 
 against right have a certain compensation in the 
 weight of public opinion, where the principle of na- 
 tionalities is as deeply rooted as the principle of jus- 
 tice was in the early ages ; where without ceasing to 
 belong to our country, which should be the first 
 object of our lives, we belong to humanity, for which 
 we feel a not less exalted, though a less enthusiastic 
 worship — under such altered conditions we cannot 
 conceive the suicide of a people if we have not lost 
 faith in human progress, and with faith in human 
 progress lost all our hopes. Manin did well to avoid 
 a giddy, tragic, and horrible death in the flames (as 
 many proposed in the madness of despair), in the city 
 of Eastern beauty, which is one of the loveliest in the 
 world. 
 
 On the 27th of August, 1849, after six months of 
 a defence that for courage and devotion has no superior 
 in modern history, except that of Saragossa, Manin 
 left the city never to return as long as the Austrians 
 should hold possession of the canals, on whose banks 
 the deserted and solitary palaces look like immense 
 mausoleums. But he had one consolation in this deep 
 distress. He went out after having heroically de- 
 
SEEICS REFUGE IN PARIS. 287 
 
 fended Venice against the Croatians. He knew that 
 all his fellow citizens would have died to keep him 
 under his own roof. He quitted his brave country for 
 a strange land, but he did not experience the supreme 
 sorrow of exile — he was not flung from his country by 
 his country, not cast forth by those who were of the 
 same blood and who spoke the same language ; he 
 could dare to denounce tyrants, without danger lest 
 he should also curse his countrymen, 
 
 Manin embarked in a French vessel. He felt a 
 lively sj^mpathy with the revolutionary nation, not- 
 withstanding the ingratitude of 1848. His wife and 
 his two children accompanied him. The former died 
 on her arrival at Marseilles. This new sorrow deepened 
 the abyss in his afflicted heart. From Marseilles he 
 went to Paris, and took apartments in the sad little 
 street, Les Petits Ecuries. Having refused all the 
 assistance that had been offered to him by the munici- 
 pality of Venice on his departure, he lived in great 
 poverty in that large city, where want of money 
 signifies wretchedness. He sought a living by giving 
 lessons in the Italian language. His pupils were 
 scattered over different quarters of the town. He could 
 not afford to hire a carriage ; this luxury, so necessary 
 to his health and his business, would have soon dissi- 
 pated his few francs. In the cold season of Paris, 
 soaked w^ith rain and splashed with mud, this repre- 
 sentative of the city once the richest in the world, 
 this Governor of Venice, w^as the living image of exile. 
 
288 DANIEL MANIN. 
 
 One day he met a great Frencli artist, and said to him, 
 "My work is not always agreeable. To-day I was 
 giving an Italian lesson to a great lady, when her 
 husband entered, and did not salute me." 
 
 But his greatest affliction was the loss of his beloved 
 daughter, Emilia, who died of a very protracted and 
 painful nervous malady. Her natural delicacy, her 
 great intelligence, the love of country which she had 
 learned in her former home, the terrible tragedies she 
 had witnessed for two years, the grief of leaving 
 Venice, the death of her mother, the sadness of exile, 
 and the sight of her old father reduced to misery ; the 
 sad recollection of the eternal murmur of the lagunes, 
 with their changing lights and shadows which she 
 had loved, all these things preyed on her health and 
 broke her heart. She died, poor martyr ! kissing the 
 hands of her father, and her last words were of her 
 beloved country. What more ? Manin collected his 
 last strength, wrote a sacred testament of last counsels 
 to his country, and died also of the moral wounds he 
 had received ; he fell asleep, like a labourer Vv'ho has 
 worked much and well, with a sweet repose in his con- 
 science, serenity in his face, and a vision of futurity in 
 his eyes, certain that those do not die eternally who 
 have sown justice in the earth. 
 
 When death comes to a life so great and eventful 
 as that of Manin the hero is transformed into a 
 divinity, an eternal example of virtue, his history into 
 a dazzling apotheosis. Belonging to a family of Jewish 
 
Ai A chía ve LI a N FOLIC Y. 
 
 race and of Spanish origin, !Manin inherited from the 
 Jews the virtue of inexhaustible hope, and from the 
 Spaniards tlie sublime love of country and the un- 
 flinching resolution to sacrifice himself for his con- 
 victions. In his private life he was the perfect model 
 of a father, a husband, and a friend. His public life 
 raised to a general law the principles whicli governed 
 him in his private character. It has long been a very 
 common error in Italy to separate public and private 
 morality, to believe that principles of strict justice are 
 not essential for nations, and need not be adhered to 
 between republics. Perfect diplomacy has been con- 
 sidered the art of complete deception. Machiavel, to 
 save Italy, proposed to dethrone the Almighty and to 
 exalt the devil ; to lay aside all scruples as obstacles 
 to any great enterprises, and morals as a chain which 
 cramps action ; to blot out the line between good and 
 evil, to draw men to a cause by their passions and 
 interests, and to govern them by encouraging their 
 vices ; to fling awa}" conscience as a useless burden, 
 and to look upon crime as an insurmountable power ; 
 to deceive the ally, to betray the enemy, to banish to 
 the colonies or to extirpate adverse parties, and to 
 work, at all cost, up to the only desirable end in 
 politics — victory. These principles, springing, some 
 of them from the sublime despair of genius, tinctured 
 with bitter irony ; others written as the result of 
 profound observation of the different forces which 
 move society, proposed and proflered as the physician 
 
 19 
 
,29o DANIEL MANIN. 
 
 mixes and presents poison to the invalid — these 
 principles forged a chain of politics in Italy whose 
 catechism of liberty was a reaction against priests and 
 professors, who had made the Gospel a catechism of 
 servitude. But Manin understood that the simplest 
 principles of morality are the most fruitful, as well for 
 public as for private life, and that Washington founded 
 an immortal republic and an enduring liberty on the 
 bases of virtue in the home and of justice in the laws ; 
 so the Dictatorship of Manin was patriarchal, his 
 stormy government was the Golden Age of the new 
 Venetia. No wonder, then, that the gondolier should 
 chant melancholy songs among the lagunes, asking 
 the land of France to give back the bones of Manin, 
 and that a funeral urn bearing the remains of the exile 
 should have been honoured more than the greatest 
 captain who returned victorious in the city of the 
 waters, followed by a mourning people, accompanied 
 by a chorus of benedictions, surrounded by the repre- 
 sentatives of all nations which defend liberty, for this 
 funeral urn contained, not the cold ashes of the dead, 
 but the germ of eternal life — the example of faith and 
 virtue. 
 
ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 19—2 
 
Adolphe Thiers 
 
 (to 1870). 
 
 TF I had never been told I should at once have 
 known that this man is from the South, that he has 
 seen the azure of our heavens, that he has heard the 
 murmur of our Mediterranean, and has gladdened his 
 eyes in the brightness of our sun. The shores which 
 extend from Andalusia to Syria are made one by the 
 mirror of the pure sea in which they are repeated, and 
 in the similarity of the races by which they are in- 
 habited. Except the Turks, those strangers encamped 
 on the soil of Christendom, in which they have never 
 taken root, all the rest of the Mediterranean-Euro- 
 pean peoples have something of the boldness of the 
 Phoenician, of the loquacity of the Grreek, of the 
 restless ambition of the Eomau, of the bitter irony 
 of the Provencal, of the mercantile and navigating 
 spirit of the Catalan, of the grace and genius of the 
 Andalusian. So all wear a costume somewhat simi- 
 lar ; a shirt blue as the waters, a red cap, which recalls 
 tlieir glowing horizon ; the throat and chest un- 
 
294 ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 covered, as in sculpture; the feet bared to tlie cool 
 waves. And all these people speak among themselves 
 v/hat they call the Frank language, a dialect as we 
 term it, or a patois or slang as it is designated by the 
 French, composed of soft and monosyllabic words 
 with which all make themselves understood, and which 
 is most eloquent in the mouths of these musical and 
 oratorical races. 
 
 Sometimes on arriving on the shores of the Medi- 
 terranean, on seeing its celestial waters with waves of 
 silver foam, the sand which is gilded by the sunlight, 
 the vast horizon, in which is visible the outlines of the 
 mountains bronzed by the changing atmosphere, and 
 which look like huge pillars and columns, this gran- 
 deur of nature has convinced me that all these coasts 
 are formed to give voice to orators, inspiration to 
 poets, to be the great palette of humanit}^, rich in all 
 variety of tints ; the eternal studio of the sculptor, 
 the matchless abode of the plastic arts. 
 
 The sea conveys an idea of awe and of sublimity. 
 The eye seems to penetrate through that immense 
 profundity. The abyss covered by rolling waves, the 
 thought of which makes one giddy, looks like some- 
 thing animated, like an immense creature in whose 
 moving waters we see the eternal generation of mon- 
 sters. The mountains surrounding it are opposing 
 forces which have been placed there to resist the inva- 
 sion of those angry waves, which appear sometimes 
 ready to burst all bounds, and to overflow the land. 
 
THE SEA. 295 
 
 The sight of the sea inclines to thought, for the sea is 
 deep, and is an emhlem of infinity. Since the first 
 ages of antiquity many have lived under its teachings 
 who have held no intercourse with each other. The 
 branch of a rose tree would sometimes suffice to propel 
 a snow white boat on the smooth waters of the Medi- 
 terranean. And the towns upon its coasts have felt its 
 influence, which, from antiquity to the Middle Ages, 
 has in a great measure influenced the drama of history. 
 
 I was about to speak of an orator, and I have spoken 
 of the sea. This was because the human voice may 
 be grand, profound, sonorous, beautiful, and tempes- 
 tuous, and in these qualities it resembles the sea. And 
 no one can speak of eloquence, still less of Southern 
 eloquence, without remembering those celestial waters 
 which formed a background to the theatre of J^^schy- 
 lus, those pebbles on the shore, with which Demos- 
 thenes improved his utterance; the spot in which 
 Plato discoursed of the immortality of the soul in un- 
 dying language, whilst Greek processions passed from 
 their marble temples to the glittering waves, and the 
 rising sun gilded the sacred heights of Hymettus. 
 
