it, dissatisfied with its actual gains, in collision with it and with one another, can alone carry it further and make the future.

We must not forget, then, in laying stress with Goethe upon the individual, that the individual is not perfect, and that he works for a future larger and better than himself. Keeping this well in mind, we may admit, as much as ever Goethe pleases, the interest and significance, the overwhelming interest and significance, in human history, of the individual. As his time recedes, he and his strain of thought grow more distinct; his contemporaries and their thoughts grow fainter. They become more and more to us like hollow shadows, saying they know not what he alone remains among them a living man, who knows what he is saying, and whose words keep a freshness and power. Burke stands thus to us now, as we look back at him among his contemporaries. In the sphere of thought which was his, in politics in the high sense of the word, in what concerns the general influence to be exercised on man's welfare and progress by the means of government and society, Burke's voice is still for us Englishmen a living voice out of the age preceding our own, it is the one living voice left of innumerable voices, the rest are shadowy. A good deal is wanting to Burke's political philosophy; there are many important things which either he cannot see or does not care to see. Whoever followed his teaching simply and absolutely would make shipwreck. Still, such is his weight and power, that while the chatter of a whole wilderness of friends of the ideas of 1789' is dead and cold, the voice of this great enemy of the Revolution lives,— moves us and makes us think to this day.

Joseph de Maistre is another of those men whose word, like that of Burke, has vitality. In imaginative power he is altogether inferior to Burke. On the other hand his thought moves in closer order than Burke's, more rapidly, more directly; he has fewer superfluities. Burke is a great writer, but Joseph de Maistre's use of the French language is more powerful, more thoroughly satisfactory, than Burke's use of the English. It is masterly; it shows us to perfection of what that admirable instrument, the French language, is capable. Finally, Joseph de Maistre is more European than Burke; his place at the great spectacle of the Revolution is more central for seeing; moreover he outlived Burke considerably, and saw how events turned. But the two men are of one family, having in common their high stamp of individuality, and their enduring vitality and instructiveness. They have in common, too, their fundamental ideas. Their sense of the slowness of the natural growth of things, of their gradual evolution out of small beginnings, is perfectly expressed

by

by Joseph de Maistre's maxim: Aucune grande chose n'eut de grands commencements - Nothing great ever began great.' That is entirely in Burke's spirit, and the maxim has its indubitable and profound truth. Things grow slowly, and in a gradual correspondence with human needs. Phrases are not things, and a Liberal theorist, some revolutionary M. Cherchemot, striking in with his Tout est à refaire'-Everything is to be made afresh-is impertinent and vain. Only, in their aversion to M. Cherchemot and his shallowness, Burke and Joseph de Maistre do not enough consider the amount of misformation, hamper, and stoppage, coming at last to be intolerable, to which human things in their slow process of natural growth are undoubtedly liable. They do not enough consider it; they banish it out of their thoughts altogether. Another trenchant and characteristic maxim of Joseph de Maistre, which Burke, too, might have uttered, is this: Il faut absolument tuer l'esprit du dix-huitième siècle The spirit of the eighteenth century must be stamped out utterly.' One is reminded of Cardinal Newman's antipathy to Liberalism.' And in a serious man a strong sense of the insufficiency of Liberal nostrums, of the charlatanism of Liberal practitioners, as also of the real truth, beauty, power, and conformity to nature of much in the past of which these practitioners are intolerant, is abundantly permissible. Still, when one has granted all that serious men like Joseph de Maistre and Cardinal Newman may fairly say against the eighteenth century and Liberalism, when one has admired the force, the vigour, the acumen, the sentiment, the grace with which it is all said, one inquires innocently for that better thing which they themselves have in store for us, and then comes the disappointment. Joseph de Maistre and Cardinal Newman have nothing but the old, sterile, impossible assumption of their infallible Church;' at which a plain man can only shake his head and say with Shakspeare,There's no such thing!"

It cannot be too often repeated: these eminent individualities, men like Burke, or Joseph de Maistre, or Cardinal Newman, are by no means to be taken as guides absolutely. Yet they are full of stimulus and instruction for us. We may find it impossible to accept their main positions. But the resoluteness with which they withstand the prevailing ideas of their time, the certainty with which they predict the apparition of something different, are often a proof of their insight. Whatever we may think of Ritualism, its growth and power prove Cardinal Newman's insight in perceiving that what he called Liberalism, but what we may perhaps better describe to ourselves as the mind of Lord Brougham, was in general, and in the sphere of religion

more

more particularly, quite inadequate, and was not destined to have things for ever its own way. In like manner, whatever we may think of Ultramontanism, its growth and power signally prove Joseph de Maistre's insight. Continental Protestantism, he declared, was going to pieces, Gallicanism was doomed, 'the Sovereign Pontiff and the French priesthood will embrace one another, and will stifle in that sacred embrace the Gallican maxims.' Rome would become a power again; by no other power could the French Revolution, 'satanic in its principle,' be effectually resisted. If England grants, as she probably will, Catholic emancipation, and if the Catholic religion in Europe comes to speak both French and English, remember what I say, my good hearer, there is nothing which you may not expect.' It is enough to make Mr. Whalley turn in his grave. A great revolution is preparing, to which that which is just ended (as people say) was only the preface. The world is in fermentation, and there will be strange sights seen; the spectacle, it is true, will be neither for you nor for me, but we may well say to one another in taking leave of this insane planet (if it is allowable to recal one's Horace at such a moment): "Spem bonam certamque domum reporto." Ultramontanism is but a stage in this new revolution prophesied by Joseph de Maistre, it is not, as he imagined, the end; but steadily and confidently, all through the first twenty years of our century, to have foreseen and predicted this stage, is no mean proof of insight and originality.

