I WAITED with impatience, my dear friend, for the second edition of Madame de Staël's work, on literature. As she had promised to answer your criticisms I was curious to know what a woman of her talents would say in defence of perfectibility. As soon as her work reached my solitude, I hastened to read the preface and notes; but I saw that not one of your objections was removed, she had only endeavoured to explain the word upon which the whole system is founded. Alas! it would be very gratifying to believe that we are from age to age advancing progressively towards perfection, and that the son is always better than the father. If any thing could prove this excellence in the human character it would be to see that Madame de Staël has found the principle of this illusion in her own heart. Yet I cannot help always entertaining apprehensions that this lady who so often laments over mankind, in boasting of their perfectibility is like those priests who do not believe in the idol to whom they offer incense at the altars. I will say also my dear friend, that it seems to me altogether unworthy a woman of the authors merit to have sought, by way of answer to you, to raise doubts with respect to your political opinions. What concern have these pretended opinions with a dispute purely literary?Might one not justly retort her own argument upon Madame de Staël and say that she has very much the air of not loving the present government and regretting the days of greater liberty? Madame de Staël was too much above these means to have made use of them; she ought to have left them to those who, in a spirit of philanthropy, prepare the road to Cayenne for certain authors if ever the good times should return. Now then, my dear friend, I must tell you my mode. of thinking upon this new course of literature. But in combating the system I shall perhaps appear to you as little reasonable as my adversary. You are not ignorant that my passion is to see Jesus Christ every where, as Madame de Staël's is to see perfectibility. I have the misfortune of believing, with Pascal, that the christian religion alone can explain the problem of man. You see. that I begin by sheltering myself under a great name, in order that you may spare my contracted ideas, and my anti-philosophic superstitions. For the rest, I find my self emboldened, in thinking with what indulgence you have already announced my work. But when will this work appear ?-It has even now been two years in the press-for two years the printer has been indefatigable in creating delays, and I have been no less indefatigable in correcting the work. What I am going to say in this letter will then be taken almost entirely from my future work on the Genius of Christianity, or on the Moral and Poeti cal Beauties of the Christian Religion. It will be amus ing to you to see how two minds, setting out from two opposite points, have sometimes arrived at the same results. Madame de Staël gives to philosophy what I ascribe to religion. To begin with ancient Literature. I agree perfectly with the ingenious author whom you have refuted, that our theatre is superior to the theatre of the ancients; I see yet more clearly that this superiority arises from a more profound study of the human heart. But to what do we owe this knowledge of the passions?-to christianity entirely, in no way to philosophy. You smile, my friend, listen to me. If there existed in the world a religion, the essential qualities of which were to plant a barrier against the passions of men, it would necessarily augment the play of the passions in the Drama and the Epopœa; it would be by its very nature much more favourable to the developement of character than any other religious institution, which, not mingling itself with the affections of the soul, would only act upon us by external scenes. Now the Christian Religion has this advantage over the religions of antiquity; 'tis a celestial wind which swells the sails of virtue, and multiplies the storms of conscience around vice. All the bases of vice and of virtue are changed among men, at least among Christians, since the preaching of the Gospel. Among the ancients, for example, humility was considered as baseness, and pride as a noble quality. Among us the reverse is the case; pride is the first of vices and humility the first of virtues. This transmutation of principles alone makes a change in the entire system of morals. It is not difficult to perceive that christianity is |