nature, not only had the Beautiful taken the lead of all other sciences, but it had made tributaries of all the different branches of literature, and the notion of Ideal was quite as familiar to moralists as to poets and philosophers. "In order to obtain a full appreciation of this admirable movement," adds a French critic, "it would be necessary to read Goethe's letters on Italy, Tieck's novels, and, above all, Jean Paul Richter, of whom we may say with truth that during his long life he was an apostle and ardent missionary of the Ideal, inaugurated by Schelling in his system of transcendental philosophy. Jean Paul Richter sought for his inspirations in religious traditions, and in his eyes Christianity had acted as a sort of Last Judgment, dooming to death the old world of Heathenism and sense, to make way for the spiritual world.

Thus, all around the master mind of Schelling there was a host of minor, yet ardent, spirits, intent upon vulgarizing, as the French put it, the new doctrines. Their names were Haman, Claudius, Jacobi, Shenkendorf, Stolberg, and many others.

Schelling was doubtless the grand discoverer in this region, and yet if we are to judge from M. Rio's personal experience, it was by no means easy to follow in his wake. The Germans scem over-fond of an archaic terminology which they create for themselves, mindless of all the world besides, as if obscurity were depth, or clearness and precision were real faults in a writer. At any rate, our author found it necessary to get his master's lofty adumbrations translated into common mortal language, and probably they lost nothing by the translation. Indeed, it was only at a later period that M. Rio was certain of really understanding the philosopher's transcendental idealism; but we must refer the reader to his pages for a summary of the system.

After all, if we were to give our own opinion on the subject, we should say that there was an innate, and perhaps unconscious, tendency to pantheism in Schelling's idea of asthetics, as will always be the case, whatever may be their genius, with those who rear their edifice on science alone. We therefore doubt greatly whether the author of "Christian Art" would have profited much by the lessons of his German masters. Fortunately for him and for ourselves, he had other resources of a more practical kind at his command; first, in the Italian researches (Italianische-Forschungen ") of Baron von Rumohr; secondly, in his own researches among the galleries and historical depositories of Italy; and thirdly, in his constant intercourse with the most eminent men of France and England. The German work was the production of a wealthy Danish nobleman, who devoted a considerable part of his life and fortune to the study of Italian art, ever tracing it back to its true source of inspiration-pure religion, ever repudiating the

hackneyed opinions of the day. According to our humble view of the matter, Rumohr did more for Rio's aesthetical education than all the high-flown notions of Schelling and his disciples put together. We believe that he himself would hardly controvert our assertion.

We have named France, and in the eyes of many this may appear somewhat paradoxical. Of all European nations, England excepted, France is perhaps the one which entertains the lowest conception of the beautiful in the arts of design. Take her different schools from the close of the sixteenth century down to our own times, and you may trace throughout all their productions something high and dry, a certain stiffness reminding one of the strict etiquette which prevailed at the court of Louis the Fourteenth, rather than of those meek, scientific, angelic forms that grace £0 many Italian or Spanish pictures of the golden age. The very Italian artists, who were called up from their own country by the Valois, or the first Bourbon monarchs, seem to have undergone a change of mind when transferred to the banks of the Seine. Nicholas Poussin, Philip de Champagne, and others, all bear more or less this stamp of sameness and dryness; Lesueur alone would perhaps form an exception in his inimitable life of S. Bruno, and it must be remembered that he laboured among the Carthusian monks, in whose society he would daily reap an ample stock of legendary lore. Now what a perennial source of inspiration were the medieval legends to the Transalpine artists. How much a Giotto, or a Fra Angelico, or a Francia, or Raphael himself, or again the Umbrian and Ventian schools have learnt by them! How truly truly lovely, heavenly, ethereal are those Madonnas, Bambini, and saintly personages that surround them! looking at them your very soul is moved sometimes to tears; how is it that nothing of the same character ever strikes us in a French painting of the best masters? Correctness of design, an elaborate disposition of the groups in accordance with the technical rules, a sober, yet vivid colouring, all essentials are there; but the feeling, the je ne sais quoi, which urges you to fall down and pray, where is it? Altogether French pictures remind one down to very lately of statuary, and it is a remarkable fact that one of their great reformers, David, brings forth this fault in strong relief in every one of his pictures.

