accordingly teems with the falsehoods and follies with which we are but too familiar in our own. One should have thought that an oracle as likely to deceive as to speak the truth, would not be accounted of any great worth. It is, furthermore, an awkward fact, that while the mesmeric and clairvoyant power in the hands of Mr. Atkinson, and Miss Martineau leads to nothing but Materialism and Atheism, on the other side the water, it shows the earth to be encircled by a succession of extending spheres, all peopled with spirits innumerable. The diseases, moreover, which are said to be cured, are mostly such as naturally yield for a time to the force of imagination. There are many which the power of the clairvoyant, miraculous as it is, cannot reach. But patent as these facts, and others like them, may be, credulity runs its

course.

Now the fact to be observed is, that this spiritualist movement is really an anti-christian movement. 'The true spiritualist,' it is justly said, 'professes to have no fixed creed, but trusts to find his religion of a progressive nature.' The spirit utterances are full of censure upon the 'sects,' as they are called—that is, the whole Christian people about them. What is said about spiritualism as not being hostile to Christianity is wholly deceptive. If Christianity be recognised at all, it is very much as some parties among ourselves profess to recognise it as a religion, in common, and only in common, with all other religions. A 'man,' says Professor Hare, who devoutly worships any object 'which he mistakes for his God, is no more wanting in piety than a debtor who pays a forged order is deficient of honesty. Would a tenant be dishonest who should pay the rent due to his landlord to one falsely personating him?' To minds of this very liberal mood spiritualism adapts itself. Hence some of its most zealous and gifted converts are reported to have been 'confirmed atheists. Of seventeen converts, whose letters are printed by Judge Edmonds, fourteen confess to having been religious sceptics. Such, in fact, is the complexion of this case generally. It gives us, both in America and in this country, THE state of mind common to the great majority who either avowedly or silently ignore the religion of the Bible. Most clear is it, that if such persons are not believers in the better sense, it is from no lack of credulity. If there be any trace of modesty left in the world, it should suffice, in the face of such facts, to put a complete end to the assumption so often obtruded upon us-viz., that the men who respect the authority of the Christian revelation do so because they are credulous; and that those who reject that authority, do so because with them credulity is a thing of the past. The question here is manifestly not a question of evidence, but a

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question between the heaven of the Gospel and a heaven which at best is but a poor reflection of earth. That there are consistent

sceptics-men who doubt concerning other things as much as concerning Christianity, no one will deny. But what of the multitude? Let the spiritualism of America answer. And what of those among ourselves who have made themselves most conspicuous as the assailants of Christianity? Let the names which occur in this paper answer.

ART. X.-(1.) Beaumarchais et son Temps. Etudes sur la Société en France au XVIII Siècle; d'après des documents inédits. Par LOUIS DE LOMENIE. Paris: Levy Frères. 1856. (2.) Euvres completes de Beaumarchais, précédées d'une Notice sur sa Vie et ses Ouvrages. Par SAINT MARC GIRARDIN. Paris: Chez Lefevre. 1835.

THERE is no more interesting, or we may add no more instructive, study than biography. Without biography, and especially autobiography, it is impossible that the history and manners of a time can be perfectly understood or correctly presented by the historian of a country. The English language is rich in biographies and autobiographies; and if memoirs are to be comprised in this category, containing, as they frequently do, the story of a life, or lives, our neighbours and allies are still richer than ourselves in a delightful species of literature.

The two volumes before us, consisting of more than eleven hundred pages of printed matter, have certainly cost their author a considerable expenditure of labour. M. de Loménie has to our own knowledge been more than five years engaged in his task; so that it is from no hurry or precipitation-from no indiscreet haste in rushing into print, that he has failed in producing a perfect book. The amount of materials placed at his disposal was very large, though somewhat confused and indigested; but it does not appear to us that he has always made the best use of these materials, or that he has succeeded in giving a complete biography of Beaumarchais, or truthful and graphic sketches of the society in which the author of Figaro lived and moved. Still less has M. de Loménie realized his purpose of giving us a perfect idea of society as it existed in France in the eighteenth century, though he has confessedly added considerably to our knowledge of facts and means of judgment. It is not to be

denied that the author of the work under review has thrown considerable light on certain epochs in French history with which the name of Beaumarchais is inseparably bound up; but he has failed, we think, in giving us a living flesh and blood picture of the society-of the men and women who were actors and contemporaries of Beaumarchais on the great stage of life-in the sixty-seven years of that chequered, ever-varying, and agitated existence which passed between 1732 and 1799. This is altogether the fault of M. de Loménie, for he received from the son-inlaw and grandson of Beaumarchais all the papers left by that alert, mobile, restless, and energetic personage, who was a perfect type of what the Italians and Spaniards call the furia franchese. The very abundance of M. de Loménie's materials may have encumbered, if it has not appalled him. But, if he had made these materials his own by a proper labour of the brain and hand-if he had winnowed and recast them, and then arranged and re-written the whole with a due regard to chronological sequence, we cannot but think his volumes would have been to readers, both foreign and native, much more interesting and satisfactory. In a preface to his work, M. de Loménie takes occasion to state that English biographers do not sufficiently distinguish between narrative and citation, or establish a due and fitting proportion between the two, thus frequently abusing the patience of their readers by citing letters, speeches, essays, treatises, and other productions of their heroes at inconsiderate length. This is, doubtless, an abuse observable enough in certain biographies in our language; but it is also an abuse from which these volumes are assuredly not free. current of the narrative of the life of Beaumarchais is frequently impeded, not to say obstructed, by letters and extracts set forth at far too great a length, the pith and point of which might have been given in a few lines, had M. de Loménie taken the pains to abridge or to make the matter his own by recasting and condensing it. The fault of the volumes before us is, that they are unnecessarily diffuse. All that it is necessary to know of Beaumarchais and his Times might have been better conveyed in a single volume of 400 or 500 pages, in which the narrative portion might have been given more briefly, rapidly, and strikingly than it is conveyed in two ponderous volumes.

