e of charms. With a full heart we dwell in an empty world."
"Penetrate into those forests of America coeval with the world; what
profound silence pervades these retreats when the winds are husht! What
unknown voices when they begin to rise! Stand still and everything is
mute; take but a step and all nature sighs. Night approaches, the shades
thicken; you hear herds of wild beasts passing in the dark; the ground
murmurs under your feet; the pealing thunder rebellows in the deserts;
the forest bows, the trees fall, an unknown river rolls before you. The
moon at length bursts forth in the east; as you proceed at the foot of
the trees, she seems to move before you on their tops and solemnly to
accompany your steps. The wanderer seats himself on the trunk of an oak
to await the return of day; he looks alternately at the nocturnal
luminary, the darkness, and the river; he feels restless, agitated, and
in expectation of something extraordinary; a pleasure never felt before,
an unusual fear, cause his heart to throb, as if he were about to be
admitted to some secret of the Divinity; he is alone in the depth of the
forests, but the mind of man is equal to the expanse of nature, and all
the solitudes of the earth are not too vast for the contemplations of his
heart. There is in man an instinctive melancholy, which makes him
harmonise with the scenery of nature. Who has not spent whole hours
seated on the bank of a river, contemplating its passing waves? Who has
not found pleasure on the seashore in viewing the distant rock whitened
by the billows? How much are the ancients to be pitied, who discovered
in the ocean naught but the palace of Neptune and the cavern of Proteus;
it was hard that they should perceive only the adventures of the Tritons
and the Nereids in the immensity of the seas, which seems to give an
indistinct measure of the greatness of our souls, and which excites a
vague desire to quit this life, that we may embrace all nature and taste
the fulness of joy in the presence of its Author." [32]

The outbreak of the Revolution recalled Chateaubriand to France. He
joined the army of the _emigrees_ at Coblentz, was wounded at the siege
of Thionville, and escaped into England where he lived (1793-1800) until
the time of the Consulate, when he made his peace with Napoleon and
returned to France. He had been a free-thinker, but was converted to
Christianity by a dying message from his mother who was thrown into