The last he cannot pardon for his work on Chateaubriand,[C] published in the early part of the year 1861. The time is past for giving a fuller account of this remarkable production of the historian of Port-Royal. Suffice it to say, that, though it deals in very small criticism indeed, though its author seems to have made it his task to sum up all the weaknesses of one the prestige of whose name fills, in France at least, the first half of this century, yet there exists no more valuable contribution to the history of literature under the first Empire. It has been called "a work no one would wish to have written, yet which is read by all with exquisite pleasure." Nothing could be truer. [Footnote C: _Chateaubriand et son Groupe Littéraire sous l'Empire_. Cours professé à Liége en 1848-1849, par C.A. Sainte-Beuve, de l'Académie Française. Paris: Garnier Frères. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 410, 457.] "Chateaubriand and his Literary Group under the Empire" is a course of twenty-one lectures delivered by Sainte-Beuve at Liège, whither he repaired soon after the Revolution of 1848 broke out in Paris. Fragments of the work appeared in the "Revue des Deux Mondes," among others the paper on Chênedollé, which forms the most interesting portion of the second division. In this are to be found several original letters, now published for the first time, casting much new light on the life of that unfortunate poet. Of more general interest, however, are the pages on Chateaubriand himself. It was the fate of this writer to be flattered beyond measure in his lifetime, and now come the first judgments of posterity, which deals with him no less harshly than it has already begun to deal with another idol of the French people, Béranger. Sainte-Beuve has constituted himself judge, reversing even his own adulatory articles, as they may be read in the earlier volumes of the "Causeries." It is at best an ungrateful task to dissect a reputation in the way in which we find it done in the present work. It must seem strange to many a reader that the very man who in early life could utter such sweet flattery, who long was the foremost to bear incense, should now consider it his duty "to seek the foot of clay beneath the splendid drapery, and to replace about the statue the aromas of the sanctuary by the perfumes of the boudoir." In spite of this, "Chateaubriand and his Literary Group" must be ranked among the most remarkable of literary biographies. Here the critic gives full scope to his inclination for minute analysis; the history of the author of "René" explains his works, and these in turn are made to tell his life,--that life so full of love of effect, and constant painstaking to seem rather than to be. Even in his religious sentiments the author of the "Genius of Christianity" appears lukewarm, not to say more.