The

The French in general, to do them justice, recur but sparingly in biography to documentary matter. If a vast mass of documents be presented for any particular biography, the better custom among our neighbours is to eliminate, and, after elimination, to distil, so to speak, the residuum into a highly-concentrated spirit. This is the essential oil or essential essence of

us.

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biography, savouring of the character and habits, and flavoured with the mental and moral idiosyncracy of the being whose life, manners, tone of thought, and manière d'être are all extracted and expressed. Such a biography M. de Loménie has not given He has not winnowed or sifted the mass of materials placed before him, but has thrown before the public, in extenso, a vast deal of hitherto unpublished matter, which often illustrates his views, but not seldom fatigues, by its endless prolixity. Sometimes these citations do not very well fit in with the text; and let it be said in passing, that the text partakes somewhat of the style of patchwork. You feel that the author of the biography, though a sensible, well-read, and well-informed man, with a good deal of taste and commendable candour, has made up his book of shreds-that his 'web', to use the illustration of Shakespeare, is of a mingled yarn,' in which there is wool of all qualities and colours intermixed. The greater part of these two ponderous volumes have been already published in separate papers in the Revue des Deux Mondes, from which separate papers an article was compiled for Fraser's Magazine, if we remember rightly, more than two years ago.

To us, we confess, it appears that the articles in the Revue des Deux Mondes have somewhat spoiled the biography. In a review the intercalated matter may not only be pleasantly, but now and again profitably, introduced. But in a distinct and separate biographical work, such variations and transitions in a word, the introduction of such foreign matter, detracts from the requisite unity and homogenity. Every one acquainted with French literary society is aware that M. de Loménie began by being the pupil, and ended in being the suppléant, of the academician Ampère, au Collège de France. Jean Jacques Ampère, the son of the celebrated mathematician of that name, co-operated with M. Guizot in contributing to the Revue Française, and when that publication ceased, transferred his pen to the Revue des Deux Mondes. It is, therefore, natural enough, that the pupil and friend of Ampère should have addressed himself to a publication, such as the Revue, in which his articles would find a ready acceptance. What we maintain here and are concerned on insisting on is, that the shape, form, and tone of thought given to these articles has had an unhappy influence on the biography, and given it a character somewhat décousu.

M. de Loménie is not quite correct in saying that there exists no memoir of Beaumarchais, with the exception of the two volumes in which are contained his factums judiciaires. A succinct, yet satisfactory memoir of Beaumarchais, was prefixed by M. Saint Marc Girardin to his edition of the Euvres

complètes de Beaumarchais, published one-and-twenty years ago, the title of which we have placed at the head of this article. An equally short, though less satisfactory, but more graphic biography of Beaumarchais, appeared about the same epoch, from the fertile pen of M. Jules Janin. Beaumarchais was certainly one of the most active and stirring of a specially active and restless generation. He never allowed, to use a somewhat vulgar but expressive phrase, the grass to grow under his feet. His light was not under a bushel; and in the diversity of his avocations, and the éclat, not to say scandal, incident to some of them, would be found joined to the memoirs or factums which he published, sufficient matter to furnish the better portion of a volume.

Though we have taken exception to the manner in which M. de Loménie has mingled together extract and narrative, and think he might have composed a better book in rewriting and recasting his materials, yet we find no fault with the spirit in which this task has been executed. The author has been throughout perfectly fair and thoroughly candid and impartial in his estimate of Caron de Beaumarchais. Though the Messieurs Delarue furnished him with papers and documents, he has not in consequence deemed it necessary to pronounce a panegyric on their kinsman. On the other hand, he has not unfairly depreciated or run him down, but has held the scales evenly between the subject of his book, and his readers, the public. Without concealing or palliating the weak points of Beaumarchais, he has shown us that he was often more sinned against than sinning; that he possessed an excellent and feeling heart, a kindly nature, and an obliging and generous disposition.

The manner in which M. de Loménie states that he became possessed of the MS., on which he has drawn so largely, is especially interesting:

'Conducted,' he says, "by a grandson of Beaumarchais, I entered a house in the street of the Pas de Mule. We ascended an attic, into which no mortal had penetrated for years. Opening, not without difficulty, the door of this nook, we raised a cloud of dust, quite suffocating. I ran to the window to inhale a mouthful of air, but the window, like the door, had become difficult to open, and resisted all my efforts. The wood, swollen by the damp and partially rotten, seemed to give way in my hand, when I resorted to the wiser plan of breaking two of the panes. We were now enabled to breathe. little hole of a room was filled with cases and boxes crammed with papers. There was there before me in that uninhabited and silent cell, covered with a thick dust, all that remained of one of the most strange, lively, bustling, and agitated existences of the last century. I had before me all the papers left fifty-four years ago by the author of the Marriage of Figaro.

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