history, is scarcely less memorable as the anniversary of the death of several distinguished patriots, than as the birth-day of American liberty.

Amid the exciting tidings of political turbulence on the continent of Europe, and especially in France, the demise of Chateaubriand escapes almost without comment from foreign journals'; although he was conspicuous among scenes more bloody and terrific than the revolution of February, or the insurrection of June. This deficiency of the newspaper press of the day, we design, in a measure, to supply, notwithstanding our lack of leisure to collect materials, and our dread of furnishing a very meagre sketch of our subject.

Chateaubriand was remarkable as the best French essayist and critic of his times, as a statesman of profound sagacity, as an orator of no mean pretensions, as a poet of decided merit, as a historian of Christianity, as a noted tourist is this country and in the East, as a soldier, and, more wonderful than all for a French hero, a man of the highest moral courage and purest piety: a catalogue of distinctions more honorable than all abbreviated titles, whether conferred by royalty, by learned associations, by national legislatures, or by literary institutions.

He is, perhaps, best known in this country, as a traveler, and a eulogist of WASHINGTON; in England, as the soul and centre of the bold diplomacy of France in the Spanish Question, a translator of Milton's "Paradise Lost," and a most kindly critic of English literature; in France, as the object of the alternate admiration and hatred of Napoleon, a stern defender of Christianity in an age of scepticism, and a Minister of State.

He died at the advanced age of eighty years, in the full possession of his reason, and with the liveliest faith of a sincere Christian. In creed a rigid Catholic, although most liberal in his feelings, he clasped the cross with fervency to his breast, a few hours before his decease. He had been long ready to depart. The loss of a beloved wife, last year, gave a severe shock to a system, which old age had already made painfully sensitive, and he had remarked, shortly after that event, that his "life was dried up at its source, and was thenceforward only a question of months."

The traveler in France, who directs his steps through the department of Ille and Vilaine, in the late province of Brittany, will find, a few miles from Saint-Malo, as he crosses a bridge with a broad sheet of water on one side, and a row of cottages, bordering a narrow race-way, on the other, a castle rising before him, of most quaint and ancient appearance. Its many-pointed towers, resembling the heads of rockets, rise far above the dense forests, with which it is surrounded, and for which this part of France is remarkable. This is the château of Combourg, the ancestral domain of the ancient and noble family of Chateaubriand, and here was François-Auguste born in the month of February, 1768.

His ancestors and paternal relatives had generally devoted themselves to the study of theology, or the practice of navigation; and fancy or fact might easily lead one to conclude that the strong religious bias, and fondness for travel by land and sea, which characterized the young Chateaubriand, were physiologically inherited. However, his ambition, rather than his instinct, led him, upon his entrance into active life, to choose the profession of a soldier, and he was soon enlisted in the regiment of Navarre. His family title gave him at court the rank of captain of cavalry. But he had no wish to be a drawing-room officer, or a military martinet, and, abandoning for active service the luxuries and unwon honors of Versailles, he took the field with his regiment, as a simple second-lieutenant of infantry.

Scarcely had he thus entered upon the service, before the severity of discipline in the army-copied from Prussian tactics, and really despised by all the nobles who held military rank, (who were admirers of the American system)-had so far alienated the army from the Government, that their defection was apparent : a defection which was among the earliest signs of the rapid strides of the Great Revolution of 1789. This defection could not, of course, be countenanced by a loyal nobleman, and Chateaubiand's military career, for the present, was ended almost as soon as it begun. His disappointed ambition left room for the workings of instinct.

* He was not a descendant of the old Chateaubriands. His father was a Monsieur Lepretre, engaged in the codfish trade at Saint-Malo, but who became rich enough to purchase the estate and title of the extinct family.

While he was a mere youth, and while wandering along the shores of his native Brittany, he conceived the idea of a Northwest passage. He intended to set sail for the Western coast of North America, and to strike it at some point far above the Gulf of California; then, forcing his way into the Polar sea, to penetrate to the United States by way of Hudson's Bay, Labrador and Canada. But the execution of this plan was postponed, until an Englishman had achieved all that could be accomplished towards the realization of the project, and a river, which flows northward into the Arctic Ocean, had been lawfully christened with the name of the great navigator, McKenzie.

But he had a remaining reason for desiring to visit America. He longed to look upon that practical liberty of which he saw vain theories in his country, preparing to explode with wreck and ruin all around them. How forcibly does the impulse of the young Chateaubriand remind us of the dialogue between Virgil's swains :

"MELIBEUS. Et quæ tanta fuit Romam tibi causa videndi ? TITYRUS. Libertas."*

relatives,

Bidding farewell to his aged mother and to his many whom proscription would scatter and the revolutionary sword lay low, he embarked at Saint-Malo, in the Spring of 1791, for America. His fellow-passengers were a company of young monks, setting out, under the direction of a Superior, for Baltimore, as missionaries of the Catholic faith. He had not omitted, before his embarkation, to obtain from his friend, the Marquis de la Rouarie, a letter of introduction to the great WASHINGTON.

