friendship, history of a house-painter, 194; reli- Neander, Dr. Augustus, Review of his History of Nebulæ, structure of, nebular theory, 13. Niebuhr, G. B., his estimate of the character of Norway, glaciers of, 104; angling in rivers of, 114; Palgrave, Sir E., notice of his Rise and Progress of Pauli, Dr., his researches into early English history, Pestalozzi's plans of education, 71. 20. Pliny, the Younger, importance of his letter to Plurality of worlds, 1; general arguments, derived lor of Great Britain, 31; how to be accounted Ranke, historical school of, 198. Ruskin and Architecture, 89; railway stations, ib.; Salmon, habits of, 115. Scandinavia. See Lloyd's Scandinavian Adven- Scottish nationality and union with England, 36; Sherwood, Mrs, her style of writing for children, 215, 216. Siluria, Sir Roderick Murchison's, 270; lower and Souvestre, M. Emile, review of his "Attic Philo- Political morality of British Statesmen past and 307. Polycarp, notice of, 57. Positivism. See Comte. Thirlwall, Bishop, merits of his History of Greece, 225, 227. Trajan's answer to Pliny's letter, 61; its conse- quences, 62. Union of England and Scotland, effects of, on the Vaud, ecclesiastical conflict in, and its issue, 159. Poverty on the Continent contrasted with the squa- Vinet, Alexander Rodolphe, his life and writings, 155; his boyhood, residence at Basle, 155, 156; as an apologist, 168; theological views, 168, 169; Voluntaryism as held by Vinet, 157. THE NORTH BRITISH REVIEW. No. XXXIX. FOR NOVEMBER, 1853. ART. I--The Life and Times of Madame de Staël. By MARIA NORRIS. London, 1853. children's children may not live to see. Her life, though only prolonged through half a century, was coeval with that series of great events which, for magnitude and meaning, "The Life and Times of Madame de Staël:" have no parallel in human history; by all what a promise of vivid interest does not of which she was more or less affected; in the title hold forth! What a host of images some of which she took a prominent and not and ideas start into life at the spell of that uninfluential part. She was born while the name, and silently group themselves around house of Bourbon was at the height of its the central figure! Necker, the object of meretricious splendour and its reckless proher life-long worship, with his grand position, fligacy; she lived to see it return, after its his bourgeois intellect, and his rare integrity; tragic downfall and its dreary banishment, --Madame Necker, the rigid mother, the to a house that had been "swept and gartender wife, the faithful friend-puritanical, nished,"-little better and no wiser than precise, bornée, but not ungenial;-Gibbon, before. She saw the rise, the culmination, at first the phlegmatic lover, afterwards the philosophic friend, but always brilliant, fascinating, and profound; - Louis de Narbonne, perhaps the most perfect specimen then extant of the finished noble of the ancien régime, polished to the core, not varnished merely on the surface;-Talleyrand, the subtlest and deepest intellect of his time, and long the intimate associate of Madame de Staël;-Napoleon, her relentless persecutor;-Benjamin Constant and Schlegel, her steady and attached allies;-these men form the circle of which she was the centre and the chief. and the setting of Napoleon's meteor-star; she had reached the pinnacle of her fame while he was laying the foundation of his ; and she, shattered and wayworn, was beginning to look forward to her final rest, when his career was closed for ever in defeat and exile. But it is not of the period in which she lived that we think first or most naturally when we hear the name of Madame de Staël: it is of the writer whose wondrous genius and glowing eloquence held captive our souls in "the season of susceptive youth," of the author of the Lettres sur Rousseau, Then the "times" in which she lived! who sanctioned and justified our partiality She saw the commencement and the close for that fascinating rhapsodist, of L'Alleof that great social earthquake which over-magne, from whose pages we first imbibed throw the oldest dynasty in Europe, shook a longing to make the riches of that mighty society to its foundation, unsettled the minds literature our own,-of Corinne, over whose of men to their inmost depths, turned up the subsoil of nations with a deeper ploughshare than destiny had ever yet driven, and opened the way for those new social ideas and those new political arrangements which are still operating and fermenting, and the final issue, the "perfect work," of which our men. VOL. XX. woes and sorrows so many eyes have wept delicious tears; of that dazzling admixture of deep thought, tender sentiment, and brilliant fancy, which give to her writings a charm possessed by the productions of no other woman-and in truth of but few 1 We are not surprised at the attraction for five years, till 1781;—and contrived not which such a subject as the Life and Times only to effect considerable savings, by the of such a woman must have had for a youth-suppression of upwards of 600 