Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 403, May, 1849. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ class of fanatics, long before Louis Philippe had received his notice to quit. It was an "impassioned leaven" in French society five years ago, in the heated imagination, or else in the artful theory, of Quinet. What was really the case? There was, in his sober opinion, as much danger from the reaction at that time as from the Great Turk, and no more. He merely used it as an academic man-of-straw to play at foils with. He held it up to contempt as an exploded folly, and then pretended it was a living danger, only to increase his own reputation for daring, and to quicken the development of antagonist principles. He little dreamed the manikin would come to life, and show fight for the Bourbons and legitimacy. He cried Wolf for his own purposes, and the actual barking of the pack must be a terrible retribution! The reaction of 1848 must have come upon the professors like doomsday. I can conceive of him, at present, only as of Friar Bacon, when he stumbled upon the discovery of gunpowder. A moment since, he stood in his laboratory compounding the genuine elixir of life, and assuring his gaping disciples of the success of his experiment; but there has been a sudden detonation, and if the professor has miraculously escaped, it is only to find chaos come again, his admiring auditors blown to atoms, and nothing remaining of his philosophical trituration, except his smutty self, and a very bad smell. I speak of him as the personification of his system. Personally, he has been a gainer by the revolution. Guizot put him out of his place, and the Republic has put him back; but the Reaction is upon him, and his theories are already resolved into their original gases. "The college of France" may soon come to a similar dissolution.

      Let us look for a while at foreign conservatism through Monsieur Quinet's glasses. I have introduced you to de Maistre, and de Maistre is to him what the Pope was to Luther. Quinet is, in his own way, another reformer; in fact, he announces his system, in its relations to Protestantism, as another noon risen upon mid-day. The theological character of foreign politics is as prominent in his writings as in those of his antagonists. Thus, to illustrate the character of the French Revolution, he takes us to the Council of Trent; and to demolish French Tories, he attacks Ultramontanism. This is indeed philosophical, considering the actual history of Europe, and the affinities of its Conservative party. Action and reaction are always equal. The cold infidelity of Great Britain was met by the cool reason of Butler, and sufficiently counteracted by even the frigid apologies of Watson, and the mechanical faith of Paley. But the passionate unbelief of the Encyclopædists produced the unbalanced credulity of the reaction; and Diderot, d'Alembert, and Voltaire, have almost, by fatality, involved the noble spirits of their correctors in that wrongheaded habit of believing, which shows its vigorous weakness in the mild Ballanche and the wavering Lamennais, and develops all its weak vigour in de Maistre and de Bonald. Thus it happens that Mons. Quinet gives to his published lectures the title of Ultramontanism; for he prefers to meet his antagonists on the untenable field of their superstition, and there to win a virtual victory over their philosophical and political wisdom. His book has reached me through the translation of Mr Cocks,2 who has kindly favoured the literature of England with several similar importations from "the College of France," and who seems to be the chosen mouthpiece of the benevolent author himself, in addressing the besotted self-sufficiency of John Bull. So far, indeed, as it discusses Ultramontanism in itself, the work may have its use. It shows, with some force and more vociferation, that it has been the death of Spain, and of every state in which it has been allowed to work; and that, moreover, it has been the persevering foe of law, of science, and of morality. This is a true bill; but of him, as of his master Michelet, it may be said with emphasis, Tout, jusqu' à la vérité, trompe dans ses écrits. It does not follow, as he would argue, that political wisdom and Christian truth fall with Ultramontanism; nor does he prove it be so, by proving that de Maistre and others have thought so. The school of the Reaction are convicted of a mistake, into which their masters in Great Britain never fell. That is all that Quinet has gained, though he crows lustily for victory, and proceeds to construct his own political religion, as if Christianity were confessedly defunct. As to the style of the Professor, so far as I can judge it from a tumid and verbose translation, it is not wanting in the hectic brilliancy of rhetoric raised to fever-heat, or of French run mad. Even its argument, I doubt not, sounded logical and satisfactory, when its slender postulate of truth was set off with oratorical sophistry, enforced with professorial shrugs of the shoulders, or driven home with conclusive raps upon the auxiliary tabatière. But the inanimate logic, as it lies coffined in the version of Mr Cocks, looks very revolting. In fact, stripped of its false ornament, all its practical part is simply the revolutionism of the Chartists. Worse stuff was never declaimed to a subterranean conclave of insurgent operatives by a drunken Barabbas, with Tom Paine for his text, and a faggot of pikes for his rostrum. The results have been too immediate for even Mons. Quinet's ambition. From hearing sedition in the "College of France," his motley and party-coloured audience has broken up to enforce it behind the barricades. They turned revolutionists against reaction in posse, and reaction in esse is the very natural consequence.

