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LAM and the painter little heeded of a more than mediæval grandeur, and yet of an immense transformation, for the monarchy and for Catholicism. But when his first and most memorable volume called "Meditations" appeared in 1820, he was at once proclaimed the foremost poet of France. This work was as much a revelation and a revolution as Chateaubriand's Genius of Christianity had been twenty years before. It gave voice to a general emotion, or rather a general yearning; and in style it was new, fascinating, majestic, without being a defiance too daring and ostentatious of ancient models. Louis XVIII. warmly expressed his admiration to the author, and ordered collections of the French and Latin classics to be sent to him. Perhaps there was a touch of irony in this, as if he who had achieved fame so suddenly needed severer teachers in the poetical art than he had so far had, and were wanting in concentration, in attic pith and grace. Favours more marked were speedily lavished on the laureate of legitimacy. Lamartine was appointed secretary of the French embassy at Naples. No appointment could have been more welcome or suitable, for the loftiest inspirations of Lamartine had been drawn from Italy. At Geneva, on his way to Naples, Lamartine married Miss Birch, an English lady, who has not merely been his faithful and affectionate companion in all his sorrows, but his active and energetic literary co-operator. In 1824 he accepted the secretaryship of the legation at Florence; and in 1826 he was himself raised to the dignity of France's representative in Tuscany. In this capacity he continued to perform duties, more ornamental perhaps than onerous, when in 1829 he was recalled by the Polignac ministry. The only notable event in Lamartine's career at Florence, was his duel with Colonel (afterwards General) Pepe. Abundantly frivolous was the cause, and the result was that Lamartine having been slightly wounded in the wrist, the two combatants became firm friends. Lamartine's character, at once chimerical and chivalrous, indisposed him to associate himself prominently with that bigoted policy of reaction which the Polignac ministry was pursuing. He, however, did not refuse a strictly diplomatic situation abroad. Meanwhile his pen had not been idle. A second volume of his "Meditations," by some regarded as superior to the first, was followed by "The Death of Socrates;" "The Last Canto of the Pilgrimage of Childe Harold," a dangerous attempt at rivalling Byron; and by his "Harmonies," which critics seem inclined to praise as the most mature and perfect of his poetical productions, though there is by no means unanimity on this point. Just before the publication of the "Harmonies," he was in April, 1830, received a member of the French Academy. A few months more saw Charles X., an estimable man, if incompetent king, driven from France. Lamartine's attachment to the dethroned dynasty was sincere; but it was rather from early association than from political conviction. After the July revolution, therefore, he neither shared the aspirations nor took part in the intrigues of the legitimists. The East had long attracted him, as well in itself as from being so closely intertwined with solemn, stupendous, christian memories. In the summer of 1832, accompanied by his wife and daughter, he set sail from Marseilles for Palestine. Here the most tragic affliction of his life befel him; his only child, his beloved Julia, died at Beyrouth. Stunned by the awful blow, yet bearing it more calmly and nobly from the wealth of sacred oriental impressions which he had gained, Lamartine was once more in France in the autumn of 1833. During his absence he had been chosen a member of the chamber of deputies by the electors of Bergnes. Perhaps he threw himself now with the more zeal into politics, that he might dwell less bitterly on his irreparable loss. He had pursued an independent path as a poet; and he took independent ground as a politician, from which neither calumny nor disappointment has been able to banish him. Already in a treatise on "Rational Politics," he had given his confession of political faith. On the 4th January, 1834, he delivered his first speech in the chamber of deputies; and ere many months his renown as an orator was almost equal to his glory as a poet. In 1835 he published his "Travels in the East," a splendid rhapsody in four volumes, but as monotonous as it was splendid. Next year came "Jocelyn;" then in 1838 "The Fall of an Angel;" then in 1839 "Poetical Musings." It is admitted even by Lamartine's harshest literary judges that, if in these utterances he is less spontaneous, original, and powerful than in his earlier productions, he has yet acquired fresh qualities, such as pathos in narrative, opulence in description, the expression of the simple