 If all southern peoples have something Greek in 
 their character, all still preserve something of their 
 mother, Athens. But few of them have so much of 
 this classic land of poetry as the population of Mar- 
 seilles, for this city was a Greek colony, which in the 
 time of the Eomans preserved its renown, exercising 
 the great influence which belongs to the moral su- 
 
296 ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 periority of its mother country. Thiers was born in 
 Marseilles, and his nationality is visible in the fruitful- 
 ness, the grace, the puritj', and the beauty of his 
 images, in the richness of his oratory, in the subtlety 
 of his genius, in the remarkable clearness of his 
 lan<zuaofe. 
 
 Thiers was born three years before the end of the 
 last century. The French revolution was just over, 
 and at its close the man was born who was destined 
 to do two great things — to write its history, and to 
 represent its fall. He was the son of a poor work- 
 man, but did not inherit the sentiment of equality 
 common among his class. By his mother's side he 
 belonged to the family of Andrés Chenier, the gentle 
 poet, who left, with his head on the guillotine, a 
 number of sweet eclogues and of beautiful legends. 
 His mother's family gave him a small annuity, and 
 sent him to the Lycee of Marseilles. In his childhood 
 he was remarkable for his domineering and turbulent 
 disposition, but also for his application to study and 
 for his genius. More than once his temper shamed 
 his intelligence, so much so that he was on the point 
 of losing his education and of being expelled from the 
 college on account of his continual insubordination. 
 
 At the age of eighteen he studied law at Aix. There 
 he obtained his first academical prize in a manner 
 which is worth relating. Foreign intervention had 
 brought the ancient Eoyal family again to the throne . 
 'T^^^p voung student, notwithstanding his constitutional 
 
NAPOLEON. ■ '297 
 
 aud moderate opinions, passed for a Jacobin, for a 
 demagogue according to the Eoyalists. These com- 
 posed the majority of the Academy of Aix, almost the 
 whole indeed, for both Republicans and Bonapartists 
 had fallen, involved in one common ruin. The eulogy 
 of Vanvernagues was the theme cliosen for the prize. 
 Thiers presented his essay. The Academy, knowing 
 that it well deserved the prize for its literary merit, 
 deferred their decision for another year. Then Thiers 
 wrote another discourse, forwarded it anonymously to 
 Paris, in order that it should be sent from thence to 
 the Academy. Thanks to this ingenious stratagem, 
 he took both the prize and the accessit, the prize under 
 his assumed name, and the accessit under his own name. 
 This gave fame in Aix to the student, and made him 
 quits with the Academy, which could not resist the 
 most terrible weapon in France — ridicule. 
 
 We cannot continue the history of this man's career, 
 which has so much influenced his times, without 
 describing the great events among which he displayed 
 his wonderful activity. Napoleon had fallen. No 
 man ever imagined war with more gi-andeur, nor 
 politics with such httleness. He was a Caesar in the 
 held, and scarcely the head of a small party in the 
 cabinet ; but he was born in an age which did not 
 consent to the suppression of nationalities by conquest, 
 nor of liberty by genius. The communities of Eussia, 
 nationality in Spain, liberty in England, kings at 
 Waterloo, the ancient ré(/ime threatened in its ex- 
 
298 ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 istence, the new in its rights — all worked a prodigious 
 reaction against Bonaparte, and buried liim alive in a 
 little island, where the restlessness of his spirit became 
 his scourge and torment. When the Allied forces 
 entered Paris for the first time, nobody seemed to 
 remember the ancient Eoyal family, over which had 
 passed the scaffold, the revolution, the republic, the 
 dictatorship, the empire. The people soon lose their 
 memory, and re-learn only with great difficulty ideas 
 which they have forgotten. Even Talleyrand himself 
 was moved when that enlio^htened but half-insane 
 mystic, Alexander of Eussia, entered his house, tor- 
 mented by his spiritualism and his remorse of con- 
 science, and said, " Does France want the Bourbons ?" 
 And, in fact, the Bourbons turned against Alexander, 
 who did not wish the reaction to be completely vic- 
 torious, nor Napoleon to be entirely conquered. Yet 
 the Bourbons in the second intervention, seemed to 
 have triumphed from the first. There had been great 
 obstacles to overcome. In thirty years a new France 
 had been created. Between this France and the Re- 
 storation stood the scaffold ; between the conscience of 
 France and the conscience of her kings there was a 
 philosophy ; between the throne and the people was 
 the decalogue of the tradition in which the throne be- 
 lieved, and the decalogue of the tradition in which the 
 people believed. Besides, it was considered a necessity 
 for restored sovereigns to have foreign armies, to place 
 themselves under the protection of the European 
 
CHARACTER OF LOUIS XVIIl. 299 
 
 powei's, to reorganize France, to separate the provinces 
 gained by the Eepublic, to be like gaolers of the 
 nation, and denying the independence of those whose 
 lives during the empire appeared incompatible with 
 the independence of other people. All this caused 
 open war between the ancient family and the new 
 people. 
 
 This war languished a little during the reign of 
 Louis XVIII. — a sceptic, there was small respect paid 
 to his authority ; a poltroon, he was unwilling to 
 fight or to move ; apoplectic, and he did not like to 
 fatigue his brain by thinking ; an egotist, and he took 
 the throne as a pleasure, and authority as a new pas- 
 time ; a shadow of the last age, of which he retained 
 the changeableness and repeated the errors. 
 
 During the reign of Louis XVIII., in the year 
 1821, Thiers arrived in Paris. The early events of life 
 are impressed on the memory like warm iron upon wax ; 
 and it was then he learned the system which makes 
 authority irresponsible by avoiding a dictatorship, 
 and which makes liberty illusory by flying from 
 anarchy and falling into the oligarchy of the middle 
 class, the least generous and the least disinterested of 
 all classes; and in order to reconcile liberty and 
 authority exalts the throne and abases the people, 
 putting them outside the pale of political existence. 
 
 Naturally the scepticism of Louis XVIII. was 
 favourable to the development of this system. Thiers 
 went to Paris to be its servant, with his mind full of 
 
30O A DO LP HE THIERS. 
 
 delusive ideas, and liis heart cheered by hope of 
 the future. At that period Paris was mekincholy, 
 confined, damp, and dirty. The second empire has 
 applied the pickaxe to the labyrinth of her streets, 
 and if it has not made the city either beautiful or 
 artistic, it has at least made it clean and airy. But 
 there are still some remains of ancient Paris ; and 
 among the remnants of the past at the corner of the 
 Pue de Rivoli, near the Hotel du Louvre, there is a 
 place called the Passage de Montesquieu, and there in 
 a humble chamber, with a poor bed, little light, and 
 no fire, uncertain not only as to the future, but 
 as to the day, Thiers lodged with the friend of his 
 boyhood, his constant companion, the celebrated 
 historian Mignet. 
 
 The more active of the two friends was he who was 
 afterwards to become the more famous — Thiers. We 
 are now acquainted with the different qualities of 
 these two men ; the one born for contemplation 
 and the study of past ages ; the other for the work of 
 government, and for labours in the Senate. Thiers 
 remembered his countryman — Manuel, a man whose 
 character shone brightly during that period of moral 
 abasement, one who well maintained the dignity of the 
 tribune in those times of the restoration of all ancient 
 institutions, and of threats against all innovations. 
 Manuel recommended him to Lafitte, the revolu- 
 tionary banker and the friend of Béranger, enemy of 
 the Bourbons, an idealist in the midst of banking 
 
HE WRITES FOR THE PRESS. 301 
 
 calcuhitions, nervous and delicate as a woman, but 
 unswerving in his resolutions when they were of deci- 
 sive and supreme importance. 
 
 Lafitte recommended young Thiers to the editor of 
 Le Constitutionnel, that journal which has now fallen so 
 deeply from its formerly celebrity. There he com- 
 menced to display those talents for w^hich he soon 
 became so remarkable, — quickness of perception, clear- 
 ness of ideas, brilliancy of style, connexion and 
 proportion between the parts of his discourse and a 
 passion for polemics. 
 
 Thiers possesses the peculiar characteristics of the 
 French genius — ease in communication, warm sym- 
 pathies, a sparkling clearness, an Attic simplicity, and 
 a want of depth, and all these are most valuable 
 for the press. Consequen tl}^, he soon gained a very 
 high reputation among his associates, particularly for 
 an article entitled " La Monarchic en France," which 
 showed strong dynastic opposition. But as yet his 
 political vocation had not been clearly expressed, nor 
 was the paper which was afterwards to unfold such 
 great changes, then very decided in its sentiments. 
 However, the essays and articles he wrote procured 
 him an eas}^ position and a complete independence. 
 He was very soon rewarded with the income from one 
 of the shares of the Constitutionnel, a journal then much 
 in fashion. 
 
 In this improved situation he was admitted into 
 good society. The salons of Paris have greatly dege- 
 
302 ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 nerated. It is enough to say that Theresa invaded 
 them with her attitudes and her songs full of spirit — 
 of wine. But in the time of the Eestoration, when 
 the sound of battle had been hushed in the murmur of 
 machinery, when the tribune began to resume its 
 eloquence, and the desire of preservation so strong 
 in France increased like a stream freed from icy 
 fetters, then the Parisian salons shone as in the first 
 period of their influence. There was the salon of 
 Lafitte, where assembled the 0])position, and also that 
 of Talleyrand. In his blue salon the destinies of 
 Trance were decided. There entered, followed by his 
 Cossacks, that Emperor Alexander who ascended the 
 throne by crime ; who believed himself destined to 
 bring a new redemption to Europe and a new mission 
 to the human conscience, and who died distracted by 
 moral tortures in a desert, to v/hich he had fled to 
 escape the stings of remorse. Talleyrand was equal 
 to any difficulty, and was capable of anything. "When 
 a child his nurse laid him down in a field in order to 
 be more at liberty in a walk with her lover, and a pig 
 mangled his legs. Something of the animal must 
 have remained in his blood, for never was there such 
 a one since the swine of Epicurus. He was a bishop, 
 and he had no belief in religion ; a courtier, and he 
 did not believe in the monarchy ; a Constitutional 
 Minister, and he had no belief in political virtue; a 
 Frenchman, and he did not believe in his country. He 
 
HIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 303 
 
 showed extreme ingenuity in order to save France in 
 the Congress of Vienna, and displayed still greater 
 meanness at Court to preserve his own influence. But 
 thanks to this influence his salon was one of the most 
 sought in Paris. 
 
