far South-west, on the banks of the Mississippi. Here he sojourned among the Natchez Indians, living as they lived, and wandering from one bark hut to another, to study their habits, like the ancient Ulysses. Upon their manners and customs he has written beautiful treatises, and, upon what he saw of their primitive life, founded the strange but truthful romances, entitled "Les Natchez," and "Atala." His acquaintance with the reality of the things described in them, gives his sketches the air of sparkling originality, while the sober graces of refined taste are by no means wanting. It was while enjoying these primitive scenes, that he read, by the pale light of a hospitable fireside in an Indian hut, on a fragment of a newspaper, of the progress of the Revolution, of the flight of Louis XVI, and his arrest at Varennes. The intelligence touched his loyalty to the quick, and he instantly set sail for France. Arriving on his native soil, he applied in vain to be admitted to fight, musket in hand, in the ranks of those who had enrolled themselves under the banner of St. Louis. His adventurous spirit was not appreciated then, and he was compelled to take the sword, and risk a loyal death as a cadet of Brittany. He was dangerously wounded at Thionville, when that place was unsuccessfully bombarded by the Austrians in 1792. He shared the exile of the royal family, and lived in London for several years, having lost all his property, and depending on his pen for subsistence. Here he wrote, among other works, his treatise on "Ancient Revolutions." In 1800, he returned to his country, with no means of support except his own perseverance, and literary talent, and began to publish works, which, although often weakened by the vicious luxuriance of a youthful writer, contain many original beauties. "Atala," and the "Genius of Christianity" appeared very shortly after Chateaubriand's return to France. The eloquence of the latter work, and the moral courage of the writer, who thus dared, in the midst of desecrated altars, to render a glowing tribute to despised religion, did not escape the quick and ever-watchful eye of Napoleon, then First Consul. Under his encouragement, the book became popular, and Chateaubriand a Bonapartist. While the clergy were warmly commending the work, Napoleon offered its author the post of Secretary of Legation in the embassy to the Pope of Rome. As the Consul had at this time some little affairs to arrange, which depended on the good nature of the pontiff, it was not bad policy to send among other members of his legation, the young " defender of the faith." After a first impulse to decline had been overcome by a reference to the example of Romish prelates, who had accepted similar stations, Chateaubriand joined the embassy of Cardinal Fesch. The tortuous policy of Napoleon, which he was obliged to see through, and might not either approve or betray, soon brought him back to Paris. Having before his departure for Rome, been connected with the Mercure and Journal des Debats (a paper still flourishing,) he resumed his contributions to the Mercury, which had now passed into his hands as its proprietor. Struck with the moderation of Napoleon, and yielding to the influence which the latter well knew how and ardently desired to exercise over so free and independent a spirit as Chateaubriand's, our hero was soon after prevailed upon to accept the post of "Minister of France to the Valois." But when the bold designs of Napoleon upon supremacy were unmasked by the horrible assassination of the Duke of Enghien, Chateaubriand resigned, the moment it was announced. Scorning to flee, he awaited the outburst of imperial vengeance, but the outburst did not come. The Emperor was more anxious than the Consul to win over to his interest the lofty character of Chateaubriand. No offers of place, however, could find their object weak enough to yield to their temptations. Napoleon was chagrined. To escape the petty inquisitions of police, he determined to defer no longer his projected visit to the East. He had in the "Martyrs," given the literary fruits of his researches in Rome, but his "Oriental Tour," far exceeded that in picturesque description, and in the fire and nerve of enthusiasm. Jerusalem was the Mecca of the French pilgrim. He visited that Sepulchre which, "alone of all graves, will have no dust to give up at the Last Day." In 1811, he was appointed by Napoleon to the Academic Chair of the Institute, to fill a vacancy caused by the death of Chenier. It was customary for the successor to signalize his inauguration by a eulogy of his predecessor; but Chenier was one of the regicides of Louis XVI, and his address, on being submitted to the censors, and by them confidentially shown to Napoleon, was interdicted, and Chateaubriand was banished from Paris.* TRAVELING EPISTLE. W July 11th, 1848. DEAR DUX: Never, I believe, have you been a sojourner in this village; but that is your loss, not mine. Every summer, I make it my valley of Arcadia, retreating hither to escape the blistering suns of the canine days, and to imbrown myself in the pleasant pursuit of woodsports perhaps, in part, to bask in smiles which, unlike the poet's cup of tea, "cheer and inebriate." I call it Arcadia, mainly on account of the exceeding fairness of the Phyllises and Amaryllises who inhabit it: "Fair gracious maids, with tender eyes, That o'er their perfumed lips is shed." It is also Arcadia-like, inasmuch as, like that ancient valley, it blooms amid an amphitheatre of hills, on the most rugged and loftiest of which ice is found, even amid the heats of midsummer. A Sabbath-day's journey—I do not mean a journey taken on Sunday-will carry you to the " Natural Ice-House" at any time. I was there but yesterday, • The unexpected length of the article excludes the concluding passages from this number, and the writer furnishes in their place the following epitome: "After Napoleon's banishment to Elba, Chateaubriand wrote "Bonaparte and the Bourbons." In consequence of this on Napoleon's return, he took refuge in Ghent. When Louis XVIII was permanently restored, Chateaubriand was created a Viscount and Peer of France. He was afterwards Minister to Berlin, Embassador to London, and to the Congress of Verona, and Minister to Rome. His pamphlet on the Freedom of the Press, offensive to Royalty, is well known. In 1829, L'Avocat and LeFevre, publishers, gave him about $100,000 for the copy right