Another figure of world-wide renown was lost by the death of the French poet Francois Rene de Chateaubriand. Born at chateau Combourg in 1768, the scion of one of the noblest families of France, he received a careful education at chateau Combourg. Roaming about on the sea-shore and in the famous forest of Brezilien, the youth received his earliest impressions of the grandeurs of nature. Shortly before the outbreak of the French Revolution he was sent to Paris, where he received a commission in the royal army. It was then he published his first poem, "L'Amour de la Campagne," in the Almanach des Muses. Dissatisfied with the revolutionary turn of affairs, he resigned his commission in 1790, and journeyed to North America. There he travelled extensively, seeking poetic inspiration from the wilderness and the primitive customs of the Indians. After the downfall of King Louis XVI. and the French nobility, Chateaubriand hastily returned to France and joined the army of emigres under Prince Conde. At the siege of Thionville he was wounded and went to England. By the time Chateaubriand recovered he found himself in abject poverty, and had to spend his days in bed for lack of fuel. In England, he wrote his "Essai sur les Revolutions," in which he compared the recent rising in France to that of the English Commonwealth. On the fall of the Directorate he returned to France, and became one of the editors of Fontaine's "Mercure de France." At the opening of the Nineteenth Century he published "Atala," an episode of his epic poem "Les Natchez," treating of the suicide of an Indian virgin, who sought death rather than violate a solemn vow of chastity given to her mother. In 1802 appeared the second episode, "Rene," a subjective story treating of the hapless love of a sister for her brother, full of a French form of _maladie du monde_ akin to Goethe's _Weltschmerz_ in the "Sorrows of Werther." During the same year, Chateaubriand brought out his famous "Genius of Christianity, or the Beauties of the Christian Religion," which achieved an immense success. It won the approbation even of Napoleon, who appointed Chateaubriand to diplomatic posts at Rome and Vallis. The execution of the Duc d'Enghien was so horrifying to Chateaubriand that he forthwith resigned his appointments. After extensive travels through Greece, Egypt and the Holy Land, Chateaubriand went to Spain, where he found inspiration at the Alhambra to write "Le dernier des Abencerrages." There, too, he wrote his story of "The Martyrs, or the Triumph of the Christian Religion," brought out in Paris in 1809. Less successful was his tragedy "Moses." In 1810, Chateaubriand published the famous political pamphlet "La Monarchie selon la Charte," which was made the basis of the subsequent royal constitution of France. On the restoration of the Bourbons he wrote another political pamphlet, directed against Bonaparte, which sent him into exile together with Louis XVIII. during the Hundred Days. On the