, so fondly loved and deeply cherished in
absence, to experience only trouble and difficulty. Away from it, he had
yearned to behold it,--to fold it, as it were, once more to his bosom.
He returned to feel as if neglected by it, and all his rapturous
emotions were changed to bitterness and gall. His hopes had proved
delusions--his expectations, mockeries. Oh! who but must look with
charity and mercy on all discontent and irritation consequent on such
a depth of disappointment: on what must have then appeared to him such
unmitigable woe. Under the influence of these saddened feelings, his
thoughts flew back to the island he had left, to place all beauty, as
well as all happiness, there!

One great proof that he did beautify the distant, may be found in the
contrast of some of the descriptions in the "Voyage a l'Ile de France,"
and those in "Paul and Virginia." That spot, which when peopled by the
cherished creatures of his imagination, he described as an enchanting
and delightful Eden, he had previously spoken of as a "rugged country
covered with rocks,"--"a land of Cyclops blackened by fire." Truth,
probably, lies between the two representations; the sadness of
exile having darkened the one, and the exuberance of his imagination
embellished the other.

St. Pierre's merit as an author has been too long and too universally
acknowledged, to make it needful that it should be dwelt on here. A
careful review of the circumstances of his life induces the belief, that
his writings grew (if it may be permitted so to speak) out of his life.
In his most imaginative passages, to whatever height his fancy soared,
the starting point seems ever from a fact. The past appears to have been
always spread out before him when he wrote, like a beautiful landscape,
on which his eye rested with complacency, and from which his mind
transferred and idealized some objects, without a servile imitation
of any. When at Berlin, he had had it in his power to marry Virginia
Tabenheim; and in Russia, Mlle. de la Tour, the niece of General
Dubosquet, would have accepted his hand. He was too poor to marry
either. A grateful recollection caused him to bestow the names of the
two on his most beloved creation. Paul was the name of a friar, with
whom he had associated in his childhood, and whose life he wished to
imitate. How little had the owners of these names anticipated that
they were to become the baptismal appellations of half a generation in
France, a