 There Thiers shone, at that time a young man of 
 twentj^-five, small and slender, but active. His coun- 
 tenance and manners were somewhat unattractive, but 
 his expression was intelligent, and he had a bitter and 
 ironical smile, like a Proven9al satire ; much of his 
 face was hidden behind great spectacles, but the broad 
 forehead was visible, in which was perceptible the 
 restless flow of the warm southern blood ; he fixed the 
 attention of all by his conversation, fluent, sustained 
 and inexhaustible, which under the transparence of 
 iraao:es concealed the richness of his ideas. 
 
 But as yet the young man could not have much 
 political influence. To obtain this it became necessary 
 for him to take some decided part, and to endeavour to 
 unfold by greater eflbrts the energy of his character. 
 A History of the French Revolution, an ingenious but 
 not remarkable work on the exposition of pic- 
 tures in 1822, a sketch of the actress Belamy; a 
 journey to the Pyrenees, — this was the whole 
 literary treasure of the 3'oung man ; a treasure more 
 valuable for its quantity than for its quality ; more 
 for tlie expectations excited than for services rendered ; 
 more fruitful for the future than rich in the present ; 
 
304 ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 the seed of a history which will always be appre- 
 ciated, and of an eloquence which will always be 
 remarkable. 
 
 Devoted thus to literature by preference, he deter- 
 mined to write a general history. As the French, 
 according to Goethe, are not learned either in languages 
 or in geography, Thiers prepared, himself to become 
 acquainted with the globe, and to give a local colouring 
 to liis pages, decided on a voyage of circumnavigation. 
 Then occurred the great event which was to decide 
 his political vocation ; the death struggle between the 
 reigning family and the liberties of France, a struggle 
 which was concluded by the revolution of 1830, 
 which overthrew the throne of St. Louis, so languidly 
 restored, to yield to a monarchy of the moderate 
 kind, which in its turn fell to give place to military 
 and plebeian dictatorship. 
 
 Louis XVIII. had seen his hopes realized, and had 
 died upon the throne. That European intervention 
 in France which the republic dissipated like smoke at 
 the sound of the Marseillaise, erecting upon all sides 
 the banner of liberty, and shaking ancient dynasties ; 
 that intervention to which the people never consented 
 and which succeeded in placing a king upon the 
 throne, should at least have preserved the honour of 
 the country, and should not have accepted a throne 
 forged with the iron shoes of Cossack horses. 
 
 But Louis XVIII. died. A few hours before his 
 death, he called the Prince his heir, blessed him, and 
 
TRIANON. 305 
 
 addressed a dying prayer to heaven that his brother 
 might be enabled to save the crown for the boy. The 
 heavens rejected the petition. Charles X. ascended 
 the throne with the ideas of other ages, and conse- 
 quently with all the severity of character, and all the 
 inaccessibleness which these ideas counselled. He 
 commenced by a coronation ceremony, half theocra- 
 tic and half feudal, only suited to wound the senti- 
 ment of equality, which holds in France all the 
 intensity of a passion. A fatal error which showed 
 the bottom of his thoughts ! Charles X. had been in 
 bis youth perhaps the most gallant among the princes 
 of that gallant Court. His imprudences had many 
 times compromised Marie Antoinette. At Trianon 
 under the shade of the trees, on the flowery borders 
 of those lakes, where the swans disport themselves, 
 the rustic farm is still shown where princes and prin- 
 cesses, dressed as shepherds and shepherdesses, with the 
 labourers of the field represented the Georgiacs; as if 
 disgusted with the evil to be found in high circles by 
 the absence of real simplicity, they were drawn to 
 seek in the mother of all creatures, nature, a holy 
 social equality. But he who was afterwards king 
 under the name of Charles X., and who was then 
 called the Comte d'Artois, was always distinguished 
 by the exclusiveness of his ideas, and also by the 
 vicious habits of the worst of the courtiers of that 
 period. 
 
 His face had in it a great deal of royal distinction ; 
 
 20 
 
3o6 ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 his manners were aristocratic, his smile was patroniz- 
 ing, he was in fact, a man born for a throne ; rather 
 in those epochs which were capable of faith in tradi- 
 tion, of devotion to royalty, of adoring like a Provi- 
 dence absolute monarchy in those exalted and silent 
 regions in which it takes something of the majestic 
 aspect of divinity. 
 
 But in those revolutionary times the man of an- 
 other epoch was lost. To his natural superstitions 
 concerning the monarchy was united a renewal of the 
 beliefs of his early years. This faith of boyhood took 
 the aspect of an expiation. Almost all vices even- 
 tually cause remorse and feebleness. This faith 
 wounded the revolutionary principle in its most rooted 
 conviction : the liberty of thought. The force of this 
 principle was so great as sometimes to lead the King 
 to acts foreigrn to his character. But as he left the 
 press a little liberty during the time of his Minister 
 Martignac, this liberty turned against him and 
 against his political character. Then he invoked in- 
 violability. And he did not seem aware that this had 
 been conceded to Sovereigns in modern constitutions, 
 in consideration of their remaining inactive, and of 
 their renouncing all political individuality. At length 
 he decided to govern, and he named a Minister, 
 Polignac, which was the same as decreeing resistance 
 to everything. The appointment of this Minister 
 decided Thiers to found, in connexion with Armand 
 Carrel (a young Republican) La Nation, a bold 
 
CHARLES X. 307 
 
 journal, warm and active, whose idea was to preci- 
 pitate the reigning family from the throne. Thiers, 
 enamoured of English history and with English in- 
 stitutions, like all the eclectics and professors of his 
 time, wished, like Hampden, to organize a legal re- 
 sistance against reaction, and was not aware that all 
 legal resistance must presently pass into violence 
 upon a soil so calcined by political excitement as that 
 of France. Thus it happened that his tribune of the 
 press was soon converted into a tribune of the barri- 
 cade. And his temperamentos not of stormy character, 
 for his sharp voice, which was so easily heard in a 
 salon, was easily lost in a tempest. Toads cannot 
 sing in the sea : they are the nightingales of the lakes. 
 
 And the sea of revolution advanced, encouraged on 
 one side by the wishes of the people, and on the other 
 by the imprudences of the Court. In the smallest 
 matters we can see the bias of public opinion. The 
 royal family thought it necessary to erect an ex- 
 piatory chapel in the cemetery of the Madeleine, where 
 the bones of Louis XVI. and of Marie Antoinette had 
 been buried in burning lime. On the da}^ of the in- 
 auguration of this monument Charles X. had dressed 
 himself in a suit of mulberry colour — for that is the 
 mourniüíx costume in the French Court — and the 
 people said laugliingly that the King had gone to the 
 ceremony disguised as a bishop. 
 
 At this time the Ministry summoned Parliament, 
 and the Assembly had then come to represent this 
 
 20—2 
 
3o8 ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 political formula — a Liberal opposition to the Monar- 
 chical reaction. In this work the Assembly was ably- 
 seconded by an active press, eloquent, combative, 
 vibrating with enthusiasm, directed by young men 
 who loved the foam of the revolution as mariners love 
 a struggle with the tempest. In this no small part 
 was taken by the nervous, eloquent, and passionate 
 pen of Thiers. At last the King and his Ministers 
 one day determined to break all the chains with which 
 the Opposition had confined them, and they promul- 
 gated decrees against the press and the tribune. The 
 King rose against the acts of Parliament, trampled 
 them, destroyed them, and traced the arbitrary limits 
 of his power to the two great conquests of modern 
 times, to the press and to the tribune, to those two 
 points whence scintillate the electricity which gives 
 vitality to language. Then Thiers found that of 
 which he had dreamed lovingly during his whole life. 
 He met the ideal of his political views — a resistance 
 like that of Hampden against the power of the 
 Stuarts. And whilst the people arose like the waves of 
 the sea tossed by the tempest, whilst the revolution 
 sounded like a storm in the distant horizon, whilst 
 the stones of Paris shook as if moved by a moral earth- 
 quake, whilst the barricades were being raised — the 
 barricades, those craters of ideas— Thiers, possessed 
 by his Utopian schemes, wrote protests and sent forth 
 manifestations. 
 
 But here we must stop to finish the first part of the 
 
HIS VERSATILE TALENTS. y^ 
 
 man's history, which is extended from the birth to 
 the death of the Citizen Monarchy, and from the 
 birth to the death of the Republic ; which contributed 
 to the creation of the Empire, to fall crushed at its 
 base. All the world resolutely declares two things 
 which are undeniable — Thiers has great talents and 
 great eloquence. His versatile talents embrace all 
 sciences, and his gift of eloquence touches all tlie 
 objects and motives of human activity. From the 
 most minute analysis of politics, he ascends to the 
 most intricate calculations of tactics ; from the study 
 of a bas-relief to the consideration of a pretext. For 
 him everything converges to his theme : the State, 
 art, literature, politics, the exact and natural sciences, 
 g3ography, and aesthetics. He could never be a pro- 
 found philosopher, though so richly gifted and so fortu- 
 nate. He could never be an orator to move masses like 
 O'Connell, nor to destroy with the Herculean force of 
 Mirabeau. His language has never had the poetic 
 languor of Lamartine, nor the tempestuous bursts of 
 Danton, that political Titan. But he has always 
 been master of that tiuency which enchants us for 
 hours together, like the murmur of a stream in a 
 peaceful and primeval country. And this man of 
 gentle manners has passed all his life in endeavouring 
 to combine in different proportions liberty and autho- 
 rity. He was unfortunate when he thought he had 
 laboured and conquered for liberty. He met a revo- 
 lution, and when he believed he had laboured and con- 
 
310 ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 quered for authority he met with a coup d'etat^ the 
 consequence of his sterile eclecticism. 
 
 We leave the history of Thiers at the time when 
 the prelude of the Eevolution of July was heard, a 
 tempest which had been long threatening in the cloud- 
 laden horizon. France felt herself humiliated, not so 
 much by the narrowness of her parliamentary institu- 
 tions and the restriction of her rights, as because that 
 both came from foreign hands, reddened in her blood. 
 The ignominious defeat of Waterloo burned in her 
 heart like a hot iron. The liberal sentiment, which 
 had been wounded, arose and sought to inflame the 
 national sentiment, also wounded by the remembrance 
 of foreign intervention. Thiers was the chief of a 
 journal which bore the most radical banner of the 
 Opposition, and met with a reality exceeding his 
 dreams. 
 
