COTTNT XAVIER DE MAISTRE

Count Xavier de Maistre was born in the Savoyard town of Chambéry in 1764. As Savoy did not form part of France until the wars of the French Révolution had rnade new maps of old Europe, we hâve in him the interesting instance of a man born on a foreign soil becoming a classic in France, a count ry wherein he scarcely set foot. The family to which he belonged was French, noble in lineage, and has become doubly illustrions in the name and person of Count Joseph de Maistre, the senator, the ambassador, the eminent political writer, and of his younger brother, Xavier.

The younger count showed from his earliest youth a talent for art, and acquired a well-deserved réputation in Italy and Russia as a painter of portraits. Early in life he entered the military service of the King of Sardinia, and spent his youth in Piedmontese garrisons, with scarcely a thought of literary activity. It was not until about 1790, when consequently the author was in his twenty-sixth or twenty-seventh year, that the charming Voyage autour de ma chambre was composed. Some references"^ in the Voyage point to as late a date as 1794. Certain, however, it is, that by the last named date, the manuscript of the traveller had been submitted to his elder brother for perusal and correction, and that before the year ended an édition of it had been printed in Turin.

“ It is probable,” said de Maistre himself, that you would never hâve heard of me [as a writer] but for the circumstance mentioned in the Voyage” Placed under arrest for partici-

*See chap. xxxii.