New Publications.—M. de Lamartine's "Souvenirs, Impressions, Pensées, et Paysages."—Tocqueville and Beaumont.—New American regulation.—M. Scribe.—Madame Tastu.—Reception of different Writers in society.
Though among the new publications sent to me for perusal I have found much to fatigue and disgust me, as must indeed be inevitable for any one accustomed for some scores of years to nourish the heart and head with the literature of the "bon vieux temps"—which means, in modern phrase, everything musty, rusty, rococo, and forgotten,—I have yet found some volumes which have delighted me greatly.
M. de Lamartine's "Souvenirs, Impressions, Pensées, et Paysages" in the East, is a work which appears to me to stand solitary and alone in the world of letters. There is certainly nothing like it, and very little that can equal it, in my estimation, either as a collection of written landscapes or as a memorial of poetical feeling, just sentiment, and refined taste.
His descriptions may perhaps have been, in some rare instances, equalled in mere graphic power by others; but who has painted anything which can excite an interest so profound, or an elevation of the fancy so lofty and so delightful?
Alas! that the scenes he paints should be so utterly beyond one's reach! How little, how paltry, how full of the vulgar interests of this "working-day world," do all the other countries of the earth appear after reading this book, when compared to Judea! But there are few who could visit it as Lamartine has done,—there are very few capable of feeling as he felt—and none, I think, of describing as he describes. His words live and glow upon the paper; he pours forth sunshine and orient light upon us,—we hear the gale whispering among the palm-trees, see Jordan's rapid stream rushing between its flowery banks, and feel that the scene to which he has transported us is holy ground.
The exalted tone of his religious feelings, and the poetic fervour with which he expresses them, might almost lead one to believe that he was inspired by the sacred air he breathed. It seems as if he had found the harps which were hung up of old upon the trees, and tuned them anew to sing of the land of David; he has "beheld the beauty of the Lord, and inquired in his temple," and the result is exactly what it should be.
The manner in which this most poetic of travellers, while standing on the ruins of Tyre, speaks of the desolation and despair that appear settling upon the earth in these latter days, is impressive beyond anything I know of modern date.
Had France produced no other redeeming volumes than these, there is enough within them to overpower and extinguish the national literary disgrace with which it has been reproached so loudly; and it is a comfort to remember that this work is as sure to live, as the literary labours of the diabolic school are to perish. It is perhaps good for us to read trash occasionally, that we may learn to value at their worth such thoughts as we find here; and while there are any left on earth who can so think, so feel, and so write, our case is not utterly hopeless.
Great, indeed, is the debt that we owe to an author like this, who, seizing upon the imagination with power unlimited, leads it only into scenes that purify and exalt the spirit. It is a tremendous power, that of taking us how and where he will, which is possessed by such an author as this. When it is used for evil, it resembles fearfully the action of a fiend, tempting, dragging, beckoning, cajoling to destruction: but when it is for good, it is like an angel's hand leading us to heaven.