CHASTELLUX, François Jean, Chevalier, and afterwards Marquis de, born at Paris in 1734; died there in 1788. He entered the army at the age of fifteen; at twenty-one became colonel of the regiment of Guyenne, and served from 1756 to 1761 in Germany. In 1780 he served in America with distinction. He wrote occasional verses with ease and grace, and was a poet in the sense of the word which is not meant to express more than a becoming accomplishment. Chastellux, however, was born and educated for better things; and he published in 1772 an essay which attracted great admiration—"De la felicité publique, ou considerations sur le sort des hommes dans les differens époques de l'histoire." The object of the work was to show that the happiness of mankind increases in direct proportion to their increased knowledge. Malesherbes gave the book high praise in saying that it was worthy of Chastellux's grandfather (D'Agesseau). Voltaire said it was superior to Montesquieu's Esprit des Loix. This work led to the author's becoming a member of the academy. In 1780 he published his "Travels in North America." His connection with the academy led to an eloge on Helvetius. He wrote some articles for the supplement to the Encyclopedie. He married in the year 1787 an Irish lady. The marriage was not happy. Some details connected with it are given in the edition, published in 1822, of his "Félicité publique."—J. A., D.
CHATEAUBRIAND, François Auguste, Viscount de, a French statesman and miscellaneous writer, was born at St. Malo in 1768. The youngest of ten children, his father intended him for the navy; but he showed an invincible repugnance for that as well as the military branch of the service. His early years were passed in solitude and ardent study, from which the attractions of the capital could not divert him. The attack on the Bastile, and the subsequent humiliation to which the royal family became exposed, roused the studious recluse into activity. As occurred throughout his subsequent career, his sensitive nature seems to have been operated upon in contrary ways; for while a sentiment of honour and family traditions bound him to the cause of royalty, he could not exclude certain sympathies with the republican movement. In 1791 he set out for America, inspired with the grandiose idea of discovering the north-west passage. Stopping at Baltimore, the monarchical young viscount paid his respects to General Washington, who, with a mild wave of his hand, cut short a florid strain of compliment, and then sensibly advised him to desist from his project of discovering the north-west passage. How far he might have proceeded, had not an English journal with startling intelligence fallen in his way, it would be needless to inquire. It was in a remote settlement of the backwoods that he read of the flight of the royal family to Varennes, and their arrest. The voice of honour, he tells us, whispered him to return; and he did return, with his genius awakened by the contemplation of nature, as seen in the wild magnificence of American savannahs, lakes, and forests. His family received him with joy; and, probably with a view to keep the wanderer out of adventures, provided him with a wife, whom he accepted with indifference, and never afterwards either loved or hated. Resolved upon joining the emigrés at Coblentz, he turned the assignats which made up his wife's fortune into money, and out of their depreciated value realized 12,000 francs, of which he lost 10,500 at a gaming table. Having joined in the futile attack on Thionville, he was left for dead in a ditch; was taken up by a few flying soldiers and thrown into an ammunition waggon, until arriving at Namur, they assigned him to the tender charities of the good women of the place, from whom he parted strengthened and refreshed to seek an asylum in Brussels. He proceeded after some time to Jersey to join the royalists, but stopped at Guernsey in a raging fever, was saved from death by the kind attentions of an English family, and finally made his way to London. During the reign of terror Chateaubriand was living in London, suffering such extreme poverty, that he declares himself to have passed three days without food; yet were his spirits sustained by a light-hearted cousin, who fought privations with his guitar and song. A clergyman employed him to assist in a work he was preparing for the press; and the clergyman's daughter showed herself not insensible to attentions, which went so far as to require explanation, when Chateaubriand rather tardily avowed his marriage. Losing his secretaryship, he taught French and translated books until 1797, when he appeared as an author, with his "Essay on Revolutions," which met with no success. A letter written by his mother on her death-bed, and sent through a