his mind stored with the prints of nearly half a century of philosophic research and observation of men and things! His voice varied with his words from grave to gay, and now and then came long peals of shrill laughter, more derisive perhaps than mirthful. That is our man!" said Maurice proudly, after describing such an evening; that evening perhaps when his own attractions eclipsed the master's brilliancy in the estimation of one who saw him for the first time-M. de Marzan, a former pupil of Lamennais, who revisited La Chenaie on the 18th of December, 1832. M. Féli was in one of his most delightful moods, recounting the experiences of his late Italian journey, and drawing out in his genial way the keen observations of the young men about him-of all excepting poor Maurice, who stood silent among the hopeful, eager talkers, painfully conscious of himself and distrustful of others, we must confess, with all affectionate sympathy for our hero. But in his reserved mien, in his expressive southern eyes and intellectual face, there was a magnetism that won completely M. de Marzan's attention from the delights of conversation, and as soon as the evening ended, he obtained an introduction through Elie de Kertauguy, a handsome, gifted youth from Lower Brittany, passionately devoted to Lamennais, and compassionately attentive to Guérin, regarding him, as did most of the inmates of La Chênaie, as a refined but very inefficient member of their circle. Not so Marzan, who in twenty-four hours had thawed Maurice's reserve, won his confidence, seen his journal, heard the circumstances of his unrequited love for Mlle. de Bayne, and laid the foundation of a friendship that lasted unbroken to the day of Guérin's death. What days, and nights too, of rapture these two young poels used to spend together, guided by their older and more experienced friend, Hippolyte de La Morvonnais. (a frequent visitor at La Chênaie), who had been to Grasmere to visit Wordsworth, and come home imbued with veneration for "Les Lakistes" (The Lake Poets). There came to be a mania among the three friends for describing in homely language the simplest domestic details, which they considered it a triumph in art to be able to give in a rhythm so dubious that none but the initiated could tell whether it was meant for prose or verse. Even at this early period, Guérin gave evidence of the peculiar strength and weakness of his style, the vagueness and looseness of his verse, the faultless harmony of his prose, which is as pure as air, free from the least touch of provincialism or mannerism; and yet, in the simple fervor of its revelations of the secrets that nature poured into his attentive ear, we are reminded of the sweet pipings of the Ettrick Shepherd, as dear old Christopher North interprets them to us. Through him we see and hear trees wave and waters flow, birds sing and winds sigh in the woods, and without being disturbed by moral inferences and philosophical conclusions. surely, when beauty comes to us so pure and fresh and untarnished, she may be left to teach her own lessons, which come to us so softly too from her lips. And The months that Maurice spent at La Chênaie were not especially fruitful to him, except in the sad experiences that tended to develop his moral strength. But for Morvonnais and Marzan, he would have remained quite unappreciated, for Lamennais, who gave the tone to the household, was too much "absorbed in his apocalyptic social visions "* to be conscious of the jewel that glittered before his eyes. Lamennais was a logician, a philosopher, a passionate and fanatical worker. Guérin was a man of ex Sainte-Beuve. the civilized world into a state of revolution. The Guérin perha o'cloc regul his mas A striking point in M. SainteBeuve's masterly analysis of the character of his former friend is the strange contrast offered by the double nature of Lamennais, who always leaned completely to one side or the other, the without any gradation, sometimes fa being possessed by what Buffon calls, b in speaking of beasts of prey, “a soul of wrath;" and again filled with a sweetness and tenderness that drew little children to him, a truly fascinating mood; and from one humor to the other he would pass in an instant. To La Chênaie and to the influence of this wonderful being, this compound of pathetic gentleness and combative obstinacy, of magnetism and repulsion Guérin came one afternoon early i the December of 1832. M. Féli, Lamennais was called in his hou hold, where ceremony was laid a« ́ and the most charming relations ex ed between old and young, recei him very cordially in his little pris parlor, which was furnished with chair and a chest of drawers. master had a way of letting the son he was conversing with say thing that he had to say upon a without interruption (an uncom method, by the way, of co one of the paucity of one's id then he would take up the Li self, and speak "gravely, pa luminously." But on this o gave himself up freely to a all sorts of subjects calen out the general intelligene pupil-the weather in Maurice's travelling co age, the high tides at Si deron, oyster fishing, Ca Victor Hugo, the mo fishes on the coast of the while hurrying to little room, presenting pearance with his sma!' clad in grey from h oblong head, pale c eyes, long nose, and with wrinkles. II: 1: ( ack but bend not? A e. à la Capanée!" the autumn of 1833, the 3:nnes ordered the dissoluaennais' religious comm ae pupils were removed to where they continued ther ier the supervision of M Lamennais. M. Féli & little army with the dig ▲ defeated general, and the self single-handed again in- ! He changed his patri to F. Lamennais, and de of democracy (says one of phers), as he had