 The true and primitive French Eevolution had been 
 daily degenerating, first, because many of its most 
 celebrated adherents were dead, and because the Em- 
 pire had converted the remainder into courtiers and 
 soldiers. As soon as the men of equality had died in 
 the agitation produced by the event of that epoch, 
 the power of the rest being lessened, they thought of 
 founding an oligarchy. But as the idea of popular 
 sovereignty was deeply rooted, it became necessary to 
 give the people some participation (though but appa- 
 rently) in the Government. This necessity becoming 
 known, all the reactionary powers combined to give 
 
THE PURITANS AAW THE PARLIAMENT. 311 
 
 the people tlie least possible share in the Government, 
 and to strip them of their rights. To found an oli- 
 garchy was the design. Bonaparte desired a military 
 oligarchy ; Charles X. a theocratical oligarchy, Guizot 
 a financial oligarchy ; Thiers wished for the oligarchy 
 which was at that period the most logical, althougli 
 always the least glorious, the oligarchy of tlie middle 
 classes, based on full parliamentary principles. 
 
 Naturally, when it became a question of establishing 
 a liberal oligarchy, all eyes turned to England. There 
 are in that countrj^ two liberal traditions that should be 
 distinguished — the Puritan tradition, and the Parlia- 
 mentary tradition. To the first have belonged the most 
 severe and most able men in England, the indomitable 
 Cromwell, whose power was greater than that of kings ; 
 the great Milton, who bore, like Dante, his hopes to 
 the heavens in immortal verses, his anger to the 
 infernal regions, and engraved his political ideas in 
 eternal fame ; and the names — then obscure, but now 
 brightest in history— the names of those mysterious 
 wanderers who would not submit their consciences to 
 tyranny, left the English coast to seek a free temple 
 to their God, and whose descendants were rewarded by 
 the privilege of being the elected of Providence to 
 found the great model of liberty, the Eepublic of the 
 United States, a work of conscience which has risen 
 immaculate on the virgin nature of the New World, 
 the continent of the future, as Asia is the continent of 
 the past. But close beside this republican tradition 
 
312 ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 there is the Parliamentary tradition, which has lessened 
 the powers or the monarch and augmented the liberties 
 of the people, in order to favour an oligarchy of the 
 higher classes, of an aristocrac}^ whose art of con- 
 servation is admirable ; who know how to resist when 
 opposition is feeble, to give way when it is strong : who 
 lay down some of their privilege that they may not lose 
 all, and who always yield in good time, never carrying 
 resistance to reaction, not provoking the ultimate con- 
 sequence of all reactions — revolution. 
 
 These traditions and this ability, these politics and 
 this art led Thiers to the service of the class to which 
 he belonged, the humblest of the middle classes ; but 
 he was sadly deceived, because political oligarchy in 
 Great Britain does not solely consist in art or ability ; 
 it consists, in a great measure, in the position in which 
 it is placed, and which allows it to discern that which 
 is perceptible from all elevations — the distant horizon, 
 the depth of the valleys, the coming of tempests. The 
 EngHsh aristocracy is elevated to a territorial height 
 by its possessions, to a historic height by its recollec- 
 tions, to a moral height by its education, to an intel- 
 lectual height by its political ideas ; and being thus 
 placed, they are separated from those who, slowly and 
 painfully worn with labour and exertion, seek to attain 
 privileges. The middle class in Erance struggles in 
 the plains formed by the revolution, and for them it 
 was difficult, if not impossible, to prevent the encroach- 
 ments of the democracy. 
 
THE FOUR DECREES OF CHARLES X. zn 
 
 But caressing the idea of resistance after the English 
 custom, Thiers was surprised by the revolution of 1830, 
 which vacillated between the Republic and the Con- 
 stitutional Monarchy in those critical moments of 
 revolutions in which the fate of the people is decided ; 
 supreme moments which, in regard to their influence 
 over the future, are worth many ages. 
 
 But we corae to the revolution and the part taken 
 by Thiers in this event. The ordinances of the King, 
 Charles X., were four decrees : — 
 
 First. He suppressed the liberty of the Press, and 
 gave a new organization to this fourth power in the 
 State. 
 
 Secondly. He dissolved the Chamber of Deputies, 
 making their nomination illegal. 
 
 Thirdly. He gave a new organization to the Elec- 
 torate. 
 
 Fourthly. He convoked a Parliament ruled by these 
 modifications. 
 
 The coup cVitat was complete. The Ptestoration 
 denied its own laws and destroyed its own institutions. 
 The first movement produced by this blow was one of 
 terror among all those who w^ere within the political 
 organization. The first resistance to which he appealed 
 was a legal resistance. A consultation of lawyers 
 opened the revolution ; a defence of the law was the 
 first explosion of violence. The toga ascended the 
 steps of the tribunals before the tricoloured banner 
 scaled the stones of the barricade. The Bourse was 
 
314 ADO LP HE THIERS. 
 
 surprised with this sudden danger, which alarmed 
 even the most powerful, and certainly the most 
 cowardly among all social forces, that of riches. The 
 Three per Cents, sunk from 78 to 72. In the Insti- 
 tute, Arago delivered a discourse. He who in the 
 laws of heaven strove to comprehend the mystery 
 of the infinite, defended the infinite upon earth — 
 justice in the laws of society. 
 
 The discourse which he read that day was full 
 of terrible allusions to arbitrary power. Marshal 
 Marmont, who, on the 18th Brumaire, had been an 
 accomplice in the assassination of liberty, who had also 
 been an accomplice in the year '14 with the Allies in 
 the murder of his country, was, in the year '30, an 
 accomplice in the murder of the law. 
 
 But the most formidable resistance was organized 
 where the wound was most profound — in the press ; 
 and in the press the periodical at that time the most 
 combative, if not the most important, was La Nation ; 
 and the most able, if not the most intelligent, writer 
 in Za Nation was Thiers. Observe the path through 
 which the son of a poor workman in Marseilles 
 advanced to the front scene of the history of France. 
 The editors confided to him the composition of the 
 protest. The brilliance of his southern style was 
 much moderated by temperate protestations of respect 
 to the law. They hesitated to sign the paper with 
 their own names, fearing the vengeance of power. 
 Thiers recommended that the true stamp should be 
 
PUBLIC EXCITE ME XT. 3 1 5 
 
 given to that act of valour, and all signed, believing 
 that they signed tlieir death warrant. The impulse 
 of this fear raised the natural idea in those supreme 
 moments^the idea of armed resistance. Thiers 
 thought that within the law there were efficacious 
 measures, as, for example, the refusal to pay taxes, a 
 means, without doubt, more to be dreaded by power 
 than a revolution, because, though revolution may de- 
 stroy it by a pistol shot, the refusal to pay taxes lets 
 it die of hunger. 
 
 But these legal resistances are difficult to organize 
 among people long habituated to servitude. The 
 violence of arbitrary government engendered the tur- 
 bulence of the revolution. Force was opposed by 
 force. In society, as in nature, creatures briug forth 
 their likeness. On the 26th, the ordinances were pro- 
 mulgated, and the legal resistance lasted only till the 
 27th. On that day the people began to fling stones 
 at the carriage of the Prime Minister, Polignac. 
 Liberal journals were distributed by thousands in the 
 streets. These sheets inflamed public opinion, and 
 brought out the profound agitation which had lain 
 tranquil. The compositors leaving their offices, ran 
 to preach an armed resistance, with the excitement 
 they so easily learnt at their work, and gave the first 
 example of engaging in the struggle. 
 
 As in the time of the first Ee volution, the move- 
 ment began in the Palais Eoyal. The stunted trees 
 of the garden may compare with the cedars of 
 
3'rt ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 Lebanon, tliey have seen so many changes. The 
 Rue St. Denis echoes a blow given in the Palais 
 Eojal. The first outlines of the Eevolution were 
 seen in the first barricades. The pupils of the Poly- 
 technic unrolled the tricolor flas:, that o-lorious banner 
 which had waved from the Alps to the PjTamids, and 
 which had been routed by foreign intervention. The 
 French nation, on flinging on* the white flag, in which 
 she had been enveloped since her defeat, was trans- 
 ported as if she had cast aside a funeral shroud, and 
 felt anew the warmth of vitality. 
 
 The people rushed into the streets ; the revolution 
 commenced. The principal posts were occupied, guns 
 were distributed among the multitude ; the Place de 
 la Greve was stained with the first blood of the 
 combat. The drums sounded to the attack, and at 
 the same moment the first shots declared the bursting 
 forth of one of those revolutions which are so well 
 compared to volcanoes, from their light, their fire, 
 their thunderings, their devastations, but which also 
 have their necessary place in social life. In this crisis 
 what was the action of Thiers ? He fled to take 
 refuge in tlie house of one of his friends, in the 
 peaceful and beautiful valley of Montmorenci, from 
 whence he could look upon Paris as a simple tiller of 
 the field looks from afar at the tempest on the ocean. 
 But in this he acted consistently ; he had never ap- 
 proved the revolution ; he did not practise that which 
 he did not believe, that of which he did not approve. 
 
HIS INCOXSISTENCY. 517 
 
 But be would Lave been more logical if be bad ab- 
 stained from its fruits. And especially be would 
 bave been more consistent if be bad not roused an 
 anti-dynastic flag — a banner essentially revolutionary, 
 A dynasty does not fall by argument. A power wbicb 
 is bereditary and permanent does not cease because a 
 pen scratcbes its sceptre. To sbow disdain for revo- 
 lutionary proceedings, it is necessary to avoid tbe 
 expression of revolutionary ideas. Preacbing tbe fall 
 of tbe dynasty, and keeping apart from tbe revolu- 
 tion, Tbiers was unfaitbful to two causes ; be was 
 certainly unfaitbful to tbe establisbed regime, witli bis 
 revolutionary predictions, and false to tbe revolution 
 wdtb bis scruples for order. To overturn a dynasty 
 peacefully is a Utopian idea wbicb was not even con- 
 ceived by tbe ultra-parliamentary Englisb. Tbey, in 
 order to put an end to tbe political life of tbe Stuarts, 
 passed tbrougb two successive revolutions ; tbey in- 
 vested witb tbe purple a rebellious and ungrateful 
 daugbter, most unjustly disinberited tbe legitimate 
 beir to tbe Tbrone, brougbt over a Dutcb magnate as 
 bead of tbeir Government, and accepted foreign inter- 
 vention in aid of insurrection. And all tbis violence 
 was called a boly revolution by tbose unwearied 
 readers of tbe Bible. Tbiers, on tbat occasion, bad 
 forgotten bis eternal models. 
 
