IV. DR. CHALMERS'S BRIDGEWATER TREATISE On the Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral Sermons, with an Essay on the Right Interpretation and Understanding of the Scriptures. By THOмas Ar- VIII. LORD DOVER'S LIVES OF EMINENT SOVEREIGNS Lives of the most Eminent Sovereigns of Modern Eu- rope. Written by a Father for the Instruction and IX. HOMOEOPATHIC SYSTEM OF MEDICINE 1. The Organon of the Healing Art; a new System. of Physic. Translated from the German of S. HAHNE- MANN, by C. H. DEVRIENT, Esq. with Notes by S. 2. A Practical Appeal to the Public, through a Series of Letters, in Defence of the New System of Physic, &c. &c. By JOHN BORTHWICK GILCHRIST, LL. D. Wahrheit aus Jean Paul's Leben. Nachbildungen der Handschrift Jean Paul's und sei- [Truth from Jean Paul's Life. With two Fac-similes SELECT JOURNAL OF FOREIGN PERIODICAL LITERATURE. JANUARY, 1834. [From "The Edinburgh Review," No. 116.] [The extracts given in French in the original article are here translated.] ART. I.-1. Ouvrages de M. Jules Janin. 16 vols. 12mo. Paris. 1832. [Works of M. Jules Janin.] 2. Euvres Complètes de Victor Hugo. 12 vols. 8vo. Paris. 1832. [The Complete Works of Victor Hugo.] THE literature of France has certainly for the last three years exhibited a very remarkable spectacle. The most startling contradiction seems to exist between the theory and practice of the more distinguished of its literary men ;-between the principles by which they feel and admit that literature must be guided, and the actual results by which they illustrate those principles. Nowhere has the complaint been more loudly and generally urged than in France, that the spirit of selfishness, the want of religious convictions, the discordant and conflicting views of morals, the cynical and licentious tone which pervade its lighter literature, are destructive to every thing profound or permanent. Nowhere is the necessity of infusing into it a better spirit more eloquently inculcated, or the importance of belief as the basis of every thing great, either in thought or action, more forcibly stated. Yet, alas! romance follows romance, one play presses on the heels of another; and still the same chaos of opinion is exhibited, still the ties which form the cement of society are assailed, —still the faith which for eighteen hundred years has survived the influence of time, the change of habits, feelings, and systems, and "the drums and tramplings" of "many conquests," is assailed and discountenanced as an obsolete and effete principle, no longer capable of vivifying, directing, or comforting the heart, and which must give way to a newer and more perfect revelation; and still these comfortless views continue to be embodied in scenes of licentious indulgence, or revolting atrocity, succeeding each other in a giddy bacchanalian whirl. The very spirit of the "anarch old" seems for some time past to have presided over this branch of the literature of our neighbours; making it one vast contradiction, a bottomless gulf of incongruities, out of which at one time arises "a spirit like an angel with bright hair dabbled in blood;" at another, the grinning aspect of a demon or a satyr; while every tone, from laughter to despair, even to the "sound of hands together smote," rises in confused and confusing accents from its gloomy margin. "Diverse lingue, orribili favelle, Gemiti di dolore, accenti d' ira, Voci alte e fioche e suon di man con elle." * If we could regard this state as any thing else but one of transition, as a step towards reconducting the convictions and opinions of men into their ancient and natural channels, the prospect would indeed be sufficiently comfortless. At this moment the literature of France has neither the calm, self-balanced, and tranquil dignity of a literature of belief, nor the resistless and overbearing strength which characterized the destructive literature of the eighteenth century. In truth, that literature might be called in one sense a literature of conviction. The destruction of what was then branded by the name of superstition, the belief in the boundless energies and inherent excellence of human nature, -philosophy, in short, falsely so called, was to that period the substitute for the religious convictions and deference to authority which had formed the constructive, or rather cementing, principles of the ages which had preceded it; the bond which for the time. united men in the ranks of one crusade. The evils which were to be the result of this new illumination, the void which would be left in society when that terrible array should have struck its camp, and left desolate the country through which their march had lain, had not then been impressed upon the mind by that most unanswerable of teachers, Experience. No doubts then occurred to damp expectation; all were confident in the regeneration of mankind through this modern Apocalypse; actions and opinions tended to one clear and definite end, the overthrow and removal of all that was, to make way for that which was to come. So long as the walls of the old edifice were crashing around them, and temple and tower, crucifix and throne, one by one, went to the ground, all was harmony and gayety among the workmen: they saw and "Various tongues, Horrible languages, out-cries of woe, Accents of anger, voices deep and hoarse, With hands together smote that swelled the sounds." Cary's Dante. were delighted with their visible progress; the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that smoothed with the hammer him that smote on the anvil, - - not now to build up, as of old, but to pull down; while Europe stood aghast at the tremendous power thus brought into play; and, as the echo of each successive downfall burst upon its ear, trembled within its courts and palaces, for the stability of its institutions. But there comes a time when a more sobered and anxious feeling succeeds this first exuberance of confidence. The old edifice, is in the dust; men have settled themselves down, as they best might, in the new mansion which has been run up in its room. But rocked and shaken by every wind, cold and comfortless by its very vastness, it is soon found neither to afford shelter nor security. Men begin to doubt their own wisdom, and to say in their hearts, as they compare what they have done with what they have undone, "The old was better." Then comes in literature, too, a period of doubt, despondency, and complaint; contradiction and counteraction take the place of that unanimity which had given so terrible a grandeur to their concentrated efforts. When the crimes of the Revolution had shaken men's confidence in the native excellence of the human heart, even though controlled by philosophy, and when its misfortunes and sufferings had impressed upon them the necessity of some higher paraclete than the philosophy of the Encyclopédie, without at the same time suggesting to them how the void was to be filled; when all began secretly to feel that there must be a deeper principle of reverence than mere utility, and yet each was left to follow in darkness such phantom of virtue or religion as his temperament, his fancy, or his interest might enable him to frame; it was then that, according to the desponding confession of the most eminent of its ornaments at the present day, French literature, deprived at once of that central point and support which had been afforded it by the enthusiasm of general belief, and of that substitute for genuine faith which had for a time been supplied by the fanaticism of destruction, became at last an intellectual, as it had previously been a moral, nullity;-that limbo of conflicting tendencies, aimless speculations, and perverted ability, which we witness at this moment. But, gloomy as the state of matters may at first sight appear, yet considered (and in this light we certainly regard it) as an unavoidable step in the transition to better things, it is, after all, more desirable than the splendor of the imposing but destructive period which it has replaced. When the tide which has set so long towards the abyss of fatalism and materialism first begins to be met by a contrary current, no wonder if for some time men, who are as the barks upon its surface, are tossed up in convulsive heavings, or whirled round in restless eddies by the collision of the tides; nor if this state of commotion should appear to themselves more uncomfortable than the smoother current down which they had been hitherto hurried. It may be so for a time, but it is much to think that the tide has turned towards its legitimate channel, and that, as it acquires strength, all this agitation must gradually disappear, and the stream of opinion flow on once more, unbroken and majestic, through healthier channels and towards a happier shore. We are not disposed, therefore, to look even on this literary anarchy with an unmixed feeling of regret or dislike. It indicates at least a distrust of the wrong path, if not a progress towards the right. Never again, we think, by any convulsion of opinion, could France be brought to exhibit the spectacle of Atheism proclaimed by law, of the God of Nature superseded by the Goddess of Liberty, of a universal faith (the only faith left) in the inborn energies and unaided virtues of man. Those dreams are dissipated, and though in their room many visions, scarcely more substantial, have arisen, it is a singular, and on the whole a consoling feature, that at the bottom of one and all of them lies the admission of the necessity of a faith,—a religion. The St.Simonian, the Theophilanthropist, the Mystic, the Templar, all concur in the anxious wish to reestablish on a permanent basis what the one feels to be the prop and security of society, the other to be the animating or consoling principle of the individual. When, out of this heaving mass, any thing really firm and stable may be evolved, it would indeed be difficult to conjecture. Men must be allowed, we fear, to go on a little longer blowing their own philosophical and religious bubbles, and seeing them burst by collision against each other, or by their own brittleness, ere the truth be fully impressed upon their minds, that the Christian religion, old-fashioned as it is, and unsuited as the St.-Simonians would persuade us it is to the new wants and relations of the nineteenth century, contains in itself all those elements which they are vainly seeking to elaborate from the philosophic crucible, and will survive to regulate the destinies and hopes of mankind, ages after their own unsubstantial and hollow idols have been shattered into atoms. Meantime, it is right to bestow a little attention on the works which this strange fermentation of opinion has produced, distinguished, as many of them are, by a high (though not the highest) degree of ability. It is customary with those who are politically hostile to the present state of things in France, to identify the appearance of the present school of literature (if that can be called |