sentiments and poetical details of common life; and that if there is the aberration, there is also the expansion, of a marvellous talent. The political principles and measures advocated by Lamartine after his entrance into the chamber of deputies, if not always practical, were always lofty and patriotic. But most of the questions debated are too remote from us to make it profitable to recall them. He opposed capital punishments, opposed the fortification of Paris, was favourable to every plan by which the people could be raised and improved. If his views respecting the fate of the East were fantastical, they were not without a certain sublimity. In October, 1840, that ministry was formed of which Guizot was the real, and at last the nominal head. It held power for more than seven years. Lamartine's political theory, coloured by cosmopolitanism and humanitarianism, was the organic development of France in harmony with its proudest traditions and most generous aspirings. It was therefore both conservative and progressive. The policy of Guizot and his colleagues aimed at and indeed avowed simple immobility, compression, resistance. In Lamartine, therefore, it found a determined, a most eloquent, and formidable foe, but a foe free from petty spites and selfish ambition. Yet though an invincible opponent, Lamartine could not be the leader of an opposition. For this he was too sensitive, had too little of the reckless partisan, of the factious fighter; and indeed the opposition in the French chambers embraced too many elements to render leadership easy. Nevertheless, the boldest movements of the opposition were kindled by the magnificent rhetoric of Lamartine. The Guizot ministry had one unquestionable virtue; if as obstinate as it was obstructive, it was courageous in its obstinacy. Backed by compact majorities in the chambers, which, however, toward the end began to waver and decline, it despised public opinion, was indifferent to the apathy or the hatred of the people. While still, notwithstanding its scattered or disheartened forces, showing a resolute front, Lamartine flung at it his brilliant improvisation in eight volumes, "The History of the Girondists." The influence of this work was immense; but it is absurd to ascribe to it the downfall of a dynasty. When an event so mighty as this occurs, there is a countless concourse of causes, the profoundest and most potent of which it may be for ever difficult to discover. Toward the Orleans family, when the French revolution burst forth, the feeling of France was more mere weariness than ardent indignation. But a government is never so hopelessly condemned, as when a country is tired of it, and is too listless for active antipathy. In the first scenes of the revolution Lamartine was the most colossal and effulgent figure. It was his voice which led to the rejection of the regency and the adoption of the republic. If for years Lamartine had been gradually approaching the republican creed, it was perhaps less from serene and logical thought than from generous impulse. When the provisional government was formed, Lamartine took the foreign department. His empire in public affairs was for a season overwhelming, both from belief in his integrity and admiration of his genius. A holy victory was that which he won on the 25th February, 1848, the day after the proclamation of the republic, when he calmed the furious multitude by the magic of his speech. On the 4th of March he declared the abolition of capital punishments for political offences. To foreign courts he announced that the policy of the republic was to be that of peace. But Lamartine was not the man to master the rough and lawless energies wildly heaving after the outburst of the revolution. The fierce passions excited felt themselves mocked by fine sentiments and fine phrases; and a parade of the moderate and the pacific, if right enough in itself, was fatal to the consolidation of the republic, by robbing it of vitality at home and sympathy abroad. If then Lamartine successfully resisted his colleague Ledru-Rollin, the fanatical red republicans, and the still more fanatical socialists; if in April, he was so popular that ten departments elected him to the assembly—he yet saw all his authority, spite of his valour and self-sacrifice, vanish in the insurrections of May and of June. From that moment he stood alone in the darkness and coldness of a bitter disenchantment. With Lamartine's heartiest concurrence General Cavaignac became the principal actor, who was destined to commit, from the same excellent motives, the very same mistakes of which Lamartine himself had been guilty. In the assembly, when the mode of electing the president was discussed, Lamartine supported the appeal to universal suffrage. This was not so much patriotism as the pedantry of patriotism; for even granting the sovereignty of the