demanded church, a wand-stroke that e the world at once from and oppression. His success e judged by the political history ace in the last sixteen years on he adopted" Christianisme whatever that may be said he, "men feel so irre mpelled to unite themselves to at they return to Christianity one suppose that it can be to Christianity which presents itself the name of Catholicism." the revolution of '48 he thought Saw the birth of liberty; in the up d'Etat" he received its deathin his own person. Baffled o side, he betook himself to litera and translated the "Divina Com a;" then "feeling within him no sustaining thought," he died in his aty-third year, after an illness of ew weeks, leaving these words in is will: "I will be buried among the or, and like the poor. I will have hing over my grave, not even a ne; nor will I have my body car into any church." They laid n in Père la Chaise, and no word blessing was uttered over his grave. Poor Lamennais! What magnificent possibilities were shattered in his fall! And Maurice, what were his emoons when the door of La Chênaie Cised behind him?-the " little paralise" he called it, but then, poor soul, * Lamartine. A ing sails, and as our eyes turned n this little fleet to the more numer As one that sailed singing nearer to us, n innumerable crowd of sea-birds fishing gaily, and gladdening our eyes with the sight of their bright plumage and graceful movements over the water— the birds, the sails, the lovely day and universal peace gave to the sea a festal red beauty that filled my soul with glad out enthusiasm in spite of the sad thoughts thing I had brought with me to our promonby the tory; and then I looked with all my eceived soul at headlands, rocks, and islfriend, ands, trying to imprint them on my who lived memory and carry them away with t of Brit- me. Coming home I trod religiously, Val de and with regret at every step, the path that had so often led me to such beautiful thoughts, in such sweet company. The path is so charming when it reaches the coppice, and passes on among high hazel trees, and a thick, bushy hedge of boxwood! Then the joy that nature had bestowed upon me died away, and the melancholy of parting took possession of me. Tomorrow will make of sea, and woods, and coast, and all the charms I have enjoyed, a dream, a floating thought to me; and so, that I might carry away from these dear places as much as possible, and as if they could give themselves to me, I besought them to engrave their images upon my soul, to give me something of themselves that could never pass away; and I broke off branches of boxwood, bushes, and luxurious thickets, plunging my head into their depths to breathe in the wild perfumes they exhale, to penetrate into their very essence, and speak as it were heart to heart. country life, Morvonnais, exercised over d sweetest inwed strength to In the followJurnal, describing Val, we see with clung to the past, ress he encountered n o'clock in the walk, last visit to the , to the whole grand enchanted me for two er is smiling upon us race of spring, and givthat make birds sing and forth on the rose-bushes , on the eglantine in the the honeysuckle climbing and wall. About two took the path that winds so through flowering broom e cliff grass, skirting along ls, bending toward ravines, in and out between hedge-rows, est boldly ascending the loftiest The object of our walk was a atory that commands the Bay of -Vaux A hundred feet below e the sea, breaking against the with sounds that passed through ils as they mounted to heaven. Aard the horizon the fishing-boats urled against the azure sky their VOL. III. 27 "The evening passed as usual in talking and reading. We recalled the happiness of past days; I traced a faint picture of them in this book, and we looked at it sadly, as at some dear, beautiful, dead face." One more passage from his journal and we will leave Maurice de Guérin in Paris. Two years from the following date he was a fashionable man of the world, capable of vieing in con versation with those marvels of wit and brilliancy, the talkers of Paris; but we have to do with him only as the banished recluse, the exile from La Chênaie. "Paris, Feb., 1834. "O God! close my eyes, keep me from seeing all this multitude, whose presence rouses in me thoughts so bitter and discouraging. As I pass through it, let me be deaf to the sounds, inaccessible to the impressions that overwhelm me when I am in the crowd; set before my eyes some image, some vision of the things I love, a field, a valley, a moor, Le Cayla, Le Val, something in nature; I will walk with eyes fastened upon these dear forms, and pass on without a sense of suffering." From the Month. OF DREAMERS AND WORKERS. NEARLY all men are born either dreamers or workers; not perhaps only the one or only the other, but one of these two points is the centre of their oscillation. Like a pendulum, they can move only so far toward their op posite, some more, some less; but, like the pendulum, they invariably return to their centre. Do we not all know some man with abstracted eye, high, retreating forehead, rather refined and often slightly attenuated frame and features, and placidly resolute in demeanor, who has held the same position in the opinion of his fellow-men, or, it may be, has occupied the same bench on the Sunday quietly for twenty years or more? He is a specimen of the extreme type of dreamers- -ven erative, mystical, and benevolent; but to all appearance practically useless, helpless, and inert. Viewed physioViewed physiologically, these men are chiefly fairhaired and of the nervous lymphatic temperament; sometimes this is combined with the bilious temperament, and in such cases (to some of which we