ive, and almost physical,-as natural and in- | vehement activity; she seemed to need no curable as that of cat and dog. relaxation, and to permit no repose. In spite of her great knowledge, her profound and sagacious reflections, her sparkling wit, and her singular eloquence, she nearly always ended by wearying even her most admiring auditors: she left them no peace; she kept them on the stretch; she ran them out of breath. And there were few of them who were not in a condition to relish the piquant mot of Talleyrand, who-when some one hinted surprise that he who had enjoyed the intimacy of such a genius as Madame de Stael could find pleasure in the society of such a contrast to her as Madame Grant-answered, in that deliberate and gentle voice which gave point to all his sharpest sayings, "Il faut avoir aimé Madame de Stael pour savourer le bonheur d'aimer une béte!" Schiller, whom she infested dreadfully during her stay in Weimar in 1803-4, writes thus to Goethe:

During her fourteen years of exile, Madame de Stael led a wandering life; sometimes residing at Coppet; ever and anon returning for a short time to France, in hopes of being allowed to remain there unmolested, but soon receiving a new order to quit. She visited Germany twice, Italy once, and at length reached England, by way of Russia, in 1812. It was at this period of her life that she produced the works which have immortalized her -De la Littérature, De l'Allemagne, and Corinne and enjoyed intercourse with the most celebrated men of Europe. Nevertheless, they were years of great wretchedness to her; the charms of Parisian society, in which she lived, and moved, and had her being, were forbidden to her; she was subjected to the most annoying and petty, as well as the most bitter and cruel persecutions; one by one her friends were prevented from visiting her, or punished with exile and disgrace if they did visit her; she was reduced nearly to solitude a state which she herself describes as, to a woman of her vivacious feelings and irrepressible besoin d'epanchement, almost worse than death. The description of her sufferings during this part of her life, which she gives in her Dix Annees d'Exil, renders that book one of the most harassing and painful we ever read; and when we add to all that Bonaparte made her endure, the recollection of the incalculable amount of individual mischief and anguish which he inflicted on the two thousand peaceful English travellers whom he seized in defiance of all law and justice, and detained for twelve of the best years of their life in French prisons, we are compelled to feel that the irritating torments and privations which he was himself afterwards to undergo at St. Helena-unworthy and oppressive as they were-were nothing but a well-proportioned and richly-merited retribution.

Several of the great men whose society she enjoyed during these memorable years of wandering, have left on record their impression of her genius and her manners; and it is curious to observe how uniform and selfconsistent this impression every where was. She seems to have excited precisely the same emotions in the minds both of German literati and of English politicians-vast admiration and not a little fatigue. Her conversation was brilliant in the extreme, but too apt to become monologue and declamation. She was too vivacious for any but Frenchmen: her intellect was always in a state of restless and

"Madame de Stael you will find quite as you have, à priori, construed her: she is all of a piece; there is no adventitious, false, pathological the immeasurable difference in temper and speck in her. Hereby it is that, notwithstanding thought, one is perfectly at ease with her, can hear all from her, and say all to her. She represents French culture in its purity, and under a In all that we name most interesting aspect. philosophy, therefore, in all highest and ultimate questions, one is at issue with her, and remains so in spite of all arguing. But her nature, her feeling, is better than her metaphysics; and her fine understanding rises to the rank of genial. She insists on explaining every thing, on seeing into it, measuring it; she allows nothing dark, inaccessible; whithersoever her torch cannot throw its light, there nothing exists for her. Hence follows an aversion, a horror, for the transcendental philosophy, which in her view leads to mysticism and superstition. This is the carbonic gas in which she dies. For what we call poetry there is no sense in her; for in such works it is only the passionate, the oratorical, and the intellectual, that she can appreciate: yet she will endure no falsehood there, only does not always recognize the

true.

"You will infer from these few words that the clearness, decidedness, and rich vivacity of her nature cannot but affect one favorably. One's only grievance is the altogether unpredented glibness of her tongue: you must make yourself all ear if you would follow her."

A month afterwards he is beginning to feel weary and satiated.

"Your Exposition" (he writes to Goethe) "has refreshed me and nourished me. It is highly proper that, by such an act, at this time, you express your contradiction of our importunate visitress the case would grow intolerable else.

