Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 097.djvu/509

 Rh Chenier's denunciation of demagogues who hate the ancien régime, not because it is bad, but because it it a régime at all, evokes his fervent plaudits. To countrymen of his he commends Turgot's exclamation: "Liberty!—sighing I say it, men are unworthy of thee!—Equality! thee they may desire, but thee they cannot attain!" With zest he quotes Béranger's reply to Chateaubriand, when the old Legitimist said to the old Republican, "Well, and so you've got your Republic at last;" and Béranger answered, "Yes, so I have; but I'd rather dream about it than have it." He is severe on what he calls the mysticised sensualism of the René school of novelists, as well as the unmasked sensualism of the Sues and Paul de Kocks. In short, he enjoys and deserves the repute of a "healthy" writer.

One of the chief attractions of his Causeries is the series of portraits of eminent French women, to whom he assigns a foremost place. The labours of Miss Pardoe and Miss Julia Kavanagh, among others that might be named, have lately popularised this compartment of his Gallery in our own reading-world. The popularity of the subject in France itself is inexhaustible; and great credit is due to M. Sainte-Beuve for the tact and discriminatiom with which he has approached it—without affected prudery on one side, or, on the other, anything like prurient license. He is at once the sagacious man of the world, and, as aforesaid, the "healthy" writer.

Out of this long line of Lady portraits, a select few may here be mentioned, in honour of the artist.. Mademoiselle de Scudéry, for instance—whom he depicts as a sort of Madame de Genlis, plus the momentous addendum of la vertu. A Genlis, in fact, of the Louis Treize era; full of strength and honesty, and a decorous, steadfast old maid "of fourscore and upwards." Like the Genlis, this illustrious Sappho (as she was called, from her autograph, or auto-portraiture, in the Grand Cyrus) was intent on pancyclopædic attainments—from a knowledge of the properties of simples and the confectionery art, to the anatomy of the human soul; every incident in social life must be apprehended, and turned to account as material for the concoction of romance, essay, moral dissertation; it must serve for a lecture or a compliment. Both the ladies were distinguished by a combined habit of pedantry, and extreme delicacy of observation, and familiarity with the ways of the world. There is something highly instructive in the completeness of Mademoiselle de Scudéry's survival of her brilliant renown in literature—the last twenty-four years of her life being a gradual decadence, thanks to the satire of Boileau, and the new style in romance of Madame de la Fayette, whose Zaïde and Princesse de Cleves had a freshness and nature quite alien from the old-fashioned roman. The "correct taste" of the Place-Royale and the Hôtel Rambouillet had, happily, no lease of perpetuity; and the Précieuses so respected in the palmy days of Clélie, must submit to become, under Molière's dynasty, the Précieuses Ridicules.

Madame de Sévigné is neatly portrayed;—that rich and vigorous nature, healthful and ever fresh; impassioned in one direction only, in her tender enthusiasm towards her daughter; distinguished by a pervading grace all her own, a grace not indeed serene and sweet, but lively, exuberant, full of sense and even smartness, and with no one pale hue in its harmony of colours. "There is a dash of Molière about her. She reminds one of his Dorine—she is herself a Dorine of fashion and high