Frenchman by birth. It would be impossible to
imagine a greater contrast than existed personally between Xavier de
Maistre and Henri Benjamin de Constant-Rebecque, commonly called
Benjamin Constant. But their personalities, interesting as both are, are
not the matter of principal concern here. The _Voyage autour de ma
Chambre_, its sequel the _Expedition Nocturne_, and the _Lepreux de la
Cite d'Aoste_, exhibit one branch of the river of Sensibility (if one
may be permitted to draw up a new Carte de Tendre), losing itself in
agreeable trifling with the surface of life, and in generous, but
fleeting, and slightly, though not consciously, insincere indulgence of
the emotions. In _Adolphe_ the river rushes violently down a steep
place, and _in nigras lethargi mergitur undas_. It is to be hoped that
most people who will read these pages know Xavier de Maistre's charming
little books; it is probable that at least some of them do not know
_Adolphe_. Constant is the more strictly original of the two authors,
for Xavier de Maistre owes a heavy debt to Sterne, though he employs the
borrowed capital so well that he makes it his own, while _Adolphe_ can
only be said to come after _Werther_ and _Rene_ in time, not in the
least to follow them in nature.

The _Voyage autour de ma Chambre_ (readers may be informed or reminded)
is a whimsical description of the author's meditations and experiences
when confined to barracks for some military peccadillo. After a fashion
which has found endless imitators since, the prisoner contemplates the
various objects in his room, spins little romances to himself about them
and about his beloved Madame de Hautcastel, moralises on the
faithfulness of his servant Joannetti, and so forth. The _Expedition
Nocturne_, a less popular sequel, is not very different in plan. The
_Lepreux de la Cite d'Aoste_ is a very short story, telling how the
narrator finds a sufferer from the most terrible of all diseases lodged
in a garden-house, and of their dialogue. The chief merit of these
works, as of the less mannerised and more direct _Prisonnier du Caucase_
and _Jeune Siberienne_, resides in their dainty style, in their singular
narrative power (Sainte-Beuve says justly enough that the _Prisonnier du
Caucase_ has been equalled by no other writer except Merimee), and in
the remarkable charm of the personality of the author, which escapes at
every moment from the work. The pleasant picture of the Chevalier de
B----