Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/219

Rh spirits of the present age, exhibiting to them a picture of bliss, loftiness and unworldliness alongside with that of their own crudeness that for once they may forget and breathe again, nay, perhaps even derive from that oblivion encouragement towards flight and conversion. Poor artists, with such a public as this, with bythoughts half of a priestly, half of the mad doctor's type! How much happier was Corneille—"our great Corneille," as Madame de Sevigné exclaims with the accent of a woman in the presence of the man—how much nobler was his audience, whom he could please with the pictures of chivalrous virtues, strict duty, magnanimous devotion, heroic self-denial! How differently did both he and they love their existence, not issuing from a blind, indomitable will," which we curse, because we cannot destroy it, but is a state where greatness conjointly with humanity is possible, and where even the severest rigour of form, the submission under a princely or clerical tyranny can neither suppress the pride, chivalry, grace, nor the intellect of all individuals, but, on the contrary, are looked upon as stimuli and incentives for that which contrasts with the inborn self-glorification and distinction, with the inherited power of volition and passion. —We cannot deny that the French have been the most Christian nation in