"The great qualities of this high-thinking and high-feeling authoress lie in the view of every one; and the results of her journey through Germany testify sufficiently how she applied her time there. Her objects were manifold: she wished to know Weimar-to gain accurate acquaintance with its moral, social, literary aspects, and whatever else it offered; further, however, she herself also wished to be known; and endea vored, therefore, to give her own views currency, no less than to search out our mode of thought. Neither could she rest satisfied even here: she must also work upon the senses, upon the feelings, upon the spirit; must strive to awaken a certain activity or vivacity, with the want of which she reproached us.

"Having no notion of what duty means, and to what a silent, collected posture he that undertakes it must restrict himself, she was evermore for striking in, for instantaneously producing an effect. In society, she required there to be constant talking and discoursing.

...

| weightiest occurrences, as lightly as if it were a game at shuttlecock."*

"To philosophize in society, means to talk with vivacity about insoluble problems. This was her peculiar pleasure and passion. Naturally, too, she was wont to carry it, in such speaking and counter-speaking, up to those concerns of thought and sentiment which properly should not be spoken of, except between God and the individual. Here, moreover, as woman and Frenchwoman, she had the habit of sticking fast on main positions, and, as it were, not hearing rightly what the other said. By all these things the evil spirit was awakened in me, so that I would treat whatever was advanced no otherwise than dialectically and problematically, and often, by stiff-necked contradictions, brought her to despair; when she for the first time grew rightly amiable, and in the

most brilliant manner exhibited her talent of thinking and replying.

"More than once I had regular dialogues with her, ourselves two; in which likewise, however, she was burdensome according to her fashion; never granting, on the most important topics, a moment of reflection, but passionately demanding that we should dispatch the deepest concerns, the

Some years after her first visit to Germany, she came to England, and Sir James Mackintosh, who saw much of her, thus describes her :

"On my return I found the whole fashionable and literary world occupied with Madame de Stael, the most celebrated woman of this or perhaps any other age. . . . She treats me as the person whom she most delights to honor: I am generally ordered with her to dinner, as one orders beans and bacon; I have, in consequence, dined with

her at the houses of almost all the Cabinet Ministers. She is one of the few persons who surpass expectation; she has every sort of talent, and would be universally popular íf, in society, she were to confine herself to her inferior talentspleasantry, anecdote, and literature-which are so much more suited to conversation than her eloquence and genius."†

Lord Byron also saw much of her both in London in 1813 and at Diodati in 1816. In the notes to the fourth canto of Childe Harold, he records her virtues and attractions in a piece of elaborate fine writing, fit only for a tombstone, and which would be pronounced inflated and tasteless even there. In his Diary and Correspondence, however, we meet with many hasty references to her, not intended for the public eye, and therefore more likely to convey his genuine impressions. "I saw Curran presented to Madame de Stael at Mackintosh's:—it was the grand confluence of the Rhone and the Saône; they were both so damned ugly that I could not help wondering how the best intellects of France and Ireland could have taken up respect"Madame ively such residences." de Stael-Holstein has lost one of her young barons, who has been carbonadoed by a vile Teutonic adjutant-kilt and killed in a coffeehouse at Scrawsenhausen. Corinne is, of course, what all mothers must be; but will, I venture to prophesy, do what few mothers could-write an essay upon it. She cannot exist without a grievance-and some body to see or read how much grief becomes her."

To-day I dine with Mackintosh and Mrs. Stale-(as John Bull may be pleased to denominate Corinne)-whom I saw last night at Covent Garden, yawning over the humor

*It is interesting, after reading what Schiller and Goethe thought of Madame de Stael, to read what the lady, in her turn, thought of them. (See her L'Allemagne, part ii., ch. vii. and viii.) more complimentary than the gentlemen. Memoirs of Mackintosh, ii. 264.