 But tbe revolution prospered. Tbree principal 
 centres were decided on for tbe expression of opinions, 
 and for tbe organization of resistance. "We must first 
 
3i8 ADO LP HE THIERS. 
 
 mention the central Parliament, the last refuge of the 
 law universally ignored. In this centre Casimir 
 Perrier was conspicuous ; a man of an unsteady con- 
 science and selfish character, deficient in a love of 
 liberty, and a despiser of the people, popular notwith- 
 standing because he had opposed the Eestoration, and 
 the people always prefer the enemies of their enemies, 
 whatever be the motive of the enmity, to the sincerest 
 and disinterested friends of their rights. Associated 
 with Perrier was the austere Protestant, cold-hearted, 
 of average intelligence, sober in speech, dry and 
 methodical in style, a worshipper of the aristocracy of 
 gold, on whose altars he unhesitatingly sacrificed that 
 which should never be sacrificed, not even for the 
 most sublime cause, nor in the most supreme moments, 
 reputation and conscience. With Guizot was Ville- 
 maine, a correct and eloquent writer, but empty and 
 garrulous, who did not hesitate in the Academy to 
 ofíer the vapours of his rhetoric as incense to the 
 stranger — the Czar, and yet scrupled in the Chamber 
 to forget the mandate of the people sustaining his 
 sovereignty. This Central Parliament was timid. 
 
 Beside the Central Parliament was the authority of 
 the Hotel de Ville. This building is like a royal 
 palace ; designed with all the elegance and grace of 
 the Eenaissance, although somewhat overcharged by 
 those immense roofs which are necessary in the cold 
 and damp countries of the north, where our spacious 
 terraces and airy galleries could not defy the incle- 
 
LAFA YETTE. 319 
 
 nieucj of the weather. And this edifice, with its 
 royal salons, seems to be for ever inhabited by the 
 genius of revolution. Opposite the abode of the 
 students, in the Place de la Greve, which has given 
 its name to all the associations of the people and of 
 labour ; at the end of the Barriere St. A.ntoine, 
 where were assembled the friends of liberty, those 
 who watered with their blood those thrilling days of 
 the social genesis, the Hotel de Ville, by historic 
 necessity, w^as converted into the general quarters of 
 the numerous insurrections, and into the great temple 
 of the revolution. But in the year 1830 it was 
 entered by a nobleman, a gentleman of the ancient 
 regime, a man of pure intentions, of honourable cha- 
 racter, of honest opinions, loving the people and 
 popularity, one who had seen the birth of the Re- 
 public in America, and passing through all the 
 catastrophes of the French revolution, appeared, 
 among the splendour of so many recollections and 
 the smoke of so many fires, the austere personifica- 
 tion of universal democracy. But these souvenirs 
 were his ruin. Lafayette, in place of having the 
 boldness of youth and the impulse of hope, had all 
 the slowness of old age, and bent under the weight of 
 his recollections. He converted the Hotel de Ville 
 into a kind of academy, and revolutionary politics he 
 made use of in historical dissertations. To explain 
 past ages was almost his sole occupation, when the 
 preparation for future times was essential. While he 
 
320 ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 spoke, Odillon Barrot, who by his side represented 
 other ideas and other interests, worked. The greatest 
 force of the revolution was expended in a mere storm 
 of words. The cause which spoke most of right in 
 the echpse of the monarchy was the most backward in 
 action in the moment for labour. Let us imagine a 
 pilot discoursing of the equipment of a vessel whilst 
 the winds tear the sails and break the planks ; of the 
 accidents of other voyages, and the history of other 
 shipwrecks, and we shall have an idea of Lafayette 
 and the Hotel de Ville. 
 
 The Centre, which had most influence, w^as composed 
 of two natures, which appeared to be contrary : of two 
 names which seemed contradictory — of a poet and a 
 banker : Béranger and I/afitte. The poet of the people 
 was the defender of the rights of the people. Béranger 
 has been a contradiction of himself; sober, he sung 
 of intoxication ; chaste, of light and vicious passions ; 
 austere, of gaiety and chivalry. A son of the people, 
 he chanted the military epopee which deprived the 
 people of liberty, and placed them under an igno- 
 minious tutelage, which sacrificed them, poor victims, 
 on battle fields, giving them for a final result, thanks 
 to the irreparable loss of French blood, the restoration 
 of the ancient Monarchy, hailing as a glimpse of 
 liberty and a supreme refuge, foreign intervention. 
 It is impossible to deny the power of the songs 
 of Béranger in bringing about the fall of the Re- 
 storation : but it is also impossible to deny the force 
 
LOUIS PHILIPPE NOMINATED. 321 
 
 of these same verses in contril)uting to the restoration 
 of the Empire. At that period of 1830 Buranger 
 was one of the founders of the ahsolute rule of the 
 middle class: he influenced Lafitte ; Lafitte influenced 
 Louis Philippe ; Louis Philippe, Lafayette ; Lafayette, 
 the people ; and a revolution in its essence democratic, 
 left power with the middle class. 
 
 Wliat paper represented Thiers at that time ? In 
 the first outbreak of the revolution and during the 
 first battles, he quietly sought refuge in the valley 
 of Montmorenci. And when he knew that the an- 
 cient monarchy was about to be overthrown, he went 
 to Paris, anxious to share in the honours of victory 
 and to have a part of the booty, contributing to the 
 nomination of Louis Philippe. He began by a pro- 
 clamation exalting the virtues of the candidate ; this 
 proclamation he threw himself to the impatient mul- 
 titude. Louis Blanc relates, in his history of the 
 ten years, that the Orleanist proclamation was re- 
 ceived with hisses in the Place de la Bourse. After 
 this, Thiers did not reappear in the palace of Lafitte, 
 where the new dynasty was being forged. With- 
 out doubt he wished to be in the antechamber of 
 the Court, and he obtained the post of Minister under 
 the new regime. Knowing that a commission to 
 Neuilly was contemplated in which he was not in- 
 cluded, he ran to Lafitte's palace and complained to the 
 poet Béranger of having been forgotten. " Nothing 
 more natural," replied the latter, ironically, "than 
 
 21 
 
322 ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 to forget the absent." Thiers set out for Neuilly in 
 search of the king for France and of the power for 
 himself. Thiers was poor when he joined La Nation^ 
 he left it with a crown in his hands for a new 
 nionarch. And by a fortune which usually accom- 
 panies all those who are sufficiently skilful to remain 
 within the limits of two ideas, on the confines of two 
 parties, the Eevolution thought of him as its chief; 
 the monarchy named him its lieutenant. Louis 
 Philippe accepted everything, always preferring the 
 nearest and least perilous course. Utility was his 
 aim, his character was selfish ; respectability was his 
 shrine, his god was success, and his life was money ; 
 he accepted the monarchy as a lucrative employ- 
 ment. That which he most loved in power was the 
 Civil List. Losing this he conceived himself lost, 
 and while so many men died that he might have a 
 throne, he thought of his receipts. 
 
 Thiers did not see Louis Philippe at Neuilly. But 
 he met his queen, the virtuous Amelie, and his 
 sister, the ambitious Adelaide. The former was in- 
 dignant with the proposition, with the suspicion that 
 attributed to her husband disloyalty to his own family, 
 treason to the King. The latter only asked that pro- 
 scription of the lesser branch should be avoided. Then 
 Thiers, with that quickness of movement, with that 
 flexible facilit}^ of speech, with the air of security 
 visible in all his affirmations, discoursed largely on 
 the irremediable misfortune of the monarchy, on the 
 
THE CITIZEN KIXG. 323 
 
 necessity for Louis Philippe to save from the ship- 
 wreck some planks from the throne of St. Louis, and 
 upon the readiness of the Courts of Europe to support 
 him, alluding to the proclamation in Paris, whose 
 voice then appeared that of the world. He did not 
 omit his usual parallel between the situation of France 
 and that of England. 
 
 The battle ended in a victory for the people : the 
 Eoyal family fled from St. Cloud to Versailles, from 
 thence to Eambouillet and to the coast; the Assem- 
 bly met, Louis Philippe went to the Palais Royal and 
 rode to the Hotel de Yille, mounted on a white horse, 
 and preceded by Lafitte, the banker, who went to 
 anoint the king of the money-changers with the 
 blood of the people and the powder of the barricades. 
 Many of the combatants spoke of the death of the 
 new king as a means of obtaining the Republic. But 
 the skilful manoeuvres of the middle class turned aside 
 the hand of the people. Odillon Barrot said to Lafayette 
 these memorable words : " This is the best of Ee- 
 publics." Lafayette presented the Citizen King to the 
 people from a balcony, embracing him amid general 
 applause. The monarchy was saved ; and the Abbot 
 Gregoire, who had retired to Passy, already very old 
 and infirm, the Abbot who had once said, " the his- 
 tory of kings will always be the martyrology of the 
 people," on hearing of the issue of the re\olution, 
 wept with pleasure, exclaiming, " Is it possible ? 
 "What happiness ! a Republic with a king !" And 
 
 21— i 
 
324 ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 anew commenced, al30ve, the work of the destruction 
 of liberty ; below, the work of the destruction of the 
 monarchy. 
 
 The monarchy of Louis Philippe was for doctri- 
 naires the supreme synthesis of politics. Admitting 
 the monarchy as thesis and the people as antithesis, 
 the most difficult but also the most important is to 
 accomplish the synthesis, the middle point which re- 
 solves contradictions, tempers its differences, and brings 
 peace to the bosom of antagonists. Thiers thought 
 he could be this synthesis. One of his first cares 
 was to bring some young Republicans to the Palais 
 Eoyal, in order that they should become accustomed 
 to look upon the new King as their chief, and that the 
 new King should consider the Pepublicans as the 
 support of his throne. But the interview was not 
 very successful, nor, consequently, was the idea of 
 Thiers very happy. He began by making them wait 
 a long time, which proved that the Citizen King was 
 acquainted with antechambers — those schools for 
 courtiers. Then he spoke to them earnestly of the 
 necessitv of avoiding: the rocks of the French Pevolu- 
 tion. He intimated that the best method of lighting 
 those rocks was to take his splendid crown for a 
 ■beacon. He spoke warmly of the Convention. 
 Cavaignac said, " You forget that my father was of 
 the Convention !" " And mine also," replied Louis 
 Philippe. On dismissing them he asked them to 
 return, and all answered " Never !" In fact, none of 
 
LOUIS PHILIPPE'S MERCANTILE POLICY. 325 
 
 them came back till 24th February, 1848. The 
 "Never !" of the Eepublicans already announced the 
 fact of the fall of the monarchy. Thiers convinced 
 himself that his synthesis was broken. 
 
