one leading
object,--to reach power by faithfully serving his party; and, power once
obtained, to hold it firmly, while exercising it with discretion.

Launched on the world almost from infancy, M. de Chateaubriand had
traversed the whole range of ideas, attempted every career, aspired to
every renown, exhausted some, and approached others; nothing satisfied
him. "My capital defect," said he himself, "has been _ennui_, disgust
with everything, perpetual doubt." A strange temperament in a man
devoted to the restoration of religion and monarchy! Thus the life of
M. de Chateaubriand had been a constant and a perpetual combat between
his enterprises and his inclinations, his situation and his nature. He
was ambitious, as the leader of a party, and independent, as a volunteer
of the forlorn hope; captivated by everything great, and sensitive even
to suffering in the most trifling matters, careless beyond measure of
the common interests of life, but passionately absorbed, on the stage of
the world, in his own person and reputation, and more annoyed by the
slightest check than gratified by the most brilliant triumph; in public
life, more jealous of success than power, capable in a particular
emergency, as he had just proved, of conceiving and carrying out a great
design, but unable to pursue in government, with energy and patience, a
well-cemented and strongly-organized line of policy. He possessed a
sympathetic understanding of the moral impressions of his age and
country; more able however, and more inclined, to win their favour by
compliance than to direct them to important and lasting advantages; a
noble and expanded mind, which, whether in literature or politics,
touched all the exalted chords of the human soul, but more calculated to
strike and charm the imagination than to govern men; greedy, to an
excess, of praise and fame, to satisfy his pride, and of emotion and
novelty, as resources from constitutional weariness.

At the very moment when he was achieving a triumph in Spain for the
House of Bourbon, he received disappointments from the latter quarter,
the remembrance of which he has thought proper to perpetuate
himself:--"In our ardour," said he, "after the arrival of the
telegraphic despatch which announced the deliverance of the King of
Spain, we Ministers hastened to the palace. There I received a warning
of my fall,--a pailful of cold water which recalled me to my usual
humility. The King and _Monsieur_ took no