This remarkable book he thus prefaces: “I have met almost all the men who, in my own days, have been conspicuous in my own or foreign countries—Washington and Napoleon, Louis XVIII. and Popes Alexander, Pius VII., and Gregory XVI., Fox, Pitt, Sheridan, Londonderry, Capo d’Istrias, Malesherbes, and Mirabeau, Nelson, Bolivar, Mehemet, the Pacha of Egypt, Suffren, Bougainville, Lapeyrouse, Moreau, and others. I was one of a triumverate which has no parallel in the history of the world; three poets of different views and interests having been almost at the same time ministers of foreign affairs—I, in France, Canning, in England, and Martinez de la Rosa, in Spain, I have lived through the uneventful years of my youth, the teeming era of the republic, the proud days of Buonaparte, and the reign of legitimacy. I have sailed over the seas of the Old and New World, and stood on the soils of four quarters of the globe. I have slept in the Indian wigwam, Arab tent, and Huron hut; amid the ruins of Athens, Jerusalem, Memphis, Carthage, and Grenada, with the Greek, Turk, and Moor, amid forests, and amid deserted cities. I have worn a bear-skin cap, and the Mameluke caftan; I have undergone hunger and thirst, and as an ambassador, covered with golden embroidery, and stars, and insignia of chivalry, have sat at the board of kings, princesses and ladies, and then have again become impoverished, and have languished in prison.” For a long time the health of Chateaubriand had been the source of much uneasiness to his friends, but on his return from a trip to Dieppe, in 1847, the symptoms became absolutely alarming. He had resolved to visit Italy, but was attacked with pneumonia, in Paris, and died July 4, 1848, after an illness of five days. The body of the poet was taken to Saint Malo, his birth-place, and on a rocky promontory, where the waves of the Atlantic ceaselessly beat, one who was restless as they, found a final repose. Full of tender love for his childhood’s home, he himself selected his burial place, as the bird which perchance has girded the earth, returns to the nest whence it first winged its flight—to die. * * * * * TO J. F. H. BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. Nine years have slipped like hourglass-sand From life’s fast-emptying globe away, Since last, dear friend, I clasped your hand, And lingered on the impoverished land, Watching the steamer down the bay. I held the keepsake which you gave, Until the dim smoke-pennon curled O’er the vague rim ’tween sky and wave, And closed the distance like a grave, Leaving me to the outer world;