sinecures, but ful authoress, which Miss Norris evidently also in some small degree to mitigate and is. We wish we could say that she had equalize taxation, and to introduce a system proved equal to the task of delineating so of order and regularity into the public acstirring an epoch and so rare a character. counts to which they had long been strangers. The faults and defects of the work, however, As proved by his celebrated Compte rendu, are those of youth and inexperience. There which, though vehemently attacked, was is a want of grasp; an apparent poverty of never successfully impugned, he found a dematerials; an almost entire absence of all ficit of 34 millions when he entered office, reference to the sources from which she has and left a surplus of 10 millions when he derived her information; an imperfect power quitted it, notwithstanding the heavy exof appreciating the political characters of penses of the American war. In the course whom she speaks; and a proneness-against of his administration, however, Necker had which youthful writers should especially be of course made many enemies, who busied on their guard-to indulge in trite and need-themselves in undermining his position at less reflections, some of which are absolutely court, and overruled the weak and vacillating puerile, and one or two not only superficial attachment of the king. Necker found that but unsound. Instances to justify our criticism may be found at pp. 152, 157, 245, 276. But, on the whole, the tone of the work is agreeable, the sentiments are generally just, and the admiration for Madame de Staël which pervades every page is such as we can heartily sympathize with. We trust, therefore, that the authoress will take our criticism in good part, and consider it as intended, not to discourage, but to warn and aid. his most careful and valuable plans were canvassed and spoilt by his enemies in the Council, where he was not present to defend them, and that, in fact, he had not and could not have fair play while he continued excluded from the Cabinet. He demanded, therefore, the entry of the Privy Council, and resigned when it was refused him, though earnestly requested to remain by those who knew how valuable his reputation was to a discredited and unpopular court, unwilling as they were to submit to his measures or honestly adopt his plans. Necker did not choose to be so used; and he retired to write the celebrated work on the Administration of the Finances, which at once placed him on the pinnacle of popularity and fame. Eighty thousand copies were sold; and henceforth Necker was the man on whom all eyes were turned in every financial crisis, and to whom the nation looked as the only minister who could rescue them from the difficulties which were daily thickening around them. Then followed the reckless administration Anne-Marie Louise Necker was born at Paris in 1766. Both her parents were remarkable persons. Her father, James Necker, a simple citizen of Geneva, began life as clerk in a banker's office in Paris, speedily became a partner, aud by skill, diligence, sound judgment, and strict integrity, contrived in the course of twenty years to amass a large fortune and to acquire a lofty reputation. While accumulating wealth, however, he neglected neither literature nor society. He studied both philosophy and political economy; he associated with the Encyclopedists and eminent literati of the of Calonne, whose sole principle was that of time; his house was frequented by some of" making things pleasant," and who, in an the most remarkable men who at that period incredibly short time, added 1,646 millions made the Parisian salons the most brilliant to the capital of the debt, and left an annual in Europe; and he found time, by various deficit of 140 millions, instead of an annual writings on financial matters, to create a excess of ten. Brienne attacked him, and high and general estimation of his talents as succeeded him; but things went on from an administrator and economist. His man-bad to worse, till when matters were wholly agement of the affairs of the French East past a remedy, in August 1788, Necker was India Company raised his fame in the high- recalled and reinstated. What he might est political circles, while, as accredited have done, on the occasion of this second agent for the Republic of Geneva at the Court of Versailles, he obtained the esteem and confidence both of the sovereign and the ministers. So high did he stand both in popular and courtly estimation, that, shortly after the accession of Louis XVI., he was appointed, although a foreigner, ComptrollerGeneral of the Finances. He held this post ministry, had he been a man of commanding genius and unbending will, it is useless and perhaps impossible to conjecture. Surrounded with numberless perplexities; beset at once by the machinations of unscrupulous enemies who counter-worked him in secret, and by the embarrassments which every predecessor had accumulated in his path; Necker's borne into power on a tide of popular ex- ter drank deeply of the intoxicating cup of