CHATEAUBRIAND.
Whilst at St. Malo I visited the tomb of a man, the great attributes of whose character, and the extraordinary incidents of whose life, have been recently made the subject of a most interesting lecture, delivered by my truly learned friend, Professor Robertson, and published, amongst several others, by Mr. Kelly, of this city. I allude to François-René, Viscount de Chateaubriand, who was born at St. Malo in the year 1768, and during a life of eighty years witnessed the outbreak and many of the horrors of the French Revolution; who had, for his personal safety, to undergo exile and penury, until his literary acquirements and productions procured for him the friendship and respect of strangers, and relieved him from indigence. Then, having been enabled to return to France, he published some romances, and also works of a serious description, by which he acquired a high and lasting reputation. Subsequently, having travelled in Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Barbary, and Spain, he made the results of his travels the subject of a most interesting Itinerary. In 1821 he was sent as ambassador to Prussia, and in 1822 was appointed to a similar office at the British Court. Towards the close of the reign of Louis the Eighteenth, he became the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, but did not continue long in office; he died in 1848 at Paris, and his remains were conveyed to St. Malo. I have mentioned Chateaubriand as an illustrious and highly gifted man, and my readers will be greatly surprised when I add—He sleeps in a nameless tomb.
In his lifetime the municipality of St. Malo had, at his request, granted a solitary rock in the bay of that seaport for his place of sepulture. There his coffin was deposited in a grave cut out of the solid stone, and surmounted by a granite cross, which marks the last resting-place of one whose reputation was far more than European. It bears the short and simple inscription of "Here lies a Christian." (Ci git un Chretien.) I believe, however, that the omission of the name has caused all who have seen the tomb to enquire who was its occupant, and has not tended to render him forgotten, or his memory unappreciated by his countrymen.
The foregoing notice of this celebrated native of St. Malo had scarcely been put in type when I received a copy of The Tablet newspaper, containing a communication from a French correspondent relative to the inauguration of a Chateaubriand memorial at St. Malo, on Sunday the 5th of September last. I presume to insert it in these pages, as strongly confirming the opinions I have expressed, and being likely to please and interest the reader by its intrinsic merits.
"A Statue to Chateaubriand.—Yesterday (Sunday) the inauguration of the Chateaubriand Memorial took place at Saint Malo. All the papers are full of recollections of the author of the Genie du Christianisme. Chateaubriand lived at a time when the evils of revolution had left the strongest emotions in all hearts. There was a drama in every man's life, a romance in every one's history. The very air was full of a floating, vague poetry of sufferings and regrets, and disappointed hopes. Nature and misfortune combined to make Chateaubriand a poet. A dreamy, unhappy childhood heightened the sensitiveness of his feelings, and religion itself was to him as poetry was—emotional. He saw his mother die, heard her last prayer for himself, the child of her affections, for his welfare, temporal and eternal. From that day he submitted to the Church's dominion. 'I wept,' he says, and 'I believed.' He then travelled in America, and the ocean and the wilderness revealed to the young man a new kind of poetry. He went to Philadelphia to salute Washington. Subsequently he travelled into the far West. Returning to Europe, Chateaubriand endured the miseries of exile. That was the most unhappy part of his life. It was then that he commenced authorship. We next hear of him at the siege of Verdun, on the surrender of which place he found himself without resources. After many vicissitudes of fortune he reached London, and betook himself seriously to literary work. The remainder of his history is too well known to need recapitulation here; I therefore return to the fête of yesterday. The town of Saint Malo is small but curious by reason of its sombre mediæval aspect, its granite houses, its narrow, winding streets, and its absence of greenery—not a lawn nor a shrub being visible anywhere. Chateaubriand's native townsmen retain a lively recollection of him, and welcomed the day with enthusiasm. A large number of strangers also paid their respects to the tomb of the author of Les Martyrs. The emotion was general when the procession reached the summit of the 'Grand Bé,' and came in sight of Chateaubriand's monument. High above the waves was an iron railing and a cross of stone, nothing more. Its simplicity was touching and effective. Chateaubriand perhaps yielded to a feeling of pride, in wishing to be buried thus on that elevated spot, with nothing in sight but the immensity of the heaven and the immensity of the ocean:—
'Cœlum undique et undique pontus.'
Be that as it may, the people of Saint Malo have done honor to themselves in honouring Chateaubriand. We may apply to him his own words about Bossuet, 'His genius will stand like the mighty figure of Homer, always seen through the long vista of the ages. If sometimes it is obscured by the dust of a falling century, the cloud soon disperses, and there it is again in all its majesty, only overlooking new ruins.'"