IDEAL FRANCE.*

THERE is perhaps no truer measure of human genius than the strength of the influence which it leaves behind in those who have been linked with it in the closest intimacy. It

would not be too much to say that Edgar Quinet lives still in his widow. His spirit has absolutely stamped itself upon her.

However gifted, she has not his genius ; she wants that mastery of speech and thought which shaped all his writings to artistic form ; her ideas not unfrequently run away with her ; her.

pen, as it were, bolts on reaching the open. Yet in this volume, perhaps more than in any other of her works, there are pages upon pages which Quinet himself would have signed. And from first to last the volume is, as it were, saturated with him.

It is true throughout to its opening words :—

"Interior dialogues with an absent immortal,—that is the true title to these pages. The great voice which became silent for ever on March 27th, 1875, continues to speak with me; I hear at all hours him who is alive in my soul, him who wished to make France the ideal of the nations. For the last twenty years, at each event, I ask myself, What would he say ? what truths would he find to enlighten his fellow-countrymen as to their duties, as to the perils which threaten our country ? ' I know well what he answers me in these dialogues ; I believe I am still writing under his dictation. But I have neither the elo- quence nor the authority of his speech. It is a weakened, far- off echo reaching from the bottom of a heart penetrated with piety towards France."

Shall we find fault with one not even herself French by birth for that encomium of the French character of which it is not too much to say that every European nation would dissent from some, if net most, of its details, when she speaks of it as "essentially humane and full of feeling," of "its generosity, its sweetness united with fiery courage, qualities which have made it always beloved ; " its "greatness of soul," "never equalled since the Greeks," of its " feeling of right and justice," which "has remained indestructible till our days"? —when she says that in France " perjury is hated, scorned under any disguise whatsoever, justice and disinterestedness are honoured even amongst enemies whenever they are made manifest "—that "there is no people less selfish than the French "—that they have " not inherited the spirit of con- quest "? It is surely enough to say that if the French would only act up to the character which she ascribes to them, no other nation would be so well pleased as our own. The

chapter on "History Compared," from which the above passages are quoted, is indeed in its one-sidedness a real—

and the only real—blot on the book. But in the name of her "ideal France," the writer speaks bold truth to the France of to-day. Now she attacks "criminal literature":—

" Yes, it is a crime to employ our beautiful and luminous French tongue for the expression of disgusting trivialities, for the tracing of the hideous pictures which it is a pleasure for de-

praved imaginations to call up Honest voices alone are reduced to silence. Who would have the courage to speak of

morality, of austerity ? Enthusiasm has become an abso- lutely laughable thing, admiration a synonym for imbecility."

She attacks Pastel de Coulanges for his historical Cusarism, Renan as a sophist in whom two voices are always speaking at once, one saying " Yes," the other "No," so that any pas- sage whatever of his works may be interpreted as you please, the writer being absolutely without conscience of the truth.

She attacks the narrowness of French education, the multi- plication of public functionaries, breeding in turn a still larger crowd of aspirants to office. She attacks the " young democracy which will keep no link with the past." She attacks the excessive centralisation which " destroys all equilibrium in the distribution of civilisation." She speaks of the moral morasses to be found in many French towns,

where for " toad souls " (dmes crapauds) cleverness consists in the combinations of rascality—" how to succeed with the

largest number of tricks and swindles without being caught in the act—how to advance rapidly in position, fortune, by

a La France Idiate, Per Madame Edgar Quinet. Paris: °alumna Levy. less.

dint of baseness and denials, whilst folding oneself in a

reputation of uprightness." She speaks of the lamentable fall in good taste "caused by the license of the press and by

an ill-digested half-science ; " of the poisoning of women's minds by low-minded literature. She inveighs against the haste and lovelessness of French marriages. Her own ideal of marriage is indeed a very different one from that fashionable amongst ourselves at this day, let alone French models :—

" To obtain the absolute confidence of one's husband, that is the foundation of the wife's happiness, the treasure of marriage. She will not exact it by words, she will deserve it by self-abnega- tion. The happiness of a perfect union requires the self-sacrifice of the one to the other, this is inevitable. Man will sacrifice him- self to his country, the woman to her husband. Is it not the

greatest happiness to love, rather than to be loved ? Love is faith."

Bat the chapters of the book which are of the deepest interest are the last two, entitled " Spiritualism " and " Immortality." To appreciate them, one must bear in mind that the author has been brought up outside of all religions faith. " Never," she tells us, " in my childhood, in my youth, have I learnt invocatory prayer." But a self-devoted union of many years with a man of very noble spirit,

followed by his loss, has forced her to believe in immortality, and through this belief she has risen to faith, at least in an unknown God. " A great love," she says, " that is the revela- tion of immortality." Such at least it has been for her. As she puts it elsewhere, "I love, I am, I shall always be."

She deems it natural that the supreme knowledge should deny itself to the ignorant. She waits for immortal life to reveal God.

It will be observed that, up to a certain point, the writer's position recalls that of Ellen Watson, the devoted pupil of the eminent agnostic, Professor Clifford, and an agnostic like himself, when his death set her face to face with " the apparently hopeless problem of a life like that of her ' dear master's,' so fall of earnest love and splendid intellectual power, shut up within the darkness of his grave," and she began, after a time, " sometimes " to hope and believe " that there is a divine power in the world, an Eternal Good, which is also in us, and yet not ourselves." From this Ellen Watson proceeded to a full faith in a self- revealing God, and gave herself up utterly to His service as

an educator in South Africa. But when Madame Quinet concludes a very brave and noble book by the words : " This faith in Immortality can alone give to life harmony, a stay in distress, and assure the triumph of our ideal France," one can but hope that she may, with Ellen Watson, go farther,

and reach, in full assurance of faith, " the central truth, round

which all the rest group themselves that there is an eternal God, in whom we live, and who can hear us when we

speak to Him ; from whom, further, we learn of His boundless

knowledge, of His years which shall not fail, and of our own blessedness as to be found only in Him." (Ibid, p. 164.) The main point of difference between these two noble-hearted women, is that for Madame Quinet supreme knowledge

is not yet equivalent to supreme love, as it was to Ellen Watson. Hence, again, the difference in their concep- tions of the supernaturaL For Madame Quinet, "reason cannot admit the supernatural,—that is to say, that which is contrary to the order established in the universe and ruled by laws." Ellen Watson, on the other hand, believed in "a.

supernatural that does not destroy the natural, but which

literally is fulfilling it."

In the meanwhile, it is satisfactory to find that a journal which, in the opinion of many, stands at present at the head

of the Paris Press, the Temps (October 23rd, 1895), bas greeted with equal sympathy the inauguration of Edgar Quinet's bust. in the courtyard of a superior primary school in Paris, and the publication of his widow's latest book, "a work of faith and a cry of hope." To the " Ecole Edgar Qninet " for four hundred girls, La France Ideate is indeed dedicated, in re- membrance of the deep interest Quinet always took in

female education.