n; Rome and the provinces of the Empire, Gaul, Egypt, the
deserts of the Thebaid, Jerusalem, Sparta, Athens, form only portions
of the scene; heaven and hell are open to the reader, but Chateaubriand,
whose faith was rather a sentiment than a passion, does not succeed
in making his supernatural habitations and personages credible even
to the fancy. Far more admirable are many of the terrestrial scenes
and narrations, and among these, in particular the story of Eudore.

In the course of the travels which led him to Jerusalem, Chateaubriand
had visited Spain, and it was his recollections of the Alhambra that
moved him to write, about 1809, the _Aventures du Dernier des
Abencerages_, published many years later. It shows a tendency towards
self-restraint, excellent in itself, but not entirely in harmony with
his effusive imagination. With this work Chateaubriand's inventive
period of authorship closed; the rest of his life was in the main
that of a politician. From the position of an unqualified royalist
(1814-24) he advanced to that of a liberal, and after 1830 may be
described as both royalist and republican. His pamphlet of 1814, _De
Bonaparte et des Bourbons_, was declared by Louis XVIII. to be worth
an army to his cause.

In his later years he published an _Essai sur la Litterature Anglaise_
and a translation of "Paradise Lost." But his chief task was the
revision of the _Memoires d'Outre-Tombe_, an autobiography designed
for posthumous publication, and actually issued in the pages of the
_Presse_, through the indiscreet haste of the publishers, while
Chateaubriand was still living. Its egotism, its vanity, its
malicious wit, its fierce reprisals on those whom the writer regarded
as his enemies, its many beauties, its brilliance of style, make it
an exposure of all that was worst and much of what was best in his
character and genius. Tended by his old friend Mme. Recamier, to whom,
if to any one, he was sincerely attached, Chateaubriand died in the
summer of 1848. His tomb is on the rocky islet of Grand-Be, off the
coast of Brittany.

Chateaubriand cannot be loved, and his character cannot be admired
without grave reserves. But an unique genius, developed at a fortunate
time, enabled him to play a most significant part in the history of
literature. He was the greatest of landscape painters; he restored
to art the sentiment of religion; he interpreted the romantic
melancholy of the age. If he posed magnificently, the