Lamartine had held and had resigned a soldier's post in the body-guard of Louis XVIII. He now accepted the position of attache to the embassy at Naples; published in 1823 his _Nouvelles Meditations_, and two years later _Le Dernier Chant du Pelerinage d'Harold_ (Byron's Childe Harold); after which followed a long silence. Secretary in 1824 to the legation at Florence, he abandoned after a time the diplomatic career, and on the eve of the Revolution of July (1830) appeared again as a poet in his _Harmonies Poetiques et Religieuses_; travelled in the East in company with his wife, and recorded his impressions in the _Voyage en Orient_; entered into political life, at first a solitary in politics as he had been in literature, but by degrees finding himself drawn more and more towards democratic ideas. "Where will you sit?" he was asked on his presentation in the Chamber. His smiling reply, "On the ceiling," was symbolical of the fact; but from "the ceiling" his exalted oratory, generous in temper, sometimes wise and well informed, descended with influence. _Jocelyn_ (1836), _La Chute d'un Ange_ (1838), the _Recueillements Poetiques_ (1839), closed the series of his poetical works, though he did not wholly cease from song. In 1847 Lamartine's idealising _Histoire des Girondins_, brilliant in its romantic portraiture, had the importance of a political event. The Revolution of February placed him for a little time at the head of affairs; as he had been the soul of French poetry, so for a brief hour he was the soul of the political life of France. With the victory of imperialism Lamartine retired into the shade. He was more than sixty years of age; he had lost his fortune and was burdened with debt. His elder years were occupied with incessant improvisations for the booksellers--histories, biographies, tales, criticism, autobiographic confidences flowed from his pen. It was a gallant struggle and a sad one. Through the delicate generosity of Napoleon III. he was at length relieved without humiliating concessions. In 1869 Lamartine died in his eightieth year.