shall have more particularly to allude) they become remarkable characters. It has been said that the religion natural to dreamers is a mild form of Buddhism; but this is probably because most Buddhists are dreamers and mystics in the highest degree. One thing is certain, dreamers are in politics either conservative or utopian, and in religion are little disposed either to reject what they have been taught or to influence others to do so. It they have been educated as Catholics, mild and devout Catholics they live and die; if as Protestants. they are unusually gentle and tolerant, and oppose alike reforms that would be innovations, and innovations that would be reforms. A man who lives by faith, thus resting on the invisible. has at times an apparent resemblance to a dreamer. It is not our object in this paper to point out the distinction. wide as it indeed is. Dreamers are the subject of wonderful anecdotes about their absence of mind: it is re lated of them that they forget their meals, start on a journey without their hats, walk with their eyes wide open over precipices, ride on their walking. sticks, and are surprised when toll is not demanded of them for their charger. There is no occasion to believe all these preposterous tales, but no doubt there are many very curious and perfectly well-authenticated cases of abstraction of mind so entire as to cause catastrophes both painful and ludicrous. To these men their real life is their dream, their working-day is only their interruption and annoyance. They are in heart mystics, and only need a cer tain activity of brain and speech to proclaim themselves as such. They possess great store of happiness within themselves, owing to their peculiarity of caring less than others for those substantial and golden rewards which cause the unrest of the world. They love the unseen and mysterious better than the visible and sensuous, and would in general barter any amount of distinct and limited reality for indefinite prospects; so that the single streak of wan and dying light, which sleeps on the edge of the dark horizon, is more precious to them, as suggesting Infinity, than any view which could be offered of noble cities or fertile plains. Almost all things are to them symbolical. No action is in their thought simply what it seems to be but there is about every deed performed, circumstance encountered, or season passed, a secret sense of omen or prescience, of brightness or of shadow. Light becomes a senti ment calling up images of correspond ing radiance and beauty, but especially perhaps that early morning light which seems, while yet sleeping, to float in on the world, as opposed to the fading colors of departing day. Darkness, again, sometimes lends a sense of peril; but more often is peopled by spirits a realm of shadows and shadowy delights, all called into being, moved, governed, and colored by the dreamer in his dream. The many gradations between brightness and gloom have each their especial fascination for dreamers, who are in this respect as discriminative and fanciful as the Jews, who, in olden times, distinguished two kinds of twilight: the doves' twilight, or crepusculum of the day, and ravens' twilight, or the crepusculum of the night. In truth, their tendency is to behold all actual things as illusions, and to consider the spiritual and unseen world as the only true one: thus, in the cloudy mantle of constant reverie they hide all the ills and infirmities of humanity, and slumber in the "golden sleep of halcyon quiet apart from the everlasting storms of life." For when a man can sit calmly on an uncomfortable pole, like the Indian mystic, and say "I am the Universe, and the Universe is me," he has attained to the greatest by means of divining-rods. conceivable height and perfection of dream-life. From the age of Plato to our own times dreamers have been born perpetually among the sons of men. St. John is claimed by them as being the most profound and loving mystic ever given to the world. There have been countless others; we need not add a list of names; those of Swedenborg, Boehmen, and Irving, will occur to the memory as representing one class of dreamers. These leaders are, as one might predict, regarded with the extreme veneration characteristic of the order. Indeed, of some it may be chronicled, as it was of the ancient deities, Buddha, etc., " Once a man, now a God!" In general, dreamers have tenanted our madhouses rather than filled our prisons; if, however, they do commit crimes, they are serious ones. Religious and political assassinations have been commonly the fruits of mad dreamers. In the ranks have been numbered many holy men, and as a rule they have influenced mankind rather by the example of their life and the teaching of their pen than by busy practical action. Only certain professions and occupations are suitable for dreamers. In the olden times they were poets, shepherds, prophets, soothsayers, diviners, alchemists, rhabdomantists.* In these days they are by rights clergymen, authors, poets, philanthropists, and, philosophers. If they enter trade they commonly end in the Gazette; and placed in positions of authority, where severity of discipline has to be exercised, they are uniformly unsuccessful; in situations of trust, they are invariably single-hearted and faithful, but in every place and at all times they are the most frequent victims of fraudulent representations and impudent imposture. A certain number of the priesthood among all nations, gentle, speculative, and saintly men, * þúßdos, a rod; men who undertook, and in certain unenlightened regions do still undertake, to discover wells of water, veins of minerals, or hidden treasures of money and jewels, |