She was

of Falstaff."
"To-day (Tuesday) a |
very pretty billet from Madame la Baronne
de Stael-Holstein. She is pleased to be
much pleased with my mention of her and
her last work in my notes. I spoke as I
thought. Her works are my delight, and so
is she herself-for half an hour. But she is
a woman by herself, and has done more in-
tellectually than all the rest of them together;
-she ought to have been a man."
"Asked for Wednesday to dine and meet the
Stael. I don't much like it ;-she always talks
of myself or herself, and I am not (except in
soliloquy, as now) much enamored of either
subject-especially of one's works. What
the devil shall I say about De l'Allemagne ?
I like it prodigiously; but unless I can
twist my admiration into some fantastical
expression, she won't believe me; and I
know by experience that I shall be over-
whelmed by fine things about rhyme, &c."
"The Stael was at the other end of
the table, and less loquacious than heretofore.
We are now very good friends; though she
asked Lady Melbourne whether I really had
any bonhommie. She might as well have
asked that question before she told C. L.
'c'est un démon.' True enough-but rather
premature, for she could not have found it
out." .. When in Switzerland, he wrote:
"Madame de Stael has made Coppet as
agreeable as society and talent can make any
place on earth."
She was a good
woman at heart, and the cleverest at bottom,
but spoilt by a wish to be-she knew not
what. In her own house she was amiable;
in any other person's you wished her gone,
and in her own again."

66

tions sur la Revolution Française," which she began with a view of vindicating her father's memory, and intended as a record of his public life.

You

We have no idea of attempting any criticism, or even any general description of her various works: such a task, if executed with care and completeness, would carry us far beyond our limits-if discharged in a hasty and perfunctory manner, would be worse than unsatisfactory. The peculiar charm of her writings arises from the mixture of brilliancy and depth which they exhibit: a brilliancy which is even more than French-a profundity which is almost German. cannot read a page without meeting with some reflection which you wish to transfer to your memory, or your commonplace book.* These reflections are not always sound; but they are always ingenious and suggestive. L'Allemagne, though incomplete and often superficial, is perhaps as nearly a true delineation of Germany as France could take in, and shows wonderful power of thought, as Corinne shows wonderful depth of insight and of feeling. These are the two worksCorinne especially-by which she will live; and both were the production of her mature years: she was thirty-eight when she wrote the latter, and forty-two when she finished the former. Yet in both there is the passionate earnestness--the vehement eloquence

the generous warmth of youth. From first to last there was nothing frivolous, artificial, or heartless, in Madame de Stael: she had nothing French about her, except her untiring vivacity and her sparkling wit. On the

* For example, we have just met with the following in her chapter "de l'amour dans le mariage," (L'Allemagne.) "La gloire elle-même ne saurait être pour une femme qu'un deuil éclatant du In Corinne we find-"Ce sont les bonheur." les caractères

que

caractères passionnés, bien plus
legers, qui sont capables de folie." "L'aspect de la
nature enseigne la résignation, mais ne peut rien
sur l'incertitude." "Les Romains n'avoient pas
cet aride principe d'utilité, qui fertilise quelques
coins de terre de plus, en frappant de stérilité le
vaste domaine du sentiment et de la pensée." "La
vie religieuse est un combat, et non pas un hymne."

These extracts will serve to show what Madame de Stael was in miscellaneous society: in the more intimate relations of life, few persons were ever more seriously or steadfastly beloved. She was an excellent hostess, and one of the most warm, constant, and zealous of friends-on the whole, an admirable, loveable, but somewhat overpowering woman. On the abdication of Napoleon, she rushed back to Paris, and remained there with few intervals till her death, filling her drawing- It was rather esprit than what we generally rooms with the brilliant society which she mean by "wit:" she was eminently spirituel in her enjoyed so passionately, and of which she conversation, but not a sayer of bons mots. was herself the brightest ornament. But she of her repartees or witticisms have been recorded. One indeed we remember, which shows how forsurvived the restoration of the Bourbons only midable she might have been in this line. An una short time; her constitution had been fortunate man, finding himself seated at dinner seriously undermined by the fatigues and irri- between her and her friend Madame Recamier, tations she had undergone, and she died in could think of nothing better to open the converJuly, 1817, on the anniversary of the taking sation with than the fade compliment-"Me voici entre l'esprit et la beauté." Now, Madame de Stael of the Bastile, at the age of fifty-one. Her neither chose that she should be considered destilast literary production was the "Considéra-tute of beauty nor that her friend should be con

