And Maurice, what were his emotions when the door of La Chênaie dosed behind him?--the "little paradise" he called it, but then, poor soul, [{417}] anything that had escaped him for ever seemed to have been paradise. He suffered all that must be endured by those who have mistaken personal influence for a divine attraction. The novitate on which he had entered at La Chênaie with a certain reluctance, galled him beyond endurance at Ploërmel. "I would rather run the chance of a life of adventure than be garrotted by a rule," he said, and so he went out into the world again, feeling like a thing let loose in the universe, and by the blessing of Providence was received into the home of his unfailing friend, Hippolyte de la Morvonnais, who lived most delightfully on the coast of Brittany, at a place called Le Val de l'Arquenon.
Two months of simple country life, and of intercourse with Morvonnais, and with his wife, who exercised over Maurice the noblest and sweetest influence, gave him renewed strength to battle with life again. In the following extract from his journal, describing the last walk at Le Val, we see with what tenacity he clung to the past, and with what sadness he encountered the future: "Ten o'clock in the evening. Last walk, last visit to the sea, to the cliffs, to the whole grand scenery that has enchanted me for two months. Winter is smiling upon us with all the grace of spring, and giving us days that make birds sing and leaves burst forth on the rose-bushes in the garden, on the eglantine in the woods, on the honeysuckle climbing over rock and wall. About two o'clock we took the path that winds so gracefully through flowering broom and coarse cliff grass, skirting along wheat-fields, bending toward ravines, twisting in and out between hedge-rows, and at last boldly ascending the loftiest rocks. The object of our walk was a promontory that commands the Bay of Quatre-Vaux. A hundred feet below us shone the sea, breaking against the rocks with sounds that passed through our souls as they mounted to heaven. Toward the horizon the fishing-boats unfurled against the azure sky their dazzling sails, and as our eyes turned from this little fleet to the more numerous one that sailed singing nearer to us, an innumerable crowd of sea-birds fishing gaily, and gladdening our eyes with the sight of their bright plumage and graceful movements over the water--the birds, the sails, the lovely day and universal peace gave to the sea a festal beauty that filled my soul with glad enthusiasm in spite of the sad thoughts I had brought with me to our promontory; and then I looked with all my soul at headlands, rocks, and islands, trying to imprint them on my memory and carry them away with me. Coming home I trod religiously, and with regret at every step, the path that had so often led me to such beautiful thoughts, in such sweet company. The path is so charming when it reaches the coppice, and passes on among high hazel trees, and a thick, bushy hedge of boxwood! Then the joy that nature had bestowed upon me died away, and the melancholy of parting took possession of me. Tomorrow will make of sea, and woods, and coast, and all the charms I have enjoyed, a dream, a floating thought to me; and so, that I might carry away from these dear places as much as possible, and as if they could give themselves to me, I besought them to engrave their images upon my soul, to give me something of themselves that could never pass away; and I broke off branches of boxwood, bushes, and luxurious thickets, plunging my head into their depths to breathe in the wild perfumes they exhale, to penetrate into their very essence, and speak as it were heart to heart.
"The evening passed as usual in talking and reading. We recalled the happiness of past days; I traced a faint picture of them in this book, and we looked at it sadly, as at some dear, beautiful, dead face."
One more passage from his journal and we will leave Maurice de Guérin in Paris. Two years from the following date he was a fashionable man of the world, capable of vieing in [{418}] conversation with those marvels of wit and brilliancy, the talkers of Paris; but we have to do with him only as the banished recluse, the exile from La Chênaie.
"Paris, Feb., 1834.
"O God! close my eyes, keep me from seeing all this multitude, whose presence rouses in me thoughts so bitter and discouraging. As I pass through it, let me be deaf to the sounds, inaccessible to the impressions that overwhelm me when I am in the crowd; set before my eyes some image, some vision of the things I love, a field, a valley, a moor, Le Cayla, Le Val, something in nature; I will walk with eyes fastened upon these dear forms, and pass on without a sense of suffering."
From the Month.
OF DREAMERS AND WORKERS.
