RECOLLECTIONS OF CHATEAUBRIAND IN ENGLAND. 187 



A troop of camels would be unable to cross the desert unless headed 

 by an ass ! In an age like the present, when firmness of purpose is 

 recognized as a virtue, can too much praise be given to the tenacity 

 of the ass ? I have ever," continued he, " admired that splendid 

 comparison which Homer draws between the stern immobility of the 

 warrior and the firmness of the ass, that having once effected his 

 entrance into a field, resists with unshaken constancy all attempts to 

 expel him from the favoured spot of his election. It is only in the 

 west that the ass has ceased to be poetic. When warlike and bar- 

 barous tribes found it expedient to render the horse the accomplice 

 of their guilty ravages from that moment the ass lost his place in 

 society, and became confounded among the democracy of the brute 

 creation. His noble qualities were thrown into shade his faculties 

 degraded his intelligence paralysed by vulgar toils and his very 

 name used as a symbol to represent the hopeless incapacity that 

 would have been too much honoured by a kick from his hoof. 

 This wanton injustice will perhaps be redressed by future ages." 



Though by no means convinced that the reader will sympathize with 

 the opinions here advanced in favour of assinine intellectuality, we 

 yet believe the advocate to have taken up the cause, not in a vein of 

 irony, but in a genuine spirit of zeal for his proteges; and, un- 

 doubtedly, if the universality of the prejudice existing against 

 the defended constitutes the disinterested generosity of the defence, 

 few will contest the liberal motives which actuated the pleader. 



Few literary men of the present day are subject to more frequent 

 moods of despondency and gloom than the noble and illustrious 

 author of Moise. Often has he confided to the ear of friendship a 

 most doleful and incoherent chapter of confessions. " There are 

 men," would he say, te who are fond of seeing sights, but mine is not 

 an inquisitive temperament. My whole existence, from infancy till 

 now, has been devoured by ennui. I have travelled with indifference 

 to external objects, urged by mere weariness of life. I have ob- 

 served nothing, felt nothing, with interest. I attach myself to 

 nothing. I serve my king cordially, and yet without enthusiasm. 

 My existence is, in short, a system of perpetual self-restraint. It 

 would pain me to think that I have done ill, and yet must I 

 confess it? to have done well affords me no intense gratification. 

 Virtue is dear to me, but as a divinity that moves my reason rather 

 than touches my heart. The faculties of him who can worship her 

 as he ought, must be peculiarly organized. Buffon has occasionally 

 appreciated her Voltaire has loaded her with derision Rousseau 

 has treated her as a prostitute, and, at the same time, adored the 

 beauty he endeavoured to degrade. And glory ! who, in his hour of 

 sober sad reflection, can seriously worship glory ? The greatest man 

 of the age has even now departed from amongst us : Buonaparte is 

 no more. I have heard scores of discharged ballad-mongers roar 

 themselves hoarse in the streets of London with the announcement of 

 his death, and not one passenger turned aside to pay the tribute of a 

 penny for the bulletin ! Glory ! Wellington, the great English 

 captain of the age, willingly sacrifices his fame to fashion to the 

 pleasures of a London season, and he and his fame are alike lost 

 in the crowd. He has become the rival of the petits maitres of 



