ter had been developed, though not
controlled, by the Revolution, the principles, transactions, and
leading promoters of which he judged with rigid independence, without
losing sight of the primary and national cause. His mind, eminently
liberal, highly cultivated, and supported by solid good sense, was more
original than inventive, profound rather than expanded, more given to
sift thoroughly a single idea than to combine many; too much absorbed
within himself, but exercising a singular power over others by the
commanding weight of his reason, and by an aptitude of imparting, with a
certain solemnity of manner, the unexpected brilliancy of a strong
imagination, continually under the excitement of very lively
impressions. Before being called to teach philosophy, he had never made
this particular branch of science the object or end of his special
study, and throughout our political vicissitudes between 1789 and 1814
he had never taken an important position, or connected himself
prominently with any party. But, in youth, under the influence of the
traditions of Port-Royal, he had received a sound classical and
Christian education; and after the _Reign of Terror_, under the
government of the Directory, he joined the small section of Royalists
who corresponded with Louis XVIII., less to conspire, than to enlighten
the exiled Prince on the true state of the country, and to furnish him
with suggestions equally advantageous for France and the House of
Bourbon, if it were destined that the House of Bourbon and France should
be re-united on some future day. He was therefore decidedly a
spiritualist in philosophy, and a royalist in politics. To restore
independence of mind to man, and right to government, formed the
prevailing desire of his unobtrusive life. "You cannot believe," he
wrote to me in 1823, "that I have ever adopted the word _Restoration_ in
the restricted sense of an individual fact; but I have always regarded,
and still look upon this fact as the expression of a certain system of
society and government, and as the condition on which, under the
circumstances of France, we are to look for order, justice, and liberty;
while, without this condition, disorder, violence, and irremediable
despotism, springing from things and not from men, will be the necessary
consequence of the spirit and doctrines of the Revolution." Passionately
imbued with this conviction, an aggressive philosopher and an expectant
politician, he fought