This remarkable man is far less known in England than he deserves to be. We know him chiefly by one of his publications, the Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg,' in which the Baconian philosophy is vigorously attacked. Most of us are no further acquainted with the man or his work. Let us run quickly over the main points in their history. He was born at Chambéry in 1754, the eldest of ten children, of a family of ancient descent and austere manners. His father was president of the Senate of Savoy. The young Joseph-Marie de Maistre was educated by the Jesuits, and took vigorously to his studies. As a young man he knew five languages, French, Latin, English, Italian, and Spanish; to which in later life he added two more, Greek and German. He entered the magistrature like his father, and in 1786, at the age of thirty-two, he married. In the fermentation of mind which preceded the French Revolution, he became a member of the Reformed Lodge of Chambéry, avowed himself an enemy of abuses, and was even accused of Jacobinism. But from the moment of the French invasion and occupation of Savoy in 1793, his Vol. 148.-No. 296. fidelity

2 G

fidelity to his own sovereign, his hostility to the French Revolution, never faltered. He quitted Savoy in January 1794, the day after the birth of his third and youngest child, his daughter Constance; he never saw her again until 1814. His property was confiscated. For two years he was employed at Lausanne on the business of the Sardinian government, and it was during his stay at Lausanne that he published his 'Considérations sur la France,' a work in which his power and his characteristic ideas first revealed themselves. In 1797 he was moved to Turin; Turin was occupied by the French in 1798, the royal family of Sardinia lost all its possessions on the mainland, and the Court of Turin became the Court of Cagliari. Joseph de Maistre was at first employed as chief magistrate of the island of Sardinia, but in 1802 his government sent him as minister plenipotentiary to Russia. At St. Petersburg he remained fifteen years, all through the great struggle with Napoleon. Ill-paid and ill-understood by the petty government of Cagliari, he was esteemed and admired by the Emperor Alexander, by Russian society, and by his diplomatic colleagues; a still better alleviation of the pressure of embarrassment and anxiety he found in study. During his stay at St. Petersburg his principal works were written, but they remained for the time in his portfolio. He was joined in 1806 by his son Rodolphe, then just sixteen years old, to whom the Emperor Alexander gave a commission in the Russian Guards. His wife and his two daughters rejoined him in 1814. In 1817 he left Russia and proceeded by way of Paris to Turin, where he was made Chancellor and Minister of State. He now published the works on which he had been long busy in Russia, his 'Du Pape,' his De l'Église Gallicane,' and the Soirées de SaintPétersbourg.' He died at Turin in February 1821, at the age of sixty-seven.

His Correspondence was published in two volumes by his son, a quarter of a century after his death, and has passed through six or seven editions. Striking and suggestive as are works like his Considérations' and his Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, it is his Correspondence which best makes us feel his variety, his attractiveness, his superiority. These two volumes of his Correspondence will live, and will take their place not merely in Catholic libraries, and as part of the polemics of a great Catholic champion, but in general literature. The literary talent of this Savoyard, whose letters, of far weightier contents than the letters of Madame de Sévigné, are not surpassed by even hers in felicity and vivacity, may well make the French adopt him with pride as one of their classics. But for us, for

the

the world at large, what will preserve his letters is the impression given by them of admirable vigour of mind in union with admirable force and purity of character. We should read them; but alas! we do not even read Burke. Our days go by, and the hour with Mr. Yates in the 'World' is followed by the hour with Mr. Labouchere in Truth;' and this fascinating course of reading leaves us with little leisure or taste for anything else. Yet what a pity to be so absorbed by our enchanters as to be unable to feel also the beauty of things like the following, a cry coming from Joseph de Maistre at the end of his hard day, his life of strenuous and grievous travail :

'I know not what the life of a rogue may be-I have never been one but the life of an honest man is abominable. How few are those whose passage upon this foolish planet' [we had 'insane planet' a little way back] has been marked by actions really good and useful! I bow myself to the earth before him of whom it can be said, "Pertransivit benefaciendo;" who has succeeded in instructing, consoling, relieving his fellow-creatures; who has made real sacrifices for the sake of doing good; those heroes of silent charity who hide themselves and expect nothing in this world. But what are the common run of men like? and how many of us are there in a thousand who can ask themselves without terror: "What have I done in this world, wherein have I advanced the general work, and what is there left of me for good or for evil?""

The great Napoleon, who ill observed his own maxim, was fond of saying: One must know how to set bounds to oneself— 'Il faut savoir se borner.' The advice is particularly good when one has to speak of a personage so rich in matter of interest, and at the same time so little known to the generality of one's readers, as Joseph de Maistre. The public is prone to demand grand review-articles, but there are subjects which are too large for the limits of a single review-article, even a grand one. Joseph de Maistre is such a subject. He ought to be treated by instalments. And now, when Russia and the Russian people are objects of so much importance to us in this country, we propose to take that portion of Joseph de Maistre's Correspondence which deals with Russia and things Russian; to observe the impression made by Russia and the Russians, during his fifteen years' experience of them, on this independent and powerful spirit, one of those minds which stand out from the crowd, and of which the thoughts are still fresh and living as on the day when they were uttered.

Joseph de Maistre had every reason to speak well of Russia. In spite of his poverty, in spite of the insignificance of his

2 G 2

Sovereign,