er husband's regard as he could devote to another than himself.

The episode of war having soon closed--not without a wound and a
serious illness--he found a refuge in London, enduring dire poverty,
but possessing the consolation of friendship with Joubert and
Fontanes, and there he published in 1797 his first work, the _Essai
sur les Revolutions_. The doctrine of human progress had been part
of the religion of the eighteenth century; Chateaubriand in 1797 had
faith neither in social, nor political, nor religious progress. Why
be deceived by the hopes of revolution, since humanity can only circle
for ever through an exhausting round of illusions? The death of his
mother and words of a dying sister awakened him from his melancholy
mood; he resolved to write a second book, which should correct the
errors of the first, and exhibit a source of hope and joy in religion.
To the eighteenth century Christianity had appeared as a gross and
barbarous superstition; he would show that it was a religion of beauty,
the divine mother of poetry and of art, a spring of poetic thought
and feeling alike through its dogma and its ritual; he would convert
literature from its decaying cult of classicism, and restore to honour
the despised Middle Ages.

The _Genie du Christianisme_, begun during its author's residence
in London, was not completed until four years later. In 1801,
detaching a fragment from his poetic apology for religion, he
published his _Atala, ou les Amours de Deux Sauvages dans le Desert_.
It is a romance, or rather a prose poem, in which the magic of style,
the enchantment of descriptive power, the large feeling for nature,
the sensibility to human passion, conceal many infirmities of design
and of feeling. Chateaubriand suddenly entered into his fame.

On April 18, 1802, the Concordat was celebrated with high solemnities;
the Archbishop of Paris received the First Consul within the portals
of Notre-Dame. It was the fitting moment for the publication of the
_Genie du Christianisme_. Its value as an argumentative defence of
Christianity may not be great; but it was the restoration of religion
to art, it contained or implied a new system of aesthetics, it was
a glorification of devout sentiment, it was a pompous manifesto of
romanticism, it recovered a lost ideal of beauty. From Ronsard to
Chenier the aim of art had been to imitate the ancients, while
imitating or interpreting life. Let us be national, let us be modern,
l