Few

"Because the few with signal virtue crowned,
The heights and pinnacles of human mind,
Sadder and wearier than the rest are found,
Wish not thy soul less wise or less refined.
True that the small delights which every day
Cheer and distract the pilgrim, are not theirs ;
True that, tho' free from Passion's lawless sway,
A loftier being brings severer cares;
Yet have they special pleasures, even mirth,
Life's valley smooth; and if the rolling earth
By those undreamed of who have only trod
To their nice ear have many a painful tone,
They know, man doth not live by joy alone,
But by the presence of the power of God."*

contrary, a tone of the profoundest melan- | always suffice for her-rarely at all times can choly runs throughout all her writings. A it suffice for any. short time before her death she said to Chateaubriand: "Je suis ce que j'ai toujours été-vive et triste." It is in Corinne, especially, but also in Delphine, that we trace that indescribable sadness which seems inseparable from noble minds-the crown of thorns which genius must ever wear. It was not with her, as with so many, the dissipation of youthful illusions-the disenchantment of the ideal life. On the contrary, the spirit of poetry, the fancies and paintings of enthusiasm, were neither dimmed nor tarnished for her, even by the approach of death; she could dream of earthly happiness, and thirsted for it still; but she felt that she had never tasted it as she was capable of conceiving it; she had never loved as she could love and yearned to love; of all her faculties she touchingly complained, "the only one that had been fully developed was the faculty of suffering." Surrounded by the most brilliant men of genius, beloved by a host of faithful and devoted friends, the centre of a circle of unsurpassed attractions, she was yet doomed to mourn "the solitude of life." No affection filled up her whole heart, called forth all her feelings, or satisfied her passionate longings after felicity; the union of souls, which she could imagine so vividly and paint in such glorious colors, was denied to her and all the rest "availed her nothing." With a mind teeming with rich and brilliant thoughts, with a heart melting with the tenderest and most passionate emotions, she had no one-no ONE-to appreciate the one and reciprocate the other; she had to live "the inner life" alone; to tread the weary and dusty thoroughfares of existence, with no hand clasped in hers, no sympathizing voice to whisper strength and consolation when the path grew rough and thorny, and the lamp burnt flickering and low. Nay, more, she had to "keep a stern tryste with death," -to walk towards the Great Darkness with none to bear her company to the margin of the cold stream, to send a cheering voice over the black waters, and to give her rendezvous upon the farther shore. What wonder then that she sometimes faltered and grew faint under the solitary burden, and "sickened at the unshared light!" The consolation offered by a poet of our own day to the sorrowing children of genius did not

sidered destitute of wit: she was therefore far from flattered by the rapprochement, and turned round upon her smirking victim with "Oui! et sans posséder ni l'une ni l'autre !"

Two of the most remarkable men of France were associated with Madame de Stael both socially and historically. Both lived in her intimacy for a longer or shorter period, and both were closely connected with the great events with which she, either as an actor or a sufferer, was mixed up. Talleyrand was her intimate of the eighteenth, and Benjamin Constant of the nineteenth century. They were two of the most distinctive and strongly marked characters of their day, and as such would well deserve a fuller delineation and analysis than we can afford them. Each was the type of a class and of a genus, and we question whether strict justice has yet been done to either. Talleyrand has been especially maltreated by common fame. By most who know his name, he is regarded as a second Macchiavelli, as little understood and as ruthlessly slandered as the first; an intriguing and unprincipled diplomatist, a heartless persifleur-the very incarnation of political profligacy and shameless tergiversa

tion.

His portraits have almost all been drawn by his foes; by those whom he had baffled, or by those whom he had deserted; by those whom his pungent sarcasms had wounded, or whom his superior address had mortified; and his own memoirs, from his own hand, are to remain a sealed book till, by the death of every one whom they could compromise, (or, say his enemies, who could contradict them,) they have become interesting to the historian alone. Talleyrand was something very different from the popular conception of him. He was a profound thinker; he had strong political opinions, if he had no moral principles; he was at least as bold, daring, and decided in action as he was sagacious in council; his political and social tact, which is wisdom so quick and

* R. M. Milnes.—"Poems of Many Years."

piercing as to seem unreasoning, had the promptitude and certainty of an instinct; and living in constant intercourse, hostile or friendly, with the ablest men of that stirring epoch, he acquired an undisputed ascendancy over them all, by the simple influence of a keener intellect and a subtler tongue.