 In reality Thiers was not a Minister. The tri- 
 uuiphcint Revolution named him First Councillor, and 
 afterwards Under Secretary of State. When, four 
 months later, Lafitte was raised to the Ministry, 
 Thiers thought of retiring. An order from the King 
 was necessary to detain him in his post. There he 
 rendered eminent services, keeping off the financial 
 crisis with skilful diplomacy in regard to the adminis- 
 tration of State property and the regulation of taxes. 
 This attention to business did not clash with the ideal- 
 ism which harmonizes with the nervous temperament 
 and the restless character of all true children of the 
 South. The man who afterwards desired to see Ital}^ dis- 
 membered, Germany divided, absolute power in Eome, 
 all nations on their knees, that France should seem 
 greater and more exalted, then, with his mobility of 
 opinions, spoke of a general crusade to restore liberty 
 — in the name of the principles of the French Revo- 
 lution — to the oppressed peoples. 
 
 But the policy of Louis Philippe was a mercantile 
 policy. The King was not so much the chief of the 
 citizens as the head of the merchants. The market 
 was his battlefield, the Bourse his temple of glory, 
 gold was his sole ambition, fortune and the riches of 
 his children his most ardent desire. He separated 
 
326 ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 liis property from the Crown to place it far from the 
 clangers of the Eevolution. He dishonoured the 
 beginning of his reign, accepting the heritage of 
 Conde from the hands of his mistress. He mistrusted 
 Lafitte, the banker, who had made him King, sooner 
 than lose some thousands of francs in the cession 
 made by him of the Wood of Branteuil. Louis 
 Philippe was too much of a merchant, and Thiers too 
 much of an orator for them to understand each other. 
 The King should always have remembered the bril- 
 liant words and superior talents of Thiers. But it 
 happened that the same qualities which were so use- 
 ful for the foundation of the new dynasty were but of 
 little value when that dynasty had fallen. 
 
 The last few months of the reign of Louis Philippe 
 were marked by events which showed it was approach- 
 ing its close. Thiers had impressed Lafitte with the 
 policy of revolutionary propaganda against the remon- 
 strances of European Courts. To this end he wrote an 
 eloquent discourse, which the Minister was to read 
 in the Chamber. This discourse was corrected by the 
 King's orders, A crisis was necessary to restore the 
 text. The political sentiment of the discourse of 
 Thiers was summed up in this sentence of supreme 
 eloquence. After saying that France could not inter- 
 fere, except in the event of being threatened in its 
 independence, and compelled to declare war, he ex- 
 claimed, " If tempests burst forth at beholding the tri- 
 coloured banner and become our auxiliai^ies shall we 
 
THE DUCHES SE DE BERRL 32? 
 
 not be responsible before tbe universe?" These words 
 proceeding from tbe mountain of tempests — tbe 
 French tribune — were to pass like a breath of life 
 over the face of a corpse, and that corpse to be reani- 
 mated, although over its mangled limbs hosts of Cos- 
 sacks had held guard. It demanded its right, its place 
 among nations, and for reply saw its useless martyr- 
 dom renewed, and the heralds of despotism, the exter- 
 minating angels of the North, announced to the 
 world, that amid orgies of blood and the lurid splendour 
 of fires, unhappy Poland had been again buried, with 
 hecatombs of her sons barbarously immolated. 
 
 At last Thiers obtained power ; he was appointed a 
 Minister. A people has seldom been so much moved 
 as France was at this period. The blood of Poland 
 had dropped like molten lead upon the hearts of all 
 Frenchmen; the Belgian insurrection, the work of 
 France, found itself terribly threatened ; La Vendee 
 renewed her sinister oath to fight and die for conquered 
 right ; the Duchesse de Berri disembarked to excite 
 civil war by her presence ; the Eepubhcan Parliament, 
 full of talent and vigour, pronounced discourses like 
 those of Garnier Pages. Articles appeared like those 
 of Armand Carrel, pamphlets were issued like those of 
 Carmenin, impressing the public mind with the idea 
 that the days of July had been lost, and exciting a 
 hope of redress in a new revolution. The temporal 
 power of the Popes was shaken, Italy was distracted, 
 socialism became converted into a species of religion, 
 
ADOLFHE THIERS. 
 
 with an industrial cliurcli ; the insurrections of L^^ons 
 and of Paris, so well overcome, showed with terrible 
 aspect the bottom of the abj'ss ; and on all sides it was 
 evident that if the new repme aspired to be durable it 
 must raise its foundations on burning- lava. 
 
 Such were the perilous circumstances in which 
 Thiers mounted to power. The King had beheld in 
 the fall of Charles X. the consequence of following a 
 personal policy, and, without doubt, he had also fol- 
 lowed a personal policy. But the difíerence between 
 both these policies was notable. Charles X. was 
 inspired by his religion, and Louis PliiHppe by his 
 cupidity. Charles X. defended ideas, and Louis 
 Phihppe interests. For the one politics were a holo- 
 caust to God and to His Church ; for the other a 
 dunghill, with which he manured his fields. So he 
 would not have men of talent in his ministry, for 
 talent was an obstacle to his personal policy ; he would 
 have men ignorant or servile. If he accepted the 
 Ministry of Broglie, a kind of Stoic, and of Guizot, a 
 man of clear inteUigence, and of Thiers, a great orator, 
 they entered to satisfy public opinion, to carry on the 
 debates in Parliament, and to obtain (by exciting a 
 rivalry between them) the exhaustion of their politics 
 in contrary efforts, so as to admit the ascendancy of 
 the real policy — the will of the Sovereign. Both fell 
 into the snare, both struggled in the Council of the 
 Crown and in the Assembly, both broke their arms a 
 thousand times in their disputes, but in the end their 
 
THE TRAITOR BEUST. 329 
 
 projectiles wounded Louis Pliilippe, and hurled him 
 from the throne. 
 
 One of the most solemn acts of the Ministry of Thiers 
 was the arrest of the Duchesse de Berri, mother of the 
 legitimate King of France, of the poor Dauphin, upon 
 whom had fallen the ria'ht to a crown, thanks to two 
 abdications. The Duchess had shown great courage 
 in landing in France to defend a cause which had in 
 her eyes the double prestige of historic right and of 
 maternal love. Thiers, in order to discover the refuge 
 of the Princess, bought a traitor, easily met with at a 
 time when everything had a price, and politics were a 
 marketable commodity. Beust, who had always passed 
 for a Legitiniist, sold him the secret, and took the 
 police even to the asylum of the unfortunate Duchess. 
 Flying from the police, the Duchess was sixteen 
 liours confined, with a few loyal persons, in the aper- 
 ture of a wall by the side of a chimney, where the air 
 scarcely entered, and they feared dying of asphyxia, till 
 at length, a fire having been lighted in the chimney, 
 and being nearly roasted alive, they went out and gave 
 themselves up to their persecutors, victims of one of 
 those infamous treasons of which Governments ap- 
 prove, but which history will for ever reprobate. Louis 
 Blanc relates, in his " History of the Ten Years," that 
 Thiers knew the traitor. One day he received a 
 mysterious communication, giving him a rendezcous in 
 the Champs Ely sees, in a spot clearly indicated, and 
 at an advanced hour of the night, when a great project 
 
330 ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 would be made known to him. Thiers hesitated, but, 
 taking two loaded pistols, he went to the place. Tliere 
 he met Beust, and there they decided on the betrayal. 
 A proceeding of Government was prepared, like a 
 crime, secretly, but the criminal who escaped the light 
 of day did not elude the stings of conscience. When 
 the Princess was captured Beust demanded her death 
 with loud voice. Thiers, who was capable of her arrest, 
 was not the man to follow on to the natural con- 
 sequence of this proceeding. On this account he 
 passed from the political Ministry of the Interior to 
 the economic Ministry of Commerce. 
 
 These acts of Thiers proved that the predominating 
 trait in his character was indecision. There were two 
 courses — either not to take the Duchesse de Berri, or, 
 having made her a prisoner, to place her on her trial. 
 To keep her in the fortress of Blaze without a trial 
 was for the Orleanists to compromise the new dynasty 
 with a perilous possession ; for the Eepublicans to 
 infringe the equality of the law, declaring there was 
 not in France a tribunal capable of judging the head 
 of a bloody civil war ; while to the Legitimists it was 
 a crime of unlawful arrest, another insult added to 
 those of legitimate sovereigns, another page to the 
 history of their martyrdoms. 
 
 Thiers pronounced one of those clever and senti- 
 mental discourses, in which he is an adept, to avoid the 
 trial of the Duchesse de Berri. In truth tliere were 
 serious obstacles: the interest of the subject; the 
 exalted position of the prisoner ; the threefold 
 
INSULTS OFFERED TO THE DUCHESS. 331 
 
 prestige of lier sex, her rank and her maternity ; the 
 strengthening of the monarchical idea by the renewal of 
 Eoyal martyrdoms ; the European potentates all rela- 
 tives of the accused, and all interested in her fate ; 
 the reigning family compromised by the ties of blood ; 
 La Vendee again in revolt, conquered but not 
 tranquillized ; eighty or a hundred thousand men of the 
 army from Bordeaux to Paris, occupied by the custody 
 of a woman, who w^as like the shadow of fifteen ages 
 of monarchy ; the Chamber of Peers in the presence 
 of the daughter of one king, and the mother of 
 another, who represented such great interests, and 
 called forth such glorious souvenirs, the impossible 
 condemnation, and the perilous acquittal ; Europe 
 excited by the affecting spectacle, and dreading to see 
 the Convention arise behind the judges of Majesty 
 (fallen in the background of the picture) with the 
 flames of the Pevolution. 
 
 Put anything was better than the infamous cabal 
 which decided to dishonour her in the eyes of Europe 
 and in the estimation of her family. The Duchess 
 had been privately married. That Joan of Arc of 
 the monarchy for whom Chateaubriand sounded the 
 funeral trumpet of the legitimist epopee, had returned 
 to France to fight for the restoration of her throne, 
 and was compelled to be delivered, in the presence of 
 her gaolers, who neither respected the modesty of 
 the woman nor the anguish of childbirth. The 
 Orleans family were implacable towards the Princess, 
 with whom they were united by so many ties. To save 
 
332 ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 the Crown they did not hesitate to dishonour their 
 blood. And this is called political ability ! 
 
