To these passions altogether physical, to this purely material picture, let us oppose one of those rare chefs d'œuvre which derive life and immortality from the soul of the artist.

A few years ago, during a journey in Italy, after having visited the galleries of Venice, Bologna, and Florence, I arrived at Milan, where I expected to admire the Supper of Leonardo da Vinci. This composition, cast as if by chance upon the wall of a refectory, was in ruins. At the time of the wars of the republic, the refectory was successively turned into stables and barracks; considerable dilapidations were the consequence, and the picture, half effaced but still existing, was no more than a sort of apparition, reminding one of those shadows in Milton's Paradise, of which the scarcely-perceptible forms seem always ready to vanish. It required some time for me to recognise it, but by degrees my eyes became accustomed to this vision, I caught the lines, I distinguished the figures, and the whole work became visible. What a subject! and what a painter! All the human passions put in motion by a divine passion! the fear, the surprise, the treachery, the indignation in the apostles, the pity and mercy in the look of the Saviour one disciple only, with his head bowed down, expresses grief; this one is the well-beloved; he does not protest, he grieves, and his grief is love. All these things are visible in this obliterated picture; physical picture is destroyed, but its soul exists, and survives matter; and in these remnants of a sublime work I read the thought of each figure, I recognise the sentiments of each individual, I hear the Gospel, I see the disciples, I adore the God.

or, so to speak, the

It would be difficult to find a more striking example of the influence of the soul over the arts; it is a lesson to artists. Enrich your memory, exercise your hand, deve

lope your intelligence; these are purely animal operations. If you do not draw from the vivifying source of the beautiful, of the infinite, and of conscience, you will produce nothing; one only attains to excellence by the paths of

virtue.

A sublime principle, of which the finest development belongs to Socrates; Cato reproduced it in defining an orator a good man, skilful in the art of speaking. Thus the sage of Greece and the sage of Rome attributed genius, not to the workings of thought, but to the beauty of the soul. Both said, the source of eloquence is virtue; and by virtue they understood the sentiment of our duty towards the gods and men.

The forgetfulness of this principle has precipitated us into chaos. Man has mistaken, for the highest part of himself, that which is but the evidence of a superior animality. What has been the consequence? an eager and learned youth has risen up on all sides. Each personality has constituted itself a centre; for intellect, far from uniting men, divides them. Each comes with his particular reasonings; no one with the sentiment of truth and if, amidst this anarchy, the soul do not resume its empire, we shall see nothing else than opinions without morality, and ambition without restraint. It is the property of intellect, when abandoned to itself, to destroy society, while increasing the enjoyments of civilisation.

The causes of our falling off are sought for in the doctrines of the philosophers; but the doctrines of philosophers are, themselves, only the result of our modes of education. You reduce man to his intellect, and his intellect yields its fruits. Observe what is become of our literature; inquire of it what it will have, and to what it tends. You will hear cries of liberty! one would say a people was in insurrection; it likewise has kings to de

throne. But, in fact, what are its works? What have we substituted for the heroical literature of Pericles, of Augustus, and of Louis XIV. Have we, then, approached nearer to nature? Have we searched deeper in the recesses of the human heart? Have we been made more pure, more true, or more enthusiastic? No. For a worn-out circle we have substituted a narrow circle; for a literature of convention, a superficial literature; for rules, licence. We have erased from our poetry sentiment, heroism, and even French character. We are no longer poets; we are no longer lovers; we no longer imagine; we paint, it is the talent of David transported into speech. Our writers wish to speak to the eyes; and they only represent of man the body and the animal passions—those passions of which satiety is the end. Open the newest works, study this literature, which certainly is not wanting either in raciness or talent, but which has lost its regenerating mission, by plunging into matter. Hideous figures surround you, frightful dramas oppress you; you are in a fantastic world a prey to tortures and executioners. Not one look towards heaven, not one sentiment for the heart. To see all these human forms which crime puts into motion would remind you of the Alberic of Dante walking the streets of Genoa, when his soul had already descended to hell. It is no longer life, neither is it death; it is a corpse animated by a demon. Such is the type of our literary creations, the heroes of our dramas and our fictions; one would say that the aim of art is only to produce terror and disgust. But we copy nature; but we exhibit the age and humanity. Man is the subject of our works! Yes, man as an animal, but man as a religious being, purifying his passions by the sense of infinity, I seek in vain for any such in your works, and yet therein alone is the pathetic; therein only are truth and immortality. Oh, you have not lied to the

world, divine Richardson, virtuous Bernardin de SaintPierre, eloquent Rousseau! you have not lied to the world, in depicting the charms of modesty, and the sublime conflicts of virtue! and shall the source of such delicious tears be dried up for ever? Does there not exist in the universe a single holy emotion-a single generous sentiment? This earth, so vast-this civilisation, so much boasted of,-do they offer for our contemplations nothing but the scenes of the charnel-house, and the pathetics of the scaffold?

Such, we must say, are works of pure intellect. All their effects are physical; the body shudders, the senses are disturbed; but the eye remains dry, the heart barren; nothing goes to the soul, because nothing comes from it. That which should be taught, therefore, to philosophers, to artists, to poets; that which must be especially taught to mothers, for it is they who form great men, is the knowledge of the soul, the art of awakening its faculties, and of separating them from the animal faculties. A truly human science, since its aim is to restore man to his true rank, from whence all our methods of education tend to make him descend.

Cause him to know that which elevates and that which debases; show him the degradation of those material habits which fetter thought; of those brutal passions which circumscribe and destroy it; show him especially the glory and the happiness which result from the development of his most sublime faculties,—the sense of the beautiful, and the love of truth. To possess the fury of the tiger, the courage of the lion, the devotedness of the dog, is but to live the life of all the animals; the life of the man begins only with the sentiment of the divinity.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSE OF THE GREAT AND BEAUTIFUL BY THE STUDY OF GREAT MODELS.

"Donnons à l'empire des femmes une sublime direction, que cette puissance enchanteresse dont elles disposent reçoive de nos propres mains une impulsion salutaire vers les grandes et les belles choses, et qu'elles nous guident ensuite elles mêmes vers cette amélioration morale si inutilement cherchée par les philosophes."

RAYMOND, Essai sur l'Emulation.

A PHENOMENON takes place in the intellectual world which it appears to us has not been sufficiently considered, viz. the fall of all that is false, and the triumph of all that is true. Whatever may be the enthusiasm with which evil is received, and the indifference to the good, the termination is inevitable, the great of every kind must always regain its place, which is the first in nature as well as the first in the human soul.

This is the reason why the soul in its transports, that is to say, in its highest aspirations, harmonises with nature in her most ideal perfections. The consequence is that chefs-d'œuvre of every kind alone survive.

Universal consciousness, stronger than all the bad passions which a vitiated taste engenders, marks with a fatal stroke in human works that which is to live, and that which is to be forgotten. The grand never dies; the indifferent (mediocre) never lives; and this immense selection, this work of every day, performed by the hand of time beneath the influence of great souls, is not liable to