On

There seems, therefore, to have been hitherto a want of real æsthetical feeling, in its highest sense, among our neighbours, and if a reaction has set in of late years, most perceptible in the productions of Orset, Perrin, and Hyppolite Flandrin, it is attributable first of all to the strong religious revulsion of the last five-and-twenty years; and, secondly, to the joint efforts of Rio, Montalembert, and Victor Hugo. But what was the real state of opinion in France, VOL. XIX.-NO. XXXVIII. [New Series.]

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when the young peer published his famous letter on Vandalism in the Fine Arts, we may judge from the fact that Rio's first volume fell dead upon the ear of the public, and well nigh discouraged him altogether. But Montalembert was not a man to be baffled by difficulties; with the dash of a crusader he plunged headlong into the thickest of the fight, ever returning to the charge until the day was won, until the tide was turned. Few men have done more than Montalembert for the fine arts in France, though at that very time he was fighting for the liberties of the Church. "Don't stay at Munich," he used to write to his friend on that occasion; "don't stand there hunting after the vagaries of a Baader or of a Schelling; come back here to fight out the good cause with us. You owe it as a duty to yourself and to your country."

Such were the fiery adjurations of the noble Count, and M. Rio was not the man to turn a deaf ear to them. It was as well for his future studies that he was thus recalled from the towering heights of German ideal to the practical, prosaic every day level of human life. It is dangerous to be too long soaring in the skies.

M. Rio had married an Englishwoman, and was now the happy father of two lovely little girls. There is nothing astonishing, therefore, that our language should have become in time as familiar to him as his own, nor that he should have made many prolonged residences in England. He was thus led by degrees to study our literature, with the special view of discovering its connection with the religious vicissitudes which England has undergone for the last three centuries. To many this peculiar point of view may appear strange; to others better acquainted with the annals of those times, they well know what a large share Catholicism has had in forming the mind of many of our old authors. At any rate the subject was attractive, and as M. Rio was then labouring under great discouragement in consequence of the utter failure of his first volume on Christian Art, it gave a new direction to his ideas. He was, besides, stimulated in his undertaking by his English friends—by Protestants even still more than by Catholics-so that when, after prosecuting his new researches for three years in Wales, the birthplace of his wife, he came up to London, every door was open to him, and he had free access to nearly every sort of information. The reader will likewise bear in mind that he still belonged to the diplomatic corps. And with these few words by way of explanation, we shall glance at some of the eminent men whom he soon made his friends, and whose portraits he excels in painting from life. We select a few of them.

The man whom the Whigs agreed to consider as the most competent judge in history was Lord Macaulay, or rather Mr. Macaulay, for those two

The

appellations represent two very different phases of his literary career. Macaulay of the first phase, the author of so many wonderful masterpieces published under the title of "Essays," had spoken in his narrative of the famous Hastings trial so admirably of Burke [one of M. Rio's great heroes], that I felt almost quite as grateful for it as if he had rendered me a personal service. To this may be added, that whenever any one spoke in his presence of the atrocious measures adopted in England to extirpate Catholicism, he defended the victims with a degree of energy expressing something more than mere compassion. He then became really eloquent, far more indeed than in the House of Commons, where he as yet seldom rose to that height which one was entitled to demand of a man who, by his deep knowledge and splendid talents, seemed to concentrate in his own person every condition required for great parliamentary success.