pectatious which no popularity could enable national gratitude and popular applause; him to satisfy; set down to labor at the and if he relished it too keenly and regretted solution of a perhaps insoluble problem; it too much, at least he used it nobly and face to face with a crisis which might well had earned it well. It would have been far stagger the most dauntless courage and con- better for his own fame and happiness if he fuse the clearest head; famine around him, had not returned to power: it could scarcely bankruptcy before him; and all other voices have been worse for his adopted country. gradually lost in one "which every moment His third and last administration was a waxed louder and more terrible-the fierce series of melancholy and perhaps inevitable and tumultuous roar of a great people, con- failures. The torrent of popular violence scious of irresistible strength, maddened by had become far too strong to stem. The intolerable wrongs, and sick of deferred monarchy had fallen to a position in which hopes;"-perhaps no human strength or it was impossible to save it. wisdom could have sufficed for the require- head, too, seems to have been somewhat ments of that fearful time. Perhaps no turned by his triumph. He disappointed human power could then have averted the the people and bored the Assembly. The catastrophe. What Necker might have done stream of events had swept past him, and had he acted differently and been differently left him standing bewildered and breathless made, we cannot say. What he did was to on the margin. "Les temps étaient bien struggle with manly, but not hopeful cour-changés pour lui, et il n'était plus ce minisage, for a terrible twelve months; using his tre à la conservation duquel le peuple attagreat credit to procure loans, spending his chait son bonheur en un auparavant. Privé vast private fortune to feed the famishing de la confiance du roi, brouillé avec ses colpopulace of Paris; commencing the final lègues, excepté Montmorin, il était négact of the long inchoate revolution, by call- ligé par l'Assemblée, et n'en obtenait pas ing the States-General; insuring its fearful tous les égards qu'il eût pu en attendre. triumph by the decisive measure of doubling L'erreur de Necker consistait à croire que la the numbers of the tiers-état, and permitting raison suffisait à tout, et que, manifestée the states to deliberate in common; devis avec un mélange de sentiment et de logique, ing schemes of finance and taxation which elle devait triompher de l'entêtement des were too wise to be palatable, and too late aristocrates et de l'irritation des patriotes. to save; composing speeches for the monarch Necker possédait cette raison un peu fière to deliver, which the queen and the courtiers qui juge les écarts des passions et les ruined and emasculated before they were blâme; mais il manquait de cette autre made public; and bearing the blame of faults raison plus élevée et moins orguilleuse, qui and failures not his own. At length his ne se borne pas à les blâmer, mais qui sait subterranean enemies prevailed: he received aussi les conduire. Aussi, placé au milieu his secret congé from the king in July 1789, d'elles, il ne fut pour toutes qu'une gene et and reached Basle, rejoicing at heart in his point un frein. Il avait blessé l'Assemblée, relief from a burden of which, even to one so passionately fond of popularity as he was, the weight was beginning to be greater than the charms. en lui rappelant sans cesse et avec des reproches le soin le plus difficile de tous, celui des finances: il s'était attiré en outre le ridicule par la manière dont il parlait de luiThe people were furious at the dismissal même. Sa démission fut acceptée avec of their favourite: the Assembly affected plaisir par tous les partis. Sa voiture fut to be so. Riots ensued; the Bastile was arrêtée à la sortie du royaume par le même stormed; blood was shed; the Court was peuple qui l'avait naguère traînée en trifrightened; and Necker was once more re- omphe; il fallut un ordre de l'Assemblée called. The royal messenger overtook him pour que la liberté d'aller en Suisse lui fût just as he was entering Switzerland, with accordée. Il l'obtenait bientôt, et se retira the command to return to Paris, and resume à Coppet, pour y contempler de loin une his post. He obeyed the mandate with a revolution qu'il était plus propre à observer sad presentiment that he was returning to qu'à conduire."* be a useless sacrifice in a hopeless cause, If the society of few men is more interestbut with the conviction that duty left him ing or instructive than that of the retired no alternative. His journey to Paris was statesman who, having played his part in one long ovation; the authorities every- the world's history, stands aside to watch at where came out to greet him; the inhabi- leisure the further progress of the mighty tants thronged around his path; the popu- drama, and having served his country faithlace unharnessed his horses and drew his carriage a great part of the way; the minis *Thiers. Rév. Française, i. p. 119. |