sister whom he dearly loved, who herself died before the letter reached her brother, wrought by its pious sentiments, to which the attendant circumstances gave greater force, a revolution on his mind, the effect of which became manifest in his "Genie du Christianisme." The effect produced by this work was prodigious. Its merits have not, indeed, stood the test of time, but it came into the world with the great advantage of meeting a present want. Men were feeling a certain tenderness towards the past, when Chateaubriand hit exactly the sentiment of the moment with those poetical and fanciful views and descriptions which, while they exalt the imagination and cheer the soul, disturb not by challenges to controversy, with hard reasonings, or dogmatic assertions. In 1800 he ventured to return to France; and his fame becoming further spread by "Atala" and "René," the first consul sent for him and appointed him in 1803 secretary to the legation at Rome, and then minister to Switzerland. Upon the execution of the duc d'Enghien, Chateaubriand to his honour resigned. The publication of his "Martyrs," a sort of prose epic, in which christianity and paganism contend to the disadvantage of the latter, confirmed his reputation, despite the objections of critics, who found that a work half-romance and half-poem violated propriety in more ways than one. In 1806 he paid that pilgrimage to Jerusalem which produced his least objectionable work, abounding as it does in vivid and graphic description, and animated with sincere sentiments of veneration for the subjects suggested by the scenery of the Holy Land. It was this work which softened the resentment of Napoleon, who—having deprived Chateaubriand of his periodical, the Mercure—intimated to the academy his wish that they should elect him to the seat vacant by the death of Marie Joseph Chenier; but Chenier was a jacobite, and as Chateaubriand would be obliged to pronounce an eulogium on his predecessor, he declined the proffered honour. When Bonaparte was sent to Elba, Chateaubriand, in order to confirm the new-born zeal of the country towards the Bourbons, published his "Bonaparte and the Bourbons." Louis XVIII. pronounced it worth an army, and appointed the author ambassador to Sweden; but as he was setting out, Napoleon landed at Cannes, and the ambassador followed the king to Ghent. After Waterloo, Chateaubriand refused to take office under Fouché. Henceforward he is to be viewed rather as the statesman than the author, and with no advantage to his fame. Whatever opinion may now be pronounced on his writings, it is certain that they produced great influence on his generation. Inflated and fantastic rather than eloquent and imaginative, and conceived with a view to effect, there nevertheless shone through his works a fine chivalrous nature and a noble invention, which tended to redeem the factitious tastes which prevailed, and with which they were in harmony. When, however, the florid author attempted to act a showy statesman's part, in order to attract attention to his own appearance, it would be well if we had no worse to say than that he failed. While professing love for constitutional principles, and even avowing his belief in the future advent of the republic, he inconsistently sided with that ultra-monarchical party, whose intrigues thwarted the enlightened aims of Louis XVIII. Having successively represented France at Berlin and London, Chateaubriand was sent to the congress of Verona, where he advocated that abominable invasion of Spain in 1822, which, as minister for foreign affairs, he odiously carried into effect. Unceremoniously turned out by the president of the council, Villele, at the instance of the king, who disliked him, he became a newspaper writer, and avenged himself in the columns of the Journal des Debats upon the cabinet. His antagonist having at length fallen, the new minister, Martignac, sent Chateaubriand as ambassador to Rome; but on the nomination of Polignac to be prime minister, he threw up his post. He arrived in Paris in time for the revolution of July, received an ovation from the people, proceeded, however, to the chamber of peers, where he proposed the recognition of the duc de Bourdeaux with a regency, and failing in his motion, refused to take the oath of allegiance to Louis Philippe, and resigned his seat. The rest of his life was spent in the preparation of memoirs for publication after his death; while his literary labours were relieved by the society of the once beautiful madame de Recamier, at whose mansion, the Abbaye aux Bois, he passed several hours every day without taking much part in conversation, and seldom satisfied unless at the hearing of his own praise, for he was inordinately vain. At length his feebleness increased so far that
