Pol. No; celestial light.

Paul. Thou choosest death before Paulina's love.

Pol. Attached to earth, thou spurnest grace divine.l

Such are those admirable dialogues in Corneille's manner, in which the sincerity of the speakers, the rapidity of the transi tions, the warmth and elevation of the sentiments, never fail to delight the audience. How sublime is Polyeuctes in this scene! what greatness of soul, what dignity, what divine enthusiasm he displays! The gravity and nobleness of the Christian character appear, even in the opposition of the plural and singular pronouns vous and tu, the mere use of which in this way places a whole world between the martyr Polyeuctes and the pagan Paulina.

Finally, Corneille has exhibited all the energy of the Christian passion in that dialogue which, to use Voltaire's expression, is "admirable, and always received with applause."

Felix proposes to Polyeuctes to sacrifice to his false gods; but Polyeuctes refuses to comply;

Fel. At length to my just wrath my clemency

Gives place. Adore, or yield thy forfeit life.

Pol. I am a Christian.

Those words-I am a Christian-twice repeated are equal to the most exalted expression of the Horaces. Corneille, who was so excellent a judge of the sublime, well knew to what a height the love of religion is capable of rising; for the Christian loves God as the supreme beauty, and heaven as his native land.

But, on the other hand, could polytheism ever inspire an idolater with anything of the enthusiasm of Polyeuctes? What could be the object of his passionate love? Would he submit to death for some lewd goddess or for a cruel and unfeeling god? The religions which are capable of exciting any ardor are those

1 Act iv. scene iii.

2 Act v. scene iii.

which approach more or less to the doctrine of the unity of a God; otherwise, the heart and mind, being divided among a multitude of divinities, cannot be strongly attached to any. No love, moreover, can be durable that has not virtue for its object. Truth will ever be the predominant passion of man; if he loves error, it is because at the time he considers error as truth. We have no affection for falsehood, though we are continually falling into it; but this weakness proceeds from our original depravity; we have lost strength while retaining desire, and our hearts still seek the light which our eyes are now too feeble to endure.

The Christian religion, in again opening to us, by the merits of the Son of Man, those luminous paths which death had covered with its shades, has recalled to us our primitive loves. Heir of the benedictions of Jacob, the Christian burns to enter that celestial Sion to which are directed all his sighs. This is the passion which our poets may celebrate, after the example of Corneille. It is a source of beauty which was wholly unknown to antiquity, and which Sophocles and Euripides would not have overlooked.

CHAPTER IX.

OF THE UNSETTLED STATE OF THE PASSIONS.

WE have yet to treat of a state of the soul which, as we think, has not been accurately described; we mean that which precedes the development of the strong passions, when all the faculties, fresh, active, and entire, but confined in the breast, act only upon themselves, without object and without end. The more nations advance in civilization, the more this unsettled state of the pas. sions predominates; for then the many examples we have before us, and the multitude of books we possess, give us knowledge without experience; we are undeceived before we have enjoyed; there still remain desires, but no illusions. Our imagination is rich, abundant, and full of wonders; but our existence is poor, insipid, and destitute of charms. With a full heart, we dwell in an empty world, and scarcely have we advanced a few steps when we have nothing more to learn.

It is inconceivable what a shade this state of the soul throws over life; the heart turns a hundred different ways to employ the energies which it feels to be useless to it. The ancients knew but little of this secret inquietude, this irritation of the stifled passions fermenting all together; political affairs, the sports of the Gymnasium and of the Campus Martius, the business of the forum and of the popular assemblies, engaged all their time, and left no room for this tedium of the heart.

On the other hand, they were not disposed to exaggerations, to hopes and fears without object, to versatility in ideas and sentiments, and to perpetual inconstancy, which is but a continual disgust,-dispositions which we acquire in the familiar society of the fair sex. Women, independently of the direct passion which they excite among all modern nations, also possess an influence over the other sentiments. They have in their nature a certain ease which they communicate to ours; they render the marks of the masculine character less distinct; and our passions, softened by the mixture of theirs, assume, at one and the same time, something uncertain and delicate.