of his complete works, which were accordingly published. After the Revolution of July, being a partisan of the Duke of Bordeaux, he refused to take the oath of allegiance to Louis Philippe, and gave up his peerage. Ever since, he has devo. ted himself to literature. He translated Milton's Paradise Lost into French prose, wrote his pleasant essay on English Literature, and compiled his "Memoirs from the Grave," which are personal reminiscence of one who has seen the three most eventful eras of French his tory, and which are expected to be a treasure akin to that anticipated from the publication of the Diary of John Quincy Adams Chateaubriand's funeral was not extravagant or imposing; but was attended by many of the most distinguished literati and statesmen of France. took a chill-bath, and was glad enough to find my way to sunshine again. If you only spin through this place in a rail-car, you will conclude that a man who owned a dozen acres of its soil, would be a proper candidate for the poor-house, and that the more he owned the poorer he would be. I doubt whether a square foot of it would breed a blade of grass in several summers. That part of the township seems to have been providentially designed for railroad sleepers, and for "nothing else." On driving into the centre of the town, you will find the whole aspect of things changed. One street cleaves as clean a carpet of verdure as you ever saw, and a delightful "contiguity of shade" will stir at once all the love of rurality you have in you. The neat white houses-uniformly neat and white-which meet your eye everywhere, are signs of thrift and comfort; while a wooden church, gothicized, and sprinkled with sand in imitation of some unknown variety of stone, and another, with a steeple that rises ambitiously for a short distance, but was prematurely tapered off into a spire, on account of the giving out of the ecclesiastical treasury,—will convince you of the taste in art of the people. Here, too, is the finest country-seat in the State, so far as elegance of situation and natural advantages go. It extends down a westward slope for about a furlong, lying in terraces, and profusely stored with flowers and fruit. Without leaving the manor, I have this day been wet with the sprays of fountains, have culled water lilies, baited some half-domesticated trout, lain down in arbors, smoked in a log cabin of cedar, swung between two trees in a Mexican hammock, mounted garden towers, bathed in a luxurious bagnio, plucked the princely blossoms of the magnolia, wandered through orchards, flower-gardens, melon yards and corn-fields in short, have amused myself with a variety of most agreeable rural pleasures. The walks, with their margin of turf enclosing borders of flowers, lead you among all sorts of vegetable beauty, skirting areas covered with fruit trees of the best and rarest kinds; now bringing you to the banks of a fish-pond, now under a long bower of grape-vines, now under arches of Madeira ivies and creepers, now to a garden house, now by the side of a delicate jet of water falling into a stone basin. And all this spectacle of beauty has been wrought under the hands of a single person, whose ambition has been to make home as enchanting a spot as possible, and to add to that natural impulse which makes even bleakness and rudeness sacred under the name of home, the attractions of all that can appeal to a cultivated taste, or a genial fancy. Moreover, it is free to all the world, and, by daylight and moonlight, strangers thread its walks, penetrating its many arbors, trailing dresses over the long grass of the orchards, and perhaps making their way to the neat little cemetery, which lies at the foot of all, in which two fountains are perpetually throwing up their silver showers, to keep fresh and bright the memorials of enduring affection. Human nature exhibits some strange developments here. If "all the world's a stage," a "strong bill" in the line of farce might be procured here. The village seems to bring forth strange and odd characters, as if the "prentice hand " of nature was rather freakish when she wrought humanity for this region. And what is better-as is generally the case in villages-every body knows every body else's peculiarities and eccentricities. For instance, there is the " Dominie," whom you could pick out of a thousand, as the Boniface of a jolly country hotel. His whole face is expressive of the fact, that he has taken almost every thing but the pledge. Those red filmy streaks across his face were "never made by drinking cold water." His nose, I may be permitted to say, is a paragon of a nose for a taverner. may be in hue what Bardolph's was, but Bardolph's was no match for it in size. It indicates that its owner, like Dr. Monoculus, is not afraid to take his own medicine, so long as the recipe prescribes "best Cognac Brandy, warm, with." Not only is it a sizeable and conspicuous member, naturally, but it is swollen almost to bursting, with the rich concentrated essence of smashers and cock-tails innumerable. Alcohol could not do more for a nose, than it has done for the Dominie's. It Then there are the "Mates," a pair, who, having arrived at that age when matrimony is purely a question of boiling kettles and chopping wood, have mutually agreed to love, honor, obey and support each other, without the trouble of announcing anything of the kind before hand, in the presence of a gentleman in a white surplice, and with a prayer-book in his hand. Abelard and Eloise were not more faithful or recluse than they. John, too, has a little of the aroma of oddity about him. He is constitutionally a heathen, and is morally impenetrable as a crocodile or rhinoceros can be physically. He is a trapper by trade, although he does some useful work in his leisure hours. He knows the subterraneous whereabouts of every fox, coon, rabbit, wood-chuck, and (I think likely) mole and muskrat within the township. On Sundays, his favorite amusement is to climb a tree in the vicinity of some animal's burrow, and watch for its tenant, until the latter starts out to gather his Sunday manna. I believe, he keeps an account of all the litters, both in esse and in futuro, of all the class of mammalia, called Rodentia, that inhabit the woods of When a fox-hunt is "on the carpet,"-rather a strange place for one, but such are the incongruities which grow into language-John is invaluable, and a fox-hunt is no uncommon occurrence . |