Here is a passage in description of nature that every reader must acknowledge to be charming. It is throughout thoroughly characteristic of the author. The closing sentence is certainly French rather than Hebrew in spirit—Chateaubriand rather than David:
Penetrate into those forests of America coeval with the world. What profound silence pervades these retreats when the winds are hushed! What unknown voices when they begin to rise! Stand still, and everything is mute; take but a step, and all nature sighs. Night approaches; the shades thicken; you hear herds of wild beasts passing in the dark; the ground murmurs under your feet; the pealing thunder roars in the deserts; the forest bows; the trees fall; an unknown river rolls before you. The moon at length bursts forth in the east; as you proceed at the foot of the trees she seems to move before you at their tops and solemnly to accompany your steps. The wanderer seats himself on the trunk of an oak to await the return of day; he looks alternately at the nocturnal luminary, the darkness, and the river: he feels restless, agitated, and in expectation of something extraordinary. A pleasure never felt before, an unusual fear, cause his heart to throb as if he were about to be admitted to some secret of the Divinity; he is alone in the depths of the forest, but the mind of man is equal to the expanse of nature, and all the solitudes of the earth are less vast than one single thought of his heart. Even did he reject the idea of a deity, the intellectual being, alone and unbeheld, would be more august in the midst of a solitary world than if surrounded by the ridiculous divinities of fabulous times. The barren desert itself would have some congeniality with his discursive thoughts, his melancholy feelings, and even his disgust for a life equally devoid of illusion and of hope.
There is in man an instinctive melancholy which makes him harmonize with the scenery of nature. Who has not spent whole hours seated on the bank of a river contemplating its passing waves? Who has not found pleasure on the sea-shore in viewing the distant rock whitened by the billows? How much are the ancients to be pitied, who discovered in the ocean naught but the palace of Neptune and the cavern of Proteus! It was hard that they should perceive only the adventures of the Tritons and the Nereids in the immensity of the seas, which seems to give an indistinct measure of the greatness of our souls, and which excites a vague desire to quit this life, that we may embrace all nature and taste the fullness of joy in the presence of its author.
How Roman Catholic, rather than catholic, in tone, is the “Genius of Christianity,” the following deliciously written sentiment about the Virgin Mary will sufficiently show:
They who see nothing in the chaste queen of angels but an obscure mystery are much to be pitied. What touching thoughts are suggested by that mortal woman, become the immortal mother of a Saviour-God! What might not be said of Mary, who is at once a virgin and a mother, the two most glorious characters of woman!—of that youthful daughter of ancient Israel, who presents herself for the relief of human suffering, and sacrifices a son for the salvation of her paternal race! This tender mediatrix between us and the Eternal, with a heart full of compassion for our miseries, forces us to confide in her maternal aid, and disarms the vengeance of Heaven. What an enchanting dogma, that allays the terror of a God by causing beauty to intervene between our nothingness and his Infinite Majesty.
The anthems of the Church represent the Blessed Mary seated upon a pure-white throne more dazzling than the snow. We there behold her arrayed in splendor, as a mystical rose, or as the morning star, harbinger of the Sun of grace; the brightest angels wait upon her, while celestial harps and voices form a ravishing concert around her. In that daughter of humanity we behold the refuge of sinners, the comforter of the afflicted, who, all good, all compassionate, all indulgent, averts from us the anger of the Lord.
Mary is the refuge of innocence, of weakness, and of misfortune. The faithful clients that crowd our churches to lay their homage at her feet are poor mariners who have escaped shipwreck under her protection, aged soldiers whom she has saved from death in the fierce hour of battle, young women whose bitter griefs she has assuaged. The mother carries her babe before her image, and this little one, though it knows not as yet the God of heaven, already knows that divine mother who holds an infant in her arms.
Finally, to illustrate the amusing real lack of logic, masking in logical form, of which Chateaubriand was capable, we give the syllogistic-looking conclusion that sums up the book:
Christianity is perfect; men are imperfect.
Now, a perfect consequence cannot spring from an imperfect principle.