Finally, the Greeks and Romans, looking scarcely any farther than the present life, and having no conception of pleasures more perfect than those which this world affords, were not disposed, like us, by the character of their religion, to meditation and desire. Formed for the relief of our afflictions and our wants, the Christian religion incessantly exhibits to our view the twofold picture of terrestrial griefs and heavenly joys, and thus creates in the heart a source of present evils and distant hopes, whence spring inexhaustible abstractions and meditations. The Christian always looks upon himself as no more than a pilgrim travelling here below through a vale of tears and finding no repose till he reaches the tomb. The world is not the object of his affections, for he knows that the days of man are few, and that this object would speedily escape from his grasp.

The persecutions which the first believers underwent had the effect of strengthening in them this disgust of the things of this life. The invasion of the barbarians raised this feeling to the highest pitch, and the human mind received from it an impression of melancholy, and, perhaps, even a slight tincture of misanthropy, which has never been thoroughly removed. On all

sides arose convents; hither retired the unfortunate, smarting under the disappointments of the world, or souls who chose rather to remain strangers to certain sentiments of life than to run the risk of finding themselves cruelly deceived. But, nowadays, when these ardent souls have no monastery to enter, or have not the virtue that would lead them to one, they feel like strangers among men. Disgusted with the age, alarmed by religion, they remain in the world without mingling in its pursuits; and then we behold that culpable sadness which springs up in the midst of the passions, when these passions, without object, burn themselves out in a solitary heart.

1 Though the author does not assert in this passage that misanthropy had any part in the introduction of the monastic institute, or is compatible with its essential spirit, this meaning might be inferred by the reader who would not attend particularly to the language which he employs. He wishes to convey the idea that the conventual life, by removing the occasions of sin and fixing the mind and heart upon God alone, afforded the remedy of that morbid condi. tion of the soul which follows from misanthropy and a natural aversion for the world. These sentiments are transformed by the religious or monastic spirit into sentiments of charity and self-denial. It is well known that the introduction of the religious orders was the inauguration of a new era in the history of Christian charity, as it opened immense additional resources for the alleviation of almost every species of human misery. The monastic spirit, moreover, was founded essentially on the love of God, as the only end of man. But the love of God and the love of the neighbor go hand-in-hand. Misanthropy, therefore, is a sentiment, both historically and intrinsically, opposed to the spirit of the monastic state. That a tinge of melancholy in regard to earthly things should pervade the religious and even the ordinary Christian life, is in accordance with the gospel itself, since it teaches us to look upon ourselves as exiles in this world, and beatifies those who yield to the spiritual sadness which this consideration inspires. "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." T.

BOOK IV.

OF THE MARVELLOUS; OR, OF POETRY IN ITS RELATIONS TO SUPERNATURAL BEINGS.

CHAPTER I.

MYTHOLOGY DIMINISHED THE GRANDEUR OF NATURE-THE ANCIENTS HAD NO DESCRIPTIVE POETRY, PROPERLY SO CALLED.

We have already shown in the preceding books that Christianity, by mingling with the affections of the soul, has increased the resources of the drama. Polytheism did not concern itself about the vices and virtues; it was completely divorced from morality. In this respect, Christianity has an immense advantage over heathenism. But let us see whether, in regard to what is termed the marvellous, it be not superior in beauty to mythology itself.

We are well aware that we have here undertaken to attack one of the most inveterate scholastic prejudices. The weight of authority is against us, and many lines might be quoted from Racine's poem on the Poetic Art in our condemnation.

However this may be, it is not impossible to maintain that mythology, though so highly extolled, instead of embellishing nature destroys her real charms; and we believe that several eminent characters in the literary world are at present of this opinion.

The first and greatest imperfection of mythology was that it circumscribed the limits of nature and banished truth from her domain. An incontestable proof of this fact is that the poetry which we term descriptive was unknown throughout all antiquity;1 so that the very poets who celebrated the works of nature did not enter into the descriptive in the sense which we attach to the word. They have certainly left us admirable delineations of the

I See note Q.