ead of the
provisional government.

It is here worthy of remark, that Lamartine, from the commencement of
his political career, did not take that interest in public affairs
which seriously interferred with his poetical meditations; on the
contrary, it was his muse which gave direction to his politics. He
took a poetical view of religion, politics, morals, society, and
state; the Chambers were to him but the medium for the realization of
his beaux ideals. But it must not be imagined that Lamartine's beaux
ideals had a distinct form, definitive outlines, or distinguishing
lights and shades. His imagination has never been plastic, and his
fancy was far better pleased with the magnitude of objects than with
the artistical arrangement of their details. His conceptions were
grand; but he possessed little power of elaboration; and this
peculiarity of his intellect he carried from literature into politics.

Shortly after his becoming a member of the French Academy, he
publishes his "_Harmonies politiques et religieuses._"[5] Between the
publication of these "Harmonies," and the "Poetical Meditations," with
which he commenced his literary career, lies a cycle of ten years; but
no perceptible intellectual progress or developement. True, the first
effusions of a poet are chiefly marked by intensity of feeling and
depth of sentiment. (What a world of emotions does not pervade
Schiller's "Robbers," or Goethe's "Goetz of Berlichingen, with the iron
hand!") but the subsequent productions must show some advancement
toward objective reality, without which it is impossible to
individualize even genius. To _our_ taste, the "Meditations" are
superior to his "Harmonies," in other words, we prefer his praeludium
to the concert. The one leaves us full of expectation, the other
disappoints us. Lamartine's religion is but a sentiment; his politics
at that time were but a poetical conception of human society. His
religion never reached the culmination point of _faith_; his politics
were never condensed into a system; his liquid sympathies for mankind
never left a precipitate in the form of an absorbing patriotism. When
his contemporary, Beranger, electrified the masses by his "_Roi
d'Yvetot_," and "_le Senateur_," (in 1813,) Lamartine quietly mused in
Naples, and in 1814 entered the body guard of Louis XVIII., when
Cormenin resigned his place as counsellor of state, to serve as a
volunteer in Napoleon's army.

[Footnote 5: Political and Reli