d sharpness of outline which impress it on the
memory, while, sparing as he is of ornament, his rare passages of
description and fancy have great merit. The surest testimony to his
value is the fact that, though both in his own day and since by far the
larger number of writers and thinkers have held views more or less
opposed to his, no one whose opinion is itself of the least importance
has ever spoken of him without respect and even admiration. Those who,
like Lamartine, qualify their admiration with a certain depreciation,
show inability to recognise fully the beauty of strength undisguised by
conventional elegance and grace of form.

[Sidenote: Bonald.]

Louis Gabriel Ambroise, Vicomte de Bonald, who is usually named with
Joseph de Maistre as the leader of the Catholic-monarchist reaction, was
a weaker thinker, and a writer of less accomplishment, though in both
respects he has perhaps been somewhat unfairly criticised. Born at
Milhaud, in the district of Rouergue, in 1754, he discharged various
civil and military employments in his native province during his youth;
was elected in 1790 member of the Departmental Assembly, but emigrated
next year; served in Conde's army, and then established himself at
Heidelberg. His first work was seized by the Directory, but he returned
to France soon afterwards, and was not molested. He published a good
deal during the first years of the century, and, like many other
royalists, received overtures from Napoleon through Fontanes. These he
did not exactly reject, but he availed himself of them very sparingly.
The Restoration, on the contrary, aroused him to vigour. It was owing to
him chiefly that the law of divorce was altered. He entered the Academy,
and in 1823 was made a peer; an honour which he resigned at the
revolution of July. He died in 1840.

Bonald's principal work is his _Legislation Primitive_. He also wrote a
book on divorce, and a considerable number of miscellaneous political
and metaphysical works. His chief subjects of discussion were, first,
the theory of the revelation of language; and secondly, the theory of
causality: in respect of both of which he combated the materialist
school of the eighteenth century. In politics Bonald was a thoroughgoing
legitimist and monarchist of the patriarchal school. Although an
orthodox and devout Catholic, he does not lay the stress on the temporal
power of the pope that the author of _Du Pape_ does. With him the king
is the i