 Examples of this kind must be productive of great 
 immorality, and in fact France was rotten to the 
 bones. La Tribune, a liberal journal, was summoned 
 for raising a fold of the veil which shaded so much 
 misery. Lafitte loved the new King, and the King 
 allowed him to fail. The only thing which occurred 
 to Thiers was to raise the fortifications of Paris ; this 
 was both expensive and useless, and the scheme was 
 aiterwards reduced to a circle of forts and bastions, 
 which proved that feeble tactics were practised by the 
 man who had studied so many works and written so 
 many pages upon strategy. The fortifications were 
 made against the Eevolution which passed over them 
 like the wind and lightning. No doubt Paris felt 
 that those fortresses were insults, and did not forg-et 
 the injury. 
 
 Thiers wished to be considered a defender of liberty. 
 But the man who has passed his life in approval of 
 the extremes of despotism is incapable of compre- 
 hending the sublime simplicity of liberty. He de- 
 fended the liberty of the press, though in the Go- 
 vernment he was the author of the ferocious laws 
 of September, which to save the majesty of power, 
 violated the majesty of right. He defended the 
 right of public meeting, but when in power he de- 
 clared France incapable of exercising it, and then 
 suppressed all political associations. At one time he 
 
HIS PREJUDICES AND VANITY. 
 
 adniittecl the people's right to self-government, and 
 at another declared them subjects under perpetual 
 tutelage. He opposed personal government, and no 
 man ever carried his prejudices or his vanity to such 
 an extreme, for in 1S34 he denied himself an am- 
 nesty which he greatly desired, from the puerile 
 weakness of not confessing himself vanquished in the 
 Council of Ministers. To these he had added in- 
 stances of ingratitude which history will never pardon. 
 After the explosion of Fieschi's machine, lie allowed 
 Armand Carrel to be prosecuted, though he had 
 known his generosity of character, and his clearness 
 of conscience in the times of struggle against another 
 dynasty, in days in which they were companion jour- 
 nalists and bosom friends. Even in external politics 
 he contradicted himself, for thougb he had frequently 
 declared that the Spanish war was as fatal to Napo- 
 leon as the intervention in Spain was to the Bour- 
 bons, yet to please the Liberals he would have risked a 
 new intervention in our country, thinking her an ex- 
 hausted Vendee, while our vital force is so great 
 that our blood always burns in our veins to defend or 
 to re-conquer our liberties. And afterwards, great 
 statesman as he was, his vanity concealed from him 
 the fact, that in the theatre of the Court, Louis 
 Philippe moved him, like a Polchinello, by the cord 
 of this vanity, and awakened all his evil instincts to 
 make him the enemy of Guizot, and to render impos- 
 sible the only Ministry that was powerful — a Ministry 
 
334 ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 including tlie two rivals, who brought to the King 
 the opinions of the nation, and did not suffer the 
 nation to submit herself to the opinions of the King. 
 And on the 1 ith October, 183d, he received the portfolio 
 of Foreign Affairs and the Presidency of the Council 
 of Ministers; both dignities offered by the Citizen King, 
 and accepted by the parliamentary orator without 
 even taking into account the will of the Parliament. 
 His ambition was realized, he was not a ¡parvenu, as 
 Talleyrand observed, but an arrive; the greatest diplo- 
 matic ladies smiled upon him, kings treated him as 
 an equal; but the personal government of Louis 
 PhiHppe was erected upon the slioulders of Thiers. 
 Vanity is the greatest enemy of statesmen. 
 
 His foreign policy was fatal. Austria despised 
 him ; England almost separated herself from the 
 French alliance ; Switzerland cursed him ; Spain, for 
 whose cause he fell, did not thank him for his services ; 
 and the three allied northern potentates renewed 
 before his face, and against the general wish of France, 
 the sacrifice of Poland with the suppression of the 
 Republic of Cracow. In the interior, the only thing 
 he accomplished through his political incapacity was 
 to place the decision of the King above that of his 
 Ministers^ and the will of the King above that of 
 Parliament ; therefore he fell. 
 
 From that time Thiers presided over the Left 
 Centre of the Chamber. The King never thanked 
 him for the revolutionary ability which had raised 
 
SUSPECTED BY THE KING. 335 
 
 him to the throne, nor for the services he had ren- 
 dered in founding his personal government. Because 
 the pressure of circumstances had drawn him to give 
 a Hberal colour to his opposition, the aversion of the 
 King made him give a suspicious appearance to the 
 monarchy. When ho went to the palace, when he 
 passed before those Princes to whom the 29th July 
 had, for the first time, presented the rich gift of tlie 
 most brilliant, if the most fragile of earthly diadems, 
 they looked upon him as a conspirator, as a shadow 
 of the societies which had been dissolved, as a rem- 
 nant of the Eevolution which had been stifled in 
 blood. The year 1835 gave him and three times took 
 from him in three days the Ministry. They wished to 
 make him an ambassador, to send him into exile with 
 a salary, for Louis Philippe thouglit all wounds could 
 be cured by a gilded plaster. He was considered a 
 fatality who, with his nervous character, active ambi- 
 tion, sparkling eloquence and parliamentary ability, 
 gave more embarrassment than service to authoritv, 
 and more annoyance than glory to the new dynasty. 
 Becoming aware of this opinion, he went to the Ivintj- 
 to say that if his presence in France made one more 
 political combination, added to the many against which 
 the monarchy had to struggle, he had decided, on the 
 slightest word or indication to that effect, to condemn 
 himself to a perpetual banisliment j so he naturally 
 brought with him to the tribune, with ideas of a 
 lively opposition, troubles which were often intense. 
 
336 ADO LP HE THIERS. 
 
 The ill-will persistently manifested towards him by the 
 King gave him prestige in the Senate ; and as the 
 people are always generous, they soon forgot his luke- 
 warm zeal in their cause, and heaped upon him popu- 
 larity — always too much disregarded by power, to 
 which it is most necessary, and always sought where 
 it is so much needed — in the Opposition; so he ex- 
 claimed from the benches of the Left, " Shall we be 
 so reduced as not to have even the fiction of a repre- 
 sentative government? If such, was our idea, why 
 did you not say so during the three days of July ?" 
 
 Things began to alter \ the doctrinaire policy had 
 borne its fruit. The middle class had become 
 exhausted and corrupt during eighteen years of 
 oligarchical domination. France, as in the worst 
 days of the former reign, on all sides represented 
 reaction. Every day the parliamentary rule pressed 
 with more and more force upon tlie lower classes. 
 Thiers rudely combated these politics. Guizot treated 
 him with great harshness, saying, " Everything de- 
 pends on the place where j^ou find yourself. If you 
 had been in mine, you would do what I do." 
 
 At last came the 24th February. The Citizen- 
 Monarchy crumbled away like tlie legitimate monarchy. 
 The King did not hear the warnings which sounded 
 under his feet. At tlie beginning of the outbreak he 
 said to his sons, " We will not act like the princes 
 of the elder branch; we shall fight in the streets." 
 And he called the first announcement of the com- 
 
THE KING'S WEAKNESS. 337 
 
 motions " a fire of straw." Electoral banquets were 
 jDroliibited. The Opposition wished to celebrate 
 them, notwithstanding the prohibition. Thiers op- 
 posed this, representing, as in 1S30, legal resistance. 
 An accusation was drawn up against the Govern- 
 ment, and deposited upon the table of the Assembly. 
 Guizot read it, and flung it contemptuously upon the 
 table. But in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and 
 on the steps of the Madeleine, the combatants fell 
 wounded. Louis Philippe promoted Bugeaud, the 
 Military Governor of Paris, a warrior famous for his 
 victories, but very unpopular on account of his 
 ferocity. This nomination exasperated the people. 
 The King began to fear, and told Guizot to dismiss 
 him. This display of weakness increased the bold- 
 ness of the insui-gents. Mole was summoned to the 
 Tuileries. On his way, the mob took possession of 
 his coach to put it upon a barricade. Mole arrived on 
 foot. He heard the order to form a Ministry, and 
 said that he, as a Conservative, was not equal to the 
 gravity of the occasion, and that Thiers was the one 
 suited to the occasion. " What will Europe say ?'' 
 exclaimed Louis Philippe. '' Do not think of that, 
 your Majesty, when the throne is tottering." The 
 Iving agreed, but with the condition that Mole should 
 be included in the Ministry. Louis Philippe much 
 enjoyed the ministerial crisis, which gave all the 
 power to the Sovereign, with the prerogative of 
 appointing his Ministers. And whilst Paris burned, 
 
 22 
 
338 ADOLPHE THIERS, 
 
 they formed a Ministry as in times of peace. When 
 Mole went to offer Thiers the chief place, he found 
 him in his house in the little Place St. George. The 
 dynastic opposition surrounded him, and the mul- 
 titude saluted him as in his days of popularity. 
 They imagined that the King would give him real 
 power, that his name would still the disturbance, 
 being absolute master of the situation by the ruin of 
 Guizot, and the timidity of Louis Philippe. Mole 
 set forth his programme. His first article was the 
 dissolution of the Chamber. The King refused his 
 consent. Thiers went to the Tuileries. The streets 
 were piled with barricades. The fire of the in- 
 surgents resounded from all quarters. " You shall 
 not go," cried the people ; "they are deceiving you." 
 Thiers entered, and presented his propositions. The 
 King moved about with much agitation. He went 
 to consult Guizot, shut up in a cabinet close by. 
 When, however, a Liberal Ministry was decided on, 
 it was too late. The King abdicated — it was too 
 late. The Eegency of the Duchess of Orleans was 
 proclaimed — too late — too late. A¥hen the Duchess 
 went to the Assembly she heard the cry, " Vive la 
 Eépublique !" The monarchy of July found its 
 grave and its cradle on the barricades. Louis 
 Philippe and all his family fled to England. Thiers 
 no longer formed part of the Government, but did 
 not cease to shine in the tribune. 
 
