prison by the revolutionists. "I wept," said Chateaubriand, "and I
believed." "Le Genie du Christianisme" was an expression of that
reactionary feeling which drove numbers of Frenchmen back into the
Church, after the blasphemies and horrors of the Revolution. It came out
just when Napoleon was negotiating his _Concordat_ with the Pope, and was
trying to enlist the religious and conservative classes in support of his
government; and it reinforced his purposes so powerfully that he
appointed the author, in spite of his legitimism, to several diplomatic
posts. "Le Genie du Christianisme" is indeed a plea for Christianity on
aesthetic grounds--an attempt, as has been sneeringly said, to recommend
Christianity by making it look pretty. Chateaubriand was not a close
reasoner; his knowledge was superficial and inaccurate; his character was
weakened by vanity and shallowness. He was a sentimentalist and a
rhetorician, but one of the most brilliant of rhetoricians; while his
sentiment, though not always deep or lasting, was for the nonce
sufficiently sincere. He had in particular a remarkable talent for
pictorial description; and his book, translated into many tongues,
enjoyed an extraordinary vogue. The English version, made in 1815, was
entitled "The Beauties of Christianity." For Chateaubriand undertook to
show that the Christian religion had influenced favorably literature and
the fine arts; that it was more poetical than any other system of belief
and worship. He compared Homer and Vergil with Dante, Tasso, Milton, and
other modern poets, and awarded the palm to the latter in the treatment
of the elementary relations and stock characters, such as husband and
wife, father and child, the priest, the soldier, the lover, etc.;
preferring Pope's Eloisa, _e.g._, to Vergil's Dido, and "Paul and
Virginia" to the idyls of Theocritus. He pronounced the Christian
mythology--angels, devils, saints, miracles--superior to the pagan; and
Dante's Hell much more impressive to the imagination than Tartarus. He
dwelt eloquently upon the beauty and affecting significance of Gothic
church architecture, of Catholic ritual and symbolism, the dress of the
clergy, the crucifix, the organ, the church bell, the observances of
Christian festivals, the monastic life, the orders of chivalry, the
country churchyards where the dead were buried, and even upon the
superstitions which the last century had laughed to scorn; such as the
belief in gho