After a long, but pleasant voyage, during which he had studied infinity in the ever-changing ocean, and assisted his pious comrades in conducting religious exercises, and in teaching the sailors to adore the Virgin Mary as the "Star of the Sea," he saluted the free soil of America, gave the captain of the packet a parting dinner at a hotel in the then "pretty city of Baltimore," and took stage at four o'clock the next morning for "cold and monotonous Philadelphia," in search of "le grand Washington."

Chateaubriand's visit to Philadelphia cost him what he calls a great" political disappointment." Instead of ancient republican

*MEL.

And what at Rome wast thou so mad to see ? TIT. Twas freedom!"

simplicity and equality, of which he had dreamed, he found men and women elegantly dressed, luxurious equipages, conversational levity, inequality of condition, immorality, gaming houses, balls and theatres. "Nothing," says he, "indicated that that I had passed from a monarchy into a republic." "I found," he remarks afterwards, "that now-a-days, it is not necessary to have hooked finger nails and a grizzly beard in order to be free." After he had waited fifteen days at Philadelphia, for General Washington, the first sight of him in a carriage, drawn by four gay horses, still more deranged the republic of the third century of Rome, which he carried about with him in his fancy. Washington lacked an essential feature of Cincinnatus. He was not holding a plow-handle, or driving a yoke of oxen with a pointed stick. "When, however," says our traveler, "I carried my letter of introduction to that great man, I found the lost simplicity of the ancient Roman."

The reader will easily pardon us, if we here insert Chateaubriand's own description of his visit to Washington.

"A little house, in the English style, not distinguished from the neighboring dwellings by any magnificence, was the palace of the President of the United States; with no 'guard in front, or valet in the hall. I knocked: a little servant-girl opened the door. I asked if the General was at home: she answered that he was. I went on to say, that I had a letter to deliver to him. The girl asked me for my name, which is hard to pronounce in English, and she could not remember it. So she says to me, softly, "Walk in, sir ;" and she marched before me, through one of those narrow passages which serve for the vestibules of English houses. She introduced me into a parlor, where she begged me to wait for the General."

The want of ceremony necessary to an interview with the Chief Magistrate, seems, to the Frenchman, a most capital joke, which it is enough to tell in a style of charming simplicity, with

out note or comment.

"I was not excited. Greatness of character or fortune do not overawe me. I admire the first, without being crushed by it: the second inspires me rather with pity than respect. The face of man will never trouble me.

"At the expiration of a few minutes, the general came in. He was a man of tall figure, and of an air rather calm and cold than

noble. He is well represented in the engravings. I presented him my letter in silence. He opened it, glanced at the signature, which he read very loud, exclaiming, "Colonel Armand!" For so had the Marquis de la Rouarie signed himself.

"We sat down; I explained to him, tolerably well, the object of my tour. He answered me in French or English monosyllables, and listened to me with a kind of surprise. I perceived it, and said to him with a little vivacity: but it is less difficult to discover the north-west passage, than to create a people as you have done.' 'Well, well, young man,' said he aloud, extending at the same time his hand. He invited me to dinner for the next day and we parted.

"I was promptly at the interview. The guests numbered only five or six. The conversation turned almost entirely on the French Revolution. The General showed us a key of the Bastille for keys of the Bastille were toys so simple, that they were distributed about then in both hemispheres.

"I left mine host at ten o'clock in the evening, and have never seen him since. He left next day for the country, and I continued my travels.

"Such was my interview with that man, who has freed a whole world. Washington went down to the tomb before that any sound of fame echoed under my footsteps. I passed before him as a being utterly unknown. He was then in all his glory, and I in all my obscurity. My name, perhaps, never lingered a day in his memory. Happy, however, that his look has fallen upon me, I have felt myself in a glow ever since. There is a virtue in the look of a great man.

*

"Some mysterious stillness enwraps the actions of Washington. He moved slowly. One would say that he felt that the liberty of future time was entrusted to him, and he dreaded lest he should compromise it. This hero, so novel to history, was borne along not by his own destinies but by those of his country. He did not suffer himself to trifle with that which did not belong to him. But from that mysterious shadow, what gleams of light have darted! Look for the wilderness in which flashed the sword of Washington. What will you find there? Graves? No, a world! Washington has left the United States as a trophy upon his battlefield."

During his American tour, Chateaubriand gathered materials for his early literary efforts, aside from his book of travels, written some time afterwards. He, of course, lingered by Niagara, endeavoring to comprehend its lonely sublimity, and has introduced into his most agreeable romance of "Atala," a gorgeous description of that famous cataract. Pressing forward into the primitive wilds of our country, he found himself at last in the