 Let us pause a moment and contemplate, under its 
 
lí/S BRILLIANT TALENTS. 339 
 
 different aspects, the life of this man, which we have 
 slightly sketched. Born among the lower ranks of 
 society, he raised himself to the highest by the 
 brilliancy of his talents and his immense perseverance. 
 But once in the highest he forgot his origin, which 
 imposed upon him the imperious duty of defending 
 the privileges of the least, to establish the right of 
 all. If he had done this he mig-ht not have had a 
 high position, nor a great fortune, but as it is, the 
 fatigues of labour have been the lot of his life, and 
 exile will perhaps be his end. Sorrow is the shade 
 which follows genius, for there cannot be genius un- 
 accompanied in some measure by the gift of prophecy ; 
 and there cannot be a prophet without labour for the 
 ideas of the future, without drawing upon himself the 
 hatred of the present. All the Hebrew prophets, 
 those severe judges of tyrants, wrote their terrible 
 sentences in the solitude of the desert. The most 
 elevated intelligence, like the most gigantic tree, 
 attracts the lightning. 
 
 But Thiers was not before his time ; he followed it, 
 and at times from afar. To found the oligarchy of 
 the middle classes was his sole idea ; to retard the 
 entrance of the people into public life was his sole 
 employment. He knew that the middle class is too 
 proud to support all the ancient monarchical institu- 
 tions, and too utilitarian and selfish to pass to new 
 republican institutions. And so he became one of the 
 founders of the hybrid Monarchy of the eighteen 
 
 22—2 
 
340 ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 years — a Monarchy born of a revolution, but un- 
 faithful to its origin, raised on the cash boxes of 
 bankers, and mistaking them for a throne of divine 
 right — a Monarchy composed of a little of everything 
 — little statesmen, little philosophers, little generals, 
 a little sovereign — a Monarchy which founded doc- 
 trinairisra, that chaos of sterility in politics ; eclecti- 
 cism, that negation of all principles in philosophy ; 
 fatalism, that scaffold of all great characters in his- 
 tory ; and public corruption, that cancer of declining 
 epochs, as the only means of government. 
 
 Thiers was not a man of the Monarchy of July. 
 Thiers propelled it towards the abyss during the last 
 year of its existence, and when he tried to save it, it 
 was too late. But certainly he had contributed to 
 found it. Neither was Thiers the man of the 
 B-epublic of February. But without doubt he had 
 helped to bring it about. During the Republic he 
 employed all his talent of oratory to overturn demo- 
 cracy, and all his skill to restore the Monarchy. 
 One day there entered the doors of the National 
 Assembly an obscure youth, pale and silent, who had, 
 if not the air of his Olympian race, ambition in his 
 soul, and the reflection of glory on his forehead. It 
 was Louis Bonaparte. And Thiers, who had so 
 much contributed by his History — his monumental 
 work — to restore the prestige of the Empire, carrying 
 it to the homes of the middle classes, as Béranger 
 had brought it to the rude dwellings of the people, 
 
LOUIS NAPOLEON, PRESIDENT. 341 
 
 did he not behold the Empire corae from its sepul- 
 chre in that pale face ? Thiers did not wish for an 
 Imperial restoration. An Empire means personal 
 government, and this is not agreeable to a parlia- 
 mentary orator. This was unforeseen. The young 
 Bonaparte was his candidate for the post of President 
 of the Republic. The motive of this election was told 
 in a scornful sentence — " He has a wooden head." 
 On such a head Thiers might very easily spread his 
 own brain. One day the candidate became President. 
 Speaking was a necessity with Thiers, and he had 
 the habit of writing long documents on all critical 
 occasions. He had written the protests against 
 orders, the first proclamations of the Orleans family, 
 the discourse in which Lafitte set forth the external 
 policy of the Monarchy of July. A new document 
 for the new Chief of the State was a basis of power, 
 and of fortune for himself. And he sought this in 
 mature years with the same intensity as in his early 
 days. He carried the speech to Bonaparte. The 
 President read it, and returning it to him, said, " I 
 have already written the speech ; for I wish to be 
 myself" The personal government was founded. 
 The wooden head (as Thiers called it) became the 
 cerebrum of France. Thiers considered himself a 
 statesman; but he had not foreseen this. When he 
 uttered the sentence " L' Empire est faitr the world 
 already knew that the Empire was made, and pro- 
 bably by his fault. 
 
342 ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 In his hatred of the people, in his enthusiasm for 
 the restoration of the oligarchy, he laboured in the 
 Assembly to prevent universal [male] suffrage. And 
 either the Eevolution of February was nothing, or it 
 was the entry of the people to the electorate. What 
 happened in this imprudent retrogression, this re- 
 striction of the suffrage ? He gave the President an 
 arm for the couj:) d'état. Bonaparte desired universal 
 suffrage. The deputies of the school of Thiers wished 
 it when the Imperial legions murdered the Eepublic 
 in the name of the rights of the people. This also 
 was too late. One of the deputies of the majority 
 who had met together in a quarter of Paris, came out 
 upon the balcony to proclaim the principle upon 
 which they had before trampled. The people laughed, 
 and a sergeant was put in prison. The policy 
 of Thiers led to this. We ma}^ say that he was from 
 the tribune the Polignac of the Eepublic, as in the 
 monument raised by his History to military genius 
 he was the restorer of the Empire. 
 
 His History ! This is indeed his chief monument, 
 and it well merits this name. It shows art in the 
 grouping of i'acts, warmth and movement in the nar- 
 ration, the profound erudition of an economist, and 
 stranger than all, skilful tactics. But imagination — 
 that great stamp of reason and intelligence, by which 
 history may be elevated into a science — is not 
 visible in any of its pages. Philosophy is wanting. 
 Thiers saw admirably, as if he had accompanied and 
 
HIS CHARACTER AXALYSED. 343 
 
 followed the marches and counter-marches of armies, 
 the evolutions of the different divisions, and even the 
 spot on which the soldiers stood. Thiers beheld the 
 terrible encounters, the battles ; heard the words of 
 command, and minutely criticised them ; counted the 
 dead, examined all, from the plan of the engagement 
 to its close, and understood all from the military 
 administration to the strategy of the field. But 
 Thiers did not perceive, did not follow the waves 
 of ideas, which pass like the movements of the 
 air, over great armies, and which involve them 
 in an impassible atmosphere in what is called 
 the spirit of their time, the life of their age. Thiers 
 is no philosopher, with talents essentially analytic; 
 the crreat 2:eneral laws of life and of history are 
 too hi^h for his mental vision. Thiers feels the 
 trembling of the earth, the shaking of societies, 
 but he neither sees nor knows aught of the central 
 fire of ideas. That his book is so deficient in great 
 philosophical teaching can only be explained by the 
 philosophical sterüity of the Empire. This might 
 find compensation in the presence of moral teaching. 
 But conscience is also absent from this great work. 
 Thiers did not wish to be in his book a philosopher, 
 like some great modern historians ; nor a judge, hke 
 some great historians of antiquity. 
 
 He manifests more admiration towards the me- 
 chanical forces of society than towards the spiritual 
 forces of ideas. This is why he has been seen in the 
 
344 ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 tribune, when European politics were discussed, less 
 in advance than the Empire, less idealistic than the 
 military, praising the antique European equilibrium, 
 which is the chain of the peoples ; and permitting the 
 destruction of nations that France might be more 
 exalted, although at the price of the unhappiness and 
 degradation of all. We find this narrow and classic 
 patriotism, which places the country above the whole 
 human race, and the welfare of a few above justice 
 for all, above generosity engendered by a philosophy 
 superior to all interests, that desires to behold each 
 individual in his right of citizen, each nation in her 
 independence, all men united in the holy equality of 
 justice, all nations friends in the bosom of humanity, 
 mistresses of nature by their labours, and reflections 
 of God by their virtues and their sciences. " Poetic 
 Utopia !" cry the utilitarians, those who would give 
 the swan to Socrates to benefit the sfods, the cross to 
 Christ to save the Csesars, the inquisition to Galileo 
 for the advantage of scholars, and who yet suffer, 
 feeling the stings of falsehood and evil ; whilst 
 these Utopians, who appear as stars in the darkest 
 nights of history, are the life of the age, the bases of 
 society. 
 
 The French Republic charged the Ministry to 
 make peace ; and entrusted the task of infusing this 
 idea into foreign Governments to the great orator, 
 Thiers. He was liked in the different Courts of 
 Europe, but he belonged to the ancient diplomacy, 
 
HIS ORATORY. 343 
 
 SO admirably laid aside in the simple, energetic, and 
 tnitliful manifestoes of Jules Favre. 
 
 And Thiers contributed more to the war than any 
 other. His former disclosures were designed to 
 wound the fibre of French patriotism, and to show 
 war as a necessity for her greatness and her influence 
 in the world, the destruction of Germanic and of Italian 
 unity. Thiers said that France should be surrounded 
 by small, dismembered, and feeble nations, incapable 
 of opposing their forces to those of the French 
 people — always powerful from their glorious history — 
 the universality of her language, and her thirty- 
 eight millions of citizens. 
 
 With these ideas of exclusiveness and supremacy, it 
 was difficult to make way with foreign Governments, 
 and they now behold the fate of France with indif- 
 ference. Selfishness, which is repugnant in indi- 
 viduals, is still more repugnant in peoples. Man 
 does not exist if he does not live in his family, in his 
 country, in humanity, where his heart and his con- 
 science expand. And peoples do not really exist 
 when they are separated from communion with other 
 peoples. A people shut up in selfishness is as useless 
 as a polypus upon its rock, devoted solely to the 
 labour of nutrition. 
 
 It is a sad pity that such a man as Thiers, a man 
 of remarkable eloquence, should belong to the reac- 
 tionaries of history. His oratory is certainly en- 
 chanting. SmaU and slender, of mediocre features. 
 
346 ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 of sharp voice, of unpleasing gestures, and of a vivacity 
 ancl mobility which prevent him from being grave 
 and solemn ; without the superior understanding of a 
 philosopher, without the brilliant imagination of a 
 poet, it is strange that he should produce immense 
 effects and obtain incalculable victories by the marvels 
 of that speech, which, fluid, connected, light, and 
 graceful, flows like conversation, yet has at times 
 the intonation and the grandeur which belongs to 
 the art of^elocution. 
 
 Jl-ú^ do you seek to know why this personage has 
 dominated less than he should have done in his time, 
 having been placed in the most favourable circum- 
 stances in which a man could find himself? He has 
 not possessed all the moral power he should have 
 had, to which those exalted intelligences aspire, who 
 from their setherial elevation despise low, worldly 
 grandeur ; he has had not this, because his ideas are 
 not progressive, because his character is moveable 
 and changeful as a flood, and a name cannot be graven 
 on the eternal bronze of history which is not chi- 
 selled by the force of a great character and of a 
 powerful imagination. 
 
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