rested in the Revolution of 1830; but it was profitable to
him, for through some of his friends he was appointed French consul,
first at Trieste, and then (the Austrians objecting) at Civita Vecchia.
He lived, however, chiefly at Rome, and travelled a good deal. Latterly
his health was weak, and he died at Paris, in 1842, of apoplexy. He was
buried at Montmartre; but, with his usual eccentricity, his epitaph was
by his direction written in Italian, and he was described as a Milanese.
Beyle's character, personal and literary, was very peculiar. In
temperament, religious views, and social ideas he was a belated
_philosophe_ of the Diderot school. But in literature he had improved
even on Diderot, and very nearly anticipated the full results of the
Romantic movement, while in politics, as has been said, he was an
imperialist. His works are pretty voluminous. They consist of novels
(_La Chartreuse de Parme_, _Armance_, _Le Rouge et le Noir_, _Memoires
d'un Touriste_, etc.); of criticism (_Histoire de la Peinture en
Italie_, _Racine et Shakespeare_, _Melanges_); of biography (Lives of
Napoleon, Haydn, Mozart, Metastasio, etc.); of topographical writing of
a miscellaneous kind (_Promenades dans Rome, Naples et Florence_, etc.);
and lastly, of a singular book entitled _De l'Amour_, which unites
extraordinary acuteness and originality of thought with cynicism of
expression and paradox of theory. In this book, and in his novels, Beyle
made himself the ancestor of what has been called successively realism
and naturalism in France. Perhaps, however, his most remarkable work was
Merimee, of whose family he was a friend, and who, far excelling him in
merit of style if not in freshness of thought, learnt beyond all doubt
from him his peculiar and half-affected cynicism of tone, his curious
predilection for the apparently opposed literatures of England and
Southern Europe, and not improbably also his imperialism. Beyle is a
difficult author to judge briefly, the contradictions, affectations, and
oddities in him demanding minute examination. Of his power, intrinsic
and exerted on others, there is no doubt.

[Sidenote: Nodier.]

[Sidenote: Delavigne.]

[Sidenote: Soumet.]

The three remaining writers require shorter notice. Charles Nodier, who
was born at Besancon in 1780, and died at Paris in 1844, is one of the
most remarkable failures of a great genius in French literary history.
He did almost everything--lexicography, text-editi