e_ read,' I said, 'and liked, his narrative of the manner in which
he forced on the Spanish war of 1822. I thought it well written.'

'It is, perhaps,' said Ampere, 'the best thing which he has written, as
the intervention to restore Ferdinand, which he effected in spite of
almost everybody, was perhaps the most important passage in his political
life.

'There is something revolting in an interference to crush the liberties
of a foreign nation. But the expedition tended to maintain the Bourbons
on the French throne, and, according to Chateaubriand's ideas, it was
more important to support the principle of legitimacy than that of
liberty. He expected, too, sillily enough, that Ferdinand would give a
Constitution. It is certain, that, bad as the effects of that expedition
were, Chateaubriand was always proud of it.'

'What has Ballanche written?' I asked.

'A dozen volumes,' he answered. 'Poetry, metaphysics, on all sorts of
subjects, with pages of remarkable vigour and _finesse_, containing some
of the best writing in the language, but too unequal and too desultory to
be worth going through.'

'How wonderfully extensive,' I said, 'is French literature! Here is a
voluminous author, some of whose writings, you say, are among the best in
the French language, yet his name, at least as an author, is scarcely
known. He shines only by reflected light, and will live only because he
attached himself to a remarkable man and to a remarkable woman.'

'French literature,' said Ampere, 'is extensive, but yet inferior to
yours. If I were forced to select a single literature and to read nothing
else, I would take the English. In one of the most important departments,
the only one which cannot be re-produced by translation--poetry--you
beat us hollow. We are great only in the drama, and even there you are
perhaps our superiors. We have no short poems comparable to the "Allegro"
or to the "Penseroso," or to the "Country Churchyard."'

'Tocqueville,' I said, 'told me that he did not think that he could
now read Lamartine.'

'Tocqueville,' said Ampere, 'could taste, like every man of genius, the
very finest poetry, but he was not a lover of poetry. He could not read a
hundred bad lines and think himself repaid by finding mixed with them ten
good ones.'

'Ingres,' said Beaumont, 'perhaps our greatest living painter, is one of
the clever cultivated men who do not read. Somebody put the "Misanthrope"
into his hands, "It is wonderfull