No, it was not on such ground that Macaulay displayed the prodigious resources of his mind, but above all of his memory, it was in conversation. There he ruled as a master, nay, even as a despot, a fact not always pleasing to those who had already swayed, or aspired to sway, the same sceptre. As for myself, whose part was far more humble, and who found the delight of novelty in these dazzling extemporaneous effusions, I listened with an ecstasy founded partly on the abundance and àpropos of the quotations by which he was prone to support his line of argument; and these quotations were not only borrowed from his favourite English poets whose compositions he seemed to know all by heart, but he likewise laid under contribution the works of classical antiquity. Indeed, if I recollect right, he was the first who gave me the spectacle which I met with so frequently afterwards at breakfast or dinners, of guests who, without being professional scholars, quoted Greek authors quite as freely as we do our French writers. It is well known that Lord Brougham, who was keenly sensitive as to the susceptibilities of his audiences, sometimes gave way to a similar license in some of the gravest parliamentary debates.

At any rate, I for one felt no fatigue at these luxuriant and extempore exhibitions of Mr. Macaulay; I was but too happy to find in his appreciations, however diffuse they might be, a help to my own ignorance of a hundred little things concerning contemporary history, which were alluded to in my presence, but which I could not understand. There were, however, certain blanks in his mind, certain problems he could never solve, certain exalted doctrines to which his practical genius could not ascend, as was proved by the latter part of his literary career, when, as Lord Macaulay, he ceased to be a witty and conscientious critic to become an elegant but partial historian, thus satisfying at one and the same time the good taste and narrow prejudices of the majority of his readers.

It was a wonderful thing to see Hallam and Macaulay tilting against each other, on account of the efforts displayed by each of them to show the same qualities and advantages that distinguished his antagonist. This spectacle I enjoyed several times in the spring of 1839; but above all one morning at breakfast with the poet Samuel Rogers, who by no means liked his hospitality to be spoilt by noisy controversies. He was obliged, like myself, for a full hour to play the part of a mute, and this made him very fidgety against hi

guests. I myself was all eyes and ears; indeed, what I heard and saw left me such a lively impression, that I immediately wrote down as follows in my diary:

Monday, May 15th. Breakfasted this morning at Rogers's with Hallam and Macaulay. The whole time it was nothing else but a crossfire between the two rivals. They seemed to vie at saying the most in a short time; their volubility was something awful. Both were endowed with a prodigious memory, and a no less prodigious power of elocution; so it was really difficult that the dialogue should degenerate into a general conversation. For a full hour the two illustrious speakers seemed ambitious of proving that on any given subject they were inexhaustible, even when most alien to a man of letters, such as the navy, uniforms, the police, civil law, &c. At last Rogers succeeded in bringing them back from those highways and byways, and by degrees our little meeting became interesting. But in the course of time Macaulay once more regained possession of his sceptre, and I listened to him even with still greater attention than usual.

"This is how I should sum up the impression he left upon my mind :-I should say of Macaulay that his overloaded memory stands very much in the way of his mind, which I allow to be quick and sound, but has no tendency to soar or to dig, all its motions being as it were horizontal. His manners and tone savour a little of the bar; he has got the conceited trick of breaking off his speech if only part of the audience are listening to him, and he will walk to the other end of the room, holding the thread of the conversation in his hands, and perfectly confident that no one will dare snatch it from him.* His eyes sparkle with wit, and the lower part of his forehead displays a very fine projection; there is something more open, more kindly, than in that of Hallam, wherein you can trace keen wit in the eyes, still keener sarcasm in the upper lip; but between the upper and lower part of the face there rises a most harsh muscle, forming a sort of barrier between both, and against that muscle every genial expansiveness, every irradiation, flowing either from the eyes or lips, seems to expire."

Our readers will readily admit, we believe, that if Hallam and Macaulay displayed wonderful powers in conversation, they had found a hearer full worthy of appreciating their talents. But we must hurry on to other figures, delineated with no less firmness and delicacy of pencil.

Here comes Thomas Carlyle, then only beginning to emerge from obscurity, and destined to remain yet, for a long time to come, totally unknown to a French public. He had particularly shocked M. Rio's sensitive conscience by the easy, off-hand way in which he absolves the crimes of the great Revolutionists. This feeling amounted to downright indignation on meeting with the following passage:"It is impossible to name any period in the history of France when the nation, as a body, suffered less than during the

*The above words stand in English in the original.