      "Every nation, like every individual, has received a certain mission, which it must fulfil. France exercises over Europe a real magistracy, which cannot be denied, and she was at the head of its religious system." So says de Maistre, and so far his bitter enemy is agreed. But, says de Maistre, "She has shamefully abused her mission; and since she has used her influence to contradict her vocation, and to debauch the morals of Europe, it is not surprising that she is restored to herself by terrible remedies." Here speaks the spirit of Reaction, and Quinet immediately shows fight. In his view she has but carried out her vocation. The Revolution was a glorious outbreak towards a new universal principle. In the jargon of his own sect, "it was a revolution differing from all preceding revolutions, ancient or modern, precisely in this, that it was the deliverance of a nation from the bonds and limits of her church, into the spirit of universality." The spirit of the national church, he maintains, had become Ultramontane; had lost its hold on men's minds; had made way for the ascendency of philosophy, and had tacitly yielded the sceptre of her sway over the intelligence and the conscience to Rousseau and Voltaire. Nor does the Professor admit that subsequent events have restored that sceptre. On the contrary, he appeals to his auditors in asserting that the priesthood have ceased to guide the French conscience. His audience applauds, and the enraptured Quinet catches up the response like an auctioneer. He is charmed with his young friends. He is sure the reaction will never seduce them into travelling to heaven by the old sterile roads. As for the réactionnaires, no language can convey his contempt for them. "After this nation," says he, "has been communing with the spirit of the universe upon Sinai, conversing face to face with God, they propose to her to descend from her vast conceptions, and to creep, crestfallen, into the spirit of sect." Thus he contrasts the catholicity of Pantheism with the catholicity of Romanism; and thus, with the instinct of a bulldog, does he fasten upon the weak points of foreign Conservatism, or hold it by the nose, a baited victim, in spite of its massive sinews and its generous indignation. This plan is a cunning one. He sinks the Conservative principles of the Reaction, and gives prominence only to its Ultramontanism. He shows that modern Ultramontanism is the creature of the Council of Trent, and reviews the history of Europe as connected with that Council. He proves the pernicious results of that Council in every state which has acknowledged it; shows that not preservation but ruin has been its inevitable effect upon national character; and so congratulates France for having broken loose from it in the great Revolution. He then deprecates its attempted resuscitation by Schlegel and de Maistre, and, falling back upon the "religious vocation" of France, exhorts his auditors to work it out in the spirit of his own evangel. This new gospel, it is almost needless to add, is that detestable impiety which was so singularly religious in the revolution of last February, profaning the name of the Redeemer to sanctify its brutal excesses, and pretending to find in the spirit of his gospel the elements of its furious Liberty and Equality. In the true sentiment of that revolution, an ideal portrait of the Messiah is elaborately engraved for the title-page of Mr Cock's translation! So a French quack adorns his shop with a gilded bust of Hippocrates! It is a significant hint of the humble origin of a system which, it must be understood, owes its present dignity and importance entirely to the genius of Mons. Quinet.

      That the Reaction is thus identified with Ultramontanism, is a fact which its leading spirits would be the very last to deny. The necessity of religion to the prosperity of France is their fundamental principle; and religion being, in their minds, СКАЧАТЬ