res into the bosom of
nature and of God."--(III. 283-284.)

"Il faut du tems," says Voltaire, "pourque les grandes reputations
murissent." As a describer of nature, we place Lamartine at the head of
all writers, ancient or modern--above Scott or Chateaubriand, Madame de
Stael or Humboldt. He aims at a different object from any of these great
writers. He does not, like them, describe the emotion produced on the
mind by the contemplation of nature; he paints the objects in the scene
itself, their colours and traits, their forms and substance, their
lights and shadows. A painter following exactly what he portrays, would
make a glorious gallery of landscapes. He is, moreover, a charming poet,
an eloquent debater, and has written many able and important works on
politics; yet we never recollect, during the last twenty years, to have
heard his name mentioned in English society except once, when an old and
caustic, but most able judge, now no more, said, "I have been reading
Lamartine's _Travels in the East_--it seems a perfect rhapsody."

We must not suppose, however, from this, that the English nation is
incapable of appreciating the highest degree of eminence in the fine
arts, or that we are never destined to rise to excellence in any but the
mechanical. It is the multitude of subordinate writers of moderate merit
who obstruct all the avenues to great distinction, which really
occasions the phenomenon. Strange as it may appear, it is a fact
abundantly proved by literary history, and which may be verified by
every day's experience, that men are in general insensible to the
highest class of intellectual merit when it first appears; and that it
is by slow degrees and the opinion oft repeated, of the really superior
in successive generations, that it is at length raised to its deserved
and lasting pedestal. There are instances to the contrary, such as Scott
and Byron: but they are the exceptions, not the rule. We seldom do
justice but to the dead. Contemporary jealousy, literary envy, general
timidity, the dread of ridicule, the confusion of rival works, form so
many obstacles to the speedy acquisition of a great living reputation.
To the illustrious of past ages, however, we pay an universal and
willing homage. Contemporary genius appears with a twinkling and
uncertain glow, like the shifting and confused lights of a great city
seen at night from a distance: while the spirits of the dead shine with
an imperishable lustre