Nearly all men are born either dreamers or workers; not perhaps only the one or only the other, but one of these two points is the centre of their oscillation. Like a pendulum, they can move only so far toward their opposite, some more, some less; but, like the pendulum, they invariably return to their centre. Do we not all know some man with abstracted eye, high, retreating forehead, rather refined and often slightly attenuated frame and features, and placidly resolute in demeanor, who has held the same position in the opinion of his fellow-men, or, it may be, has occupied the same bench on the Sunday quietly for twenty years or more? He is a specimen of the extreme type of dreamers--venerative, mystical, and benevolent; but to all appearance practically useless, helpless, and inert. Viewed physiologically, these men are chiefly fair-haired and of the nervous lymphatic temperament; sometimes this is combined with the bilious temperament, and in such cases (to some of which we shall have more particularly to allude) they become remarkable characters. It has been said that the religion natural to dreamers is a mild form of Buddhism; but this is probably because most Buddhists are dreamers and mystics in the highest degree. One thing is certain, dreamers are in politics either conservative or utopian, and in religion are little disposed either to reject what they have been taught or to influence others to do so. If they have been educated as Catholics, mild and devout Catholics they live and die; if as Protestants, they are unusually gentle and tolerant, and oppose alike reforms that would be innovations, and innovations that would be reforms. A man who lives by faith, thus resting on the invisible, has at times an apparent resemblance to a dreamer. It is not our object in this paper to point out the distinction, wide as it indeed is. Dreamers are the subject of wonderful anecdotes about their absence of mind: it is related of them that they forget their meals, start on a journey without their hats, walk with their eyes wide open over precipices, ride on their walking-sticks, and are surprised when toll is not demanded of them for their charger. There is no occasion to believe all these preposterous tales, but no doubt there are many very curious and perfectly well-authenticated cases of abstraction of mind so entire as to cause catastrophes both painful and ludicrous. To these men their real life is their dream, their working-day is only their interruption and annoyance. They are in heart mystics, and only need a certain activity of brain and speech to proclaim themselves as such. They possess great store of happiness within themselves, owing to their peculiarity of caring less than others for those [{419}] substantial and golden rewards which cause the unrest of the world. They love the unseen and mysterious better than the visible and sensuous, and would in general barter any amount of distinct and limited reality for indefinite prospects; so that the single streak of wan and dying light, which sleeps on the edge of the dark horizon, is more precious to them, as suggesting Infinity, than any view which could be offered of noble cities or fertile plains. Almost all things are to them symbolical. No action is in their thought simply what it seems to be; but there is about every deed performed, circumstance encountered, or season passed, a secret sense of omen or prescience, of brightness or of shadow. Light becomes a sentiment calling up images of corresponding radiance and beauty, but especially perhaps that early morning light which seems, while yet sleeping, to float in on the world, as opposed to the fading colors of departing day. Darkness, again, sometimes lends a sense of peril; but more often is peopled by spirits--a realm of shadows and shadowy delights, all called into being, moved, governed, and colored by the dreamer in his dream. The many gradations between brightness and gloom have each their especial fascination for dreamers, who are in this respect as discriminative and fanciful as the Jews, who, in olden times, distinguished two kinds of twilight: the doves' twilight, or crepusculum of the day, and ravens' twilight, or the crepusculum of the night. In truth, their tendency is to behold all actual things as illusions, and to consider the spiritual and unseen world as the only true one: thus, in the cloudy mantle of constant reverie they hide all the ills and infirmities of humanity, and slumber in the "golden sleep of halcyon quiet apart from the everlasting storms of life." For when a man can sit calmly on an uncomfortable pole, like the Indian mystic, and say "I am the Universe, and the Universe is me," he has attained to the greatest conceivable height and perfection of dream-life. From the age of Plato to our own times dreamers have been born perpetually among the sons of men. St. John is claimed by them as being the most profound and loving mystic ever given to the world. There have been countless others; we need not add a list of names; those of Swedenborg, Boehmen, and Irving, will occur to the memory as representing one class of dreamers. These leaders are, as one might predict, regarded with the extreme veneration characteristic of the order. Indeed, of some it may be chronicled, as it was of the ancient deities, Buddha, etc., "Once a man, now a God!" In general, dreamers have tenanted our madhouses rather than filled our prisons; if, however, they do commit crimes, they are serious ones. Religious and political assassinations have been commonly the fruits of mad dreamers. In the ranks have been numbered many holy men, and as a rule they have influenced mankind rather by the example of their life and the teaching of their pen than by busy practical action. Only certain professions and occupations are suitable for dreamers. In the olden times they were poets, shepherds, prophets, soothsayers, diviners, alchemists, rhabdomantists. [Footnote 68] In these days they are by rights clergymen, authors, poets, philanthropists, and, philosophers. If they enter trade they commonly end in the Gazette; and placed in positions of authority, where severity of discipline has to be exercised, they are uniformly unsuccessful; in situations of trust, they are invariably single-hearted and faithful, but in every place and at all times they are the most frequent victims of fraudulent representations and impudent imposture. A certain number of the priesthood among all nations, gentle, speculative, and saintly men, [{420}] have been of this order; weaving their work and their dreams together into a fair fabric of many colors, which if it seems to ordinary eyes shadowy and unsubstantial as the mist, is yet, like the air, elastic, solid, and capable of resisting a very heavy pressure. Idealists are, however, rarely formidable in action unless the bilious is largely transfused in their temperament. They then become missionaries and martyrs; patriots, revolutionists, fanatics; they head revolutions, plan massacres, overthrow monarchies, and shatter creeds. Peter the Hermit, John of Leyden, are examples of this order.
[Footnote 68:
