Hard and cold, with a sarcastic and at times a cruel expression on his countenance, but noble in character and strong of will, he stands at the threshold of the new century like--if not the good, at least the best spirit of the great, universal reaction. There is no possibility of confusing him with the dwarfish figures who during the course of the century have diluted his ideas, taken the sap and strength out of his thoughts, and torn and twisted his doctrines in order to oppress and dissemble under cover of them. Joseph de Maistre was a mind, these others have only been bodies. He was a man without baseness and without hypocrisy, a colonel of the Papal Zouaves as _litterateur_, the most soldierlike and the most attractive figure which the reactionary camp of the century has to show.
[2] Joseph de Maistre, _Considérations sur la France; Lettres et opuscules_, i., ii; _Correspondance diplomatique_, i., ii.; _Soirées de St. Pétersbourg_, i., ii; _Du Pape; De l'Église Gallicane; Examen de la philosophie de Bacon,_ i., ii.; Margerée, _Le Comte J. de Maistre_; E. Faguet, _Politiques et moralistes du 19me siècle_.
Side by side with Joseph de Maistre stands Bonald, the famous medieval schoolmaster of the European reaction, a man with the same bent of mind and the same practical aims, but as monotonous as De Maistre is versatile, as conventional as De Maistre is wittily fantastic.
Louis Gabriel Ambroise, Vicomte de Bonald, was born in 1754 (the same year as De Maistre) at Monna, in the south of France. He began life as an officer in Louis XV.'s musketeers. During the first stage of the Revolution he favoured liberal ideas, but only for a short time. He married early, and was made chief magistrate of the Department of Aveyron, an appointment which he resigned when Louis XVI. found himself obliged to consent to the subjection of the clergy to the secular laws. In 1791 he emigrated, and joined the army of the Prince of Condé. He wrote his _Théorie du Pouvoir_ at Heidelberg. The police of the Directory destroyed almost the whole first edition of this book, but a copy which had been sent to Bonaparte luckily reached its destination and made such a favourable impression on the great man that he removed its author's name from the list of exiles. Not unprofitably had Bonald taught that every revolution is begun by the subject but ended by the ruler, that it begins because the authorities have been weak and have yielded, and ends because they have recovered strength. He had shown that all disturbance only serves to strengthen authority, and prophesied that the Revolution, which had begun with the declaration of the rights of man, would end with the declaration of the rights of God. These latter being the very rights which Bonaparte, by means of his Concordat, was now proclaiming, Bonald's position was assured. He remained devotedly attached to the Bourbons, but was content to dream of them in an appointment conferred on him by the Emperor. He was made _conseiller tutélaire_ of the University, with a salary of 12,000 francs a year for doing nothing. Chateaubriand reviewed his books with reverent admiration. De Maistre wrote to him after the publication of his _Recherches Philosophiques_; "Is it conceivable that nature has amused herself by tuning two strings until they are in as perfect harmony with each other as your mind and mine? If certain manuscripts of mine are ever printed, you will find in them almost the same expressions you yourself have used, and yet I certainly have altered nothing." In another letter he expresses himself even more strongly: "I have thought nothing which you have not written, and written nothing which you have not thought." Bonald felt himself flattered by these assertions, though he doubted their truth--and this with good reason, for, similar as are the results arrived at by these comrades-in-arms, there is little resemblance between their mental processes.