Lectures on Some Subjects of Modern History and Biography

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1864 edition. Excerpt: ...avowed;--such, amid many material services, and a blaze of military glory, was the French Government from 1804 to 1814. And observe, all those forms and institutions that, even in the decline of the old monarchy, had served as checks and limitations to arbitrary power, were swept away by the Revolution. The local legislatures, however mutilated--the provincial franchises--the rights of the various municipal corporations--the parliaments, where the magistracy often uttered so courageous a language--an aristocracy which, though divested of direct political power, still exerted that great influence which intellectual cultivation, large property, and hereditary rank never fail to confer--an opulent and influential clergy that, in its stated periodical meetings, boldly remonstrated against abuses in Church and State--lastly, the written laws, immemorial customs, and practices and habitudes of ages: --such, even in the reigns of Louis XIV. and of Louis XV., were the surviving, though defective, bulwarks of freedom. The fate of the last of the Condes opened an impassable abyss between the Emperor Napoleon and the illustrious man whose biography I have been tracing. Henceforth he devoted himself almost exclusively to literature. He now conceived the project of writing an epic poem, in which he might realize his own theories of art. The subject he selects is the deadly struggle between nascent Christianity and expiring Paganism in the reign of the Emperor Diocletian. He was resolved that the new poem should bear the same local colouring, the same fidelity of costume, as his American tales. Hence he resolves to visit the great scenes of primitive Christianity--Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. Leaving France, M. de Chateaubriand visits Italy..