of the people, and needs no homage from their eyes.  I was very happy in that little study in presence of these two men, whose influence has been so great, so real.  To me Beranger has been much; his wit, his pathos, his exquisite lyric grace, have made the most delicate strings vibrate, and I can feel, as well as see, what he is in his nation and his place.  I have not personally received anything from La Mennais, as, born under other circumstances, mental facts which he, once the pupil of Rome, has learned by passing through severe ordeals, are at the basis of all my thoughts.  But I see well what he has been and is to Europe, and of what great force of nature and spirit.  He seems suffering and pale, but in his eyes is the light of the future.

These are men who need no flourish of trumpets to announce their coming,—­no band of martial music upon their steps,—­no obsequious nobles in their train.  They are the true kings, the theocratic kings, the judges in Israel.  The hearts of men make music at their approach; the mind of the age is the historian of their passage; and only men of destiny like themselves shall be permitted to write their eulogies, or fill their vacant seats.

Wherever there is a genius like his own, a germ of the finest fruit still hidden beneath the soil, the “Chante pauvre petit” of Beranger shall strike, like a sunbeam, and give it force to emerge, and wherever there is the true Crusade,—­for the spirit, not the tomb of Christ,—­shall be felt an echo of the “Que tes armes soient benis jeune soldat” of La Mennais.

LETTER XI.

FRANCE AND HER ARTISTIC EXCELLENCE.—­THE PICTURES OF HORACE
VERNET.—­DE LA ROCHE.—­LEOPOLD ROBERT.—­CONTRAST BETWEEN THE FRENCH
AND ENGLISH SCHOOLS OF ART.—­THE GENERAL APPRECIATION OF TURNER’S
PICTURES.—­BOTANICAL MODELS IN WAX.—­MUSIC.—­THE OPERA.—­DUPREZ.—­
LABLACHE.—­RONCONI.—­GRISI.—­PERSIANA.—­“SEMIRAMIDE” AS PERFORMED BY
THE NEW YORK AND PARIS OPERAS.—­MARIO.—­COLETTI.—­GARDINI.—­
“DON GIOVANNI.”—­THE WRITER’S TRIAL OF THE “LETHEON.”—­ITS EFFECTS.

It needs not to speak in this cursory manner of the treasures of Art, pictures, sculptures, engravings, and the other riches which France lays open so freely to the stranger in her Musees.  Any examination worth writing of such objects, or account of the thoughts they inspire, demands a place by itself, and an ample field in which to expatiate.  The American, first introduced to some good pictures by the truly great geniuses of the religious period in Art, must, if capable at all of mental approximation to the life therein embodied, be too deeply affected, too full of thoughts, to be in haste to say anything, and for me, I bide my time.

No such great crisis, however, is to be apprehended from acquaintance with the productions of the modern French school.  They are, indeed, full of talent and of vigor, but also melodramatic and exaggerated to a degree that seems to give the nightmare passage through the fresh and cheerful day.  They sound no depth of soul, and are marked with the signet of a degenerate age.