over with youthful passions, with healthy energy, with splendid talents, with mundane tastes, he was condemned by an act of flagrant injustice to a life of celibacy, of inaction, and of religious duties which, in the case of one so devoid of devotional sentiment as he was, could only be the most loathsome and wearisome hypocrisy. What wonder that a mighty wrong like this should have sunk

and feelings, even if it did not sour his temper? At college he brooded over his mortification, and looked his destiny in the face, and deliberately took his course. With rare powers like his, he felt that obscurity was impossible, but that he must rise by a different ladder from the one he would himself have chosen. He resolved to triumph over those who had degraded him, but to whom he knew himself in every way supe

Far from being devoid of political predilections and convictions, his whole career, from the time he entered the States-General, show-into his mind, and greatly modified his views ed that both were very strong in him. He had thought deeply and he felt keenly. That much of personal feeling entered into the motives which determined him to the course he took, and that much of egotism and scorn of his fellow-men mingled with and alloyed his lofty and persevering ambition, cannot be denied, and is not be wondered at. We must read his character and career by the light which his early history throws over it, and we shall find there enough amply to ex-rior; and he prepared himself to do so by plain both his steady preference for constitutional liberty after the English model, and the ardor and determination with which he threw himself into the most active ranks of the revolutionists.

He had suffered too much under the old régime not to desire to sweep away a system which permitted such injustices as he had endured. He had seen too thoroughly the hollowness and rottenness of every thing around him—the imbecile feebleness of the court, the greediness and impiety of the Church, the selfish and heartless profligacy of the higher ranks to be of opinion that there was much worth preserving in the existing state of things. He had too fine a fancy and too powerful a mind not to participate in some measure in the hopes then entertained by all the more "erected spirits" of the nation, of an era of glorious social regeneration. He was a bishop against his will; he had lived in the very centre of all the elegant immoralities of Paris; and he had studied and conversed with Voltaire. He was the eldest son of one of the noblest families of France, but having been lamed by an accident arising from the combined neglect of parents and menials, he was compelled, by one of those acts of family tyranny then by no means uncommon, to forego his birthright, and accept the destiny of younger sons in that age and of that rank,-viz., to go into the Church. Without being allowed to return to the paternal roof, he was transferred from his nurse's cottage to the ecclesiastical seminary of Saint Sulpice, and thence to the College of the Sorbonne. He was made a priest without the slightest attention either to his wishes or his character. Boiling

sedulous and earnest study. He spoke little, he reflected much. Naturally both intelligent and ardent, he taught himself to become well-informed, reserved, and self-restrained; and from the training which the Catholic Church has always given to its servants, he learned that untiring and watchful patience, that deep insight into men, that quick appreciation of circumstances, those gentle and insinuating manners, that habitual quietude, that prompt and well-timed activity, which were his most distinguishing qualities through life, and his chief instruments of success. When he had completed his theological studies he entered the world-to enjoy it and subdue it. He was known as the Abbé de Perigord. "Contrarié dans les goûts, [says Mignet,] il y entra en mécontent, prêt á y agir en révolutionnaire. Il y obtint, dès l'abord, la réputation d'un homme avec lequel il fallait compter, et qui, ayant un beau nom, un grand calme, infiniment d'esprit, quelque chose de gracieux qui captivait, de malicieux qui effrayait,* beaucoup d'ardeur contenue par

* Talleyrand, at his first entrance into society, armed himself with that fine and subtle wit which has made him so renowned, and by one or two crushing repartees, made himself both respected and feared. But in general at this period his sayings were distinguished rather for fineness than severity. He was in the saloon of the Duc de Choiseul when the Duchess De N was announced. She was a

lady whose adventures were then the talk of all Paris, and an exclamation of Oh! oh! escaped the Abbé, so loud that the Duchess who entered at that moment heard it. As soon as the company were seated round the table, the lady said, "Je voudrais bien savoir, M. l'Abbé, pourquoi vous avex dit Oh! oh lorsque je suis entrée ?" "Point, Madame, [replied the Abbé,] vous avez mal entendu. J'ai dit Ah! ah!"