Francois-Auguste de Chateaubriand, the illustrious author of the _Genie du Christianisme_, the poet, statesman, diplomatist, soldier, and traveler in the Old World and the New, was one of the two or three human beings who, at the commencement of the nineteenth century, disputed with the emperor Napoleon the attention of Europe. Sprung from an old family of the Breton nobility--a race preserving longer perhaps than any other in France the traditions of the monarchy--he reluctantly gave in his adhesion to the _de facto_ government of Napoleon; but the execution of the duc d'Enghien outraged him profoundly, and sending back to Napoleon his commission as foreign minister, he abjured him for ever. Napoleon probably regretted the fact seriously. "Chateaubriand," said the emperor, "has received from Nature the sacred fire: his works attest it. His style is that of a prophet, and all that is grand and national appertains to his genius." It would be out of place in the brief sketch here given to trace his long and adventurous career. By turns author, minister, ambassador, soldier, he saw, like his famous contemporary and associate, Talleyrand, revolution after revolution, dynasty after dynasty, Bonapartist, Bourbon and Orleanist, pass before him; and having in this long career enjoyed or suffered all the splendors and all the woes of life--now at the height of wealth and power, now a penniless and homeless wanderer--he came at the age of eighty, in 1848, to Paris to die, in wellnigh abject poverty. Among the personal delineations of this celebrated man, the most characteristic and entertaining perhaps are those presented by Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas in their respective memoirs. Chateaubriand is there shown in undress, and the portrait drawn of him is vivid and interesting. Victor Hugo describes him as he appeared in 1819 at his fine hotel in Paris, wealthy, influential and renowned. The author-to-be of _Les Miserables_ was then a mere youth, and his budding glories as an ultra-royalist poet conferred upon him the honor of an introduction to the great man. Hugo was ushered in, and saw before him, leaning in a stately attitude against the mantelpiece, the illustrious individual. M. de Chateaubriand, says Hugo, affected the bearing of a soldier: the man of the pen remembered the man of the sword. His neck was encircled by a black cravat, which hid the collar of his shirt: a black frockcoat, buttoned to the top, encased his small, bent body. The fine part about him was his head--out of proportion with his figure, but grave and noble. The nose was firm and imperious in outline, the eye proud, the smile charming; but this smile was a sudden flash, the mouth quickly resuming its severe and haughty expression.