"The place where your letter was written, is enough to give me some hope. It is impossible you should be there without succeeding. Such glory is reserved for you, and there is none more delightful, or more brilliant, for you, or for any man. It is possible the opposition may have been indiscreet; but could the unfortunate man, of whom they spoke, have solicited it of them? It appears certain that his wife was kindly received by the emperor; that he permitted her to write to him; and that he has never received her letters. Humane and just as we are assured he is, would he have suffered the wife and children to be treated in the same manner? The wife and children! What a reward for such a noble self-devotion! It is as cruel as the condition from which you once before saved her. What do they expect? Do they wish that the earliest enemies of the unhappy man should be roused to claim that a period should be put to his misfortunes? -that they should imitate the demand of the Romans from the Carthagenians? It seems to me, if you were to speak for a single hour to those on whom his fate depends, all would be well. I have such experience of your influence over opinions which were even opposed to your own, that I am tempted to ask,-What effect would you not produce were you to lend your intelligence and talent to second the persuasions of interest? Should you ask this, as the reward of your counsels, could it be refused? In short, the idea that this calamity may be terminated by your exertion, this idea excites in me so much emotion, that without disguising to myself the indiscretion of a second letter, I could not deny myself the expression of this belief, which arises as much from admiration of you, as from pity for him.

"NECKER DE STAEL."

Happily the arms of Bonaparte aided the eloquence of Coppet, the diplomacy of Morris, and the letters of Washington.

M. de Lafayette was freed, and one of the most absurd and atrocious injustices of modern times was put an end to. The majority of historians, Walter Scott among them, give all the credit of the liberation to Bonaparte; the documents furnished by Morris, prove that the proposition came from Austria, solicited by Morris and the President of the United States.

Another European wreck, another fragment of revolutionary lava, a name famous, proscribed, a victim, General Moreau, suddenly presents himself to Morris in his agricultural establishment where he now only occupies himself in making his orchards prosper and in planting his park.

"November 10th, 1807.-General Moreau comes to breakfast. Walk with him and endeavor to dissuade him from his projected journey to New Orleans. He is at length shaken, and would renounce it if his preparations were not too far advanced.

"I persist, and at length render it doubtful in his mind. I am certain this journey will be imputed by many evil meaning men to improper motives. He treats the chattering of idlers with contempt. But I tell him that such idlers form a power in Republics. That he must not suppose himself as free here as he would be in an absolute monarchy; that his reputation makes him a slave to public opinion; that he cannot with impunity do many things here which would be of no consequence in a country where he was surrounded by spies in the service of government; because there, the Ministers having convinced themselves that his views are innocent, and his conduct irreproachable, he might safely laugh at the suspicions both of the great vulgar and of the small; but here where the same modes of knowing what men do are not adopted, every one is at liberty to suspect, and will decide rashly on appearances, after which it may be impossible to deracinate the ideas hastily, lightly, and unjustly assumed.

In the course of our conversation, touching very gently the idea of his serving (in case of necessity), against France, he declares frankly, that when the occasion arrives he shall feel no reluctance; that, France having cast him out he is a citizen of the country in which he lives, and has the same right to follow his trade here, as any other man. And as it would be unjust to prevent a French hatter, whom Bonaparte might banish, from making hats, so it would be unjust to prevent a French General from making car. I assent to the truth of this observation, not because I believe it true, but because I will not impeach the reasons he may find it convenient to give to himself for his own conduct, should he hereafter be employed in our service."

What was false and trivial in Moreau's words has been sufficiently punished.

How different the result of different revolutions !

Moreau, wandering through the world, denies his country and dies by a French cannon; Governeur Morris ends his honored old age in the bosom of the liberty he has founded, of the land he has served.

SECTION VII.

BROCKDEN BROWN-WASHINGTON

IRVING.

Morris is very like a clever English naval officer, mingling in the good society of the XVIIIth century; Jonathan Edwards like a Scottish theologian of the XVIIth; Benjamin Franklin is not far from the qualities which distinguish Goldsmith and his charming Vicar. All three lack originality.

Brockden Brown, an American, resolved to break the charm; he looked for originality, unfortunately it was not his own. Lewis, author of the Monk, head of the funereal and demoniac school was in full fashion; Brown took him for model.

He understood and could express passion. Instead of yielding to the timid scruples of his compatriots, he braved criticism and only looked for effect; effect, factitious and exaggerated. Brown's demons are false demons; his monsters result from predetermination; his efforts of imagination are the struggles of an intelligence which wishes to create but which produces chimeras. There is a ridiculous super-excitement in these productions; all is forced, violent, incoherent. Nothing spontaneous, natural, simple; but always convulsions, perpetual emphasis, and horrors crowded upon horrors.

Whence comes this vehement exaggeration? Why this unheard-of tendency to the pathetic, the immense, the romantic, fantastic, marvellous? Because American society has nothing fantastic in it; the drama and the dithyrambic are exotics in the United States. Brown is already forgotten. It is the inevitable fate of all outré literature. False colors soon fade; their own exaggeration destroys them.

Washington Irving, more modest and happier, has not pretended to so much grandeur; he owes the renown which encircles him, not to sallies of the imagination, creative thought or a lofty mental flight, but to a graceful imitation of old English literature. It is a somewhat timid copy, upon silk paper, of Addison, Steel and Swift. All that he writes. glows with the gentle, agreeable lustre of watered silk. Correct and agreeable, he pleases but does not move you: the sensations which he excites lack power. It is like a young lady of good family, well brought up, a slave to propriety, never elevating the voice, never exaggerating the tone, never

guilty of the sin of eloquence, and careful not to have any energy, energy being often vulgar. Our intention is not to lower a really great merit, to depreciate a talent which we love. None know better than we, the excellence of a style without pretension and without emphasis, though not without grace, the coloring of which is harmonious and its form pure; but we cannot dissemble, that there is a certain feebleness under these qualities.

We may add that the characteristic merit of Mr. Irving has nothing American in it. All his thoughts direct themselves towards England alone; for her his wishes, his memories; he has. for her a singularly superstitious and poetic worship, and takes her as the writers of Queen Anne's day exhibit her. Do not tell him that Addison's England is an embellished ideality, he will not hear you; do not try to prove to him that Sir Roger de Coverley is a creature like Don Quixotte, a half-symbolic personage, to whom the man of talent has lent action, speech and costume. For Washington Irving, all that the cotemporaries of Pope have written is gospel. He reproduces their phrases, he borrows their language. He loves even the noisy drunken hospitality of that day. This writer, who traces his lines not far from the savannahs of the Ohio, or in some square house in Boston, lives in thought in St. James' Park; he wanders, in his reveries, through the shadowy alleys of Kensington; he talks with Sterne; he shakes hands with Goldsmith. He will soon don the rosecolored buckram and jerkin of the seventeenth century. Do not wake him; he dreams of losing himself in the sinuous alleys of the old city; he is listening to the winds which whistle by the great arched windows of the feudal mansions, or agitates the immense sign boards, so spoken against by Addison. All Irving's poetic Past is there; it is the charm. of his works. The velvety and golden dream which enchants