could "bear no brother near the throne." l'Egypte, c'est à dire, vers la fin de 1797, que je He loved incense and homage; and after the le vis plusieurs fois à Paris; et jamais la difficulté 18th Brumaire, she would render him de respirer que j'éprouvois en sa présence ne put se neither. She would not flatter him, and he dissiper. J'êtois un jour à table entre lui et could not in his heart despise her as he prévoir l'avenir! J'examinois avec attention la l'Abbé Sièyes: singulière situation, si j'avois pu desired to do, and as he wished it to be imag- figure de Buonaparte; mais chaque fois qu'il ined that he did. Then, whenever they met decouvroit en moi des regards observateurs, il in society she bored him dreadfully, and he avoit l'art d'ôter à ses yeux toute expression, mubbed her rudely. He was cold and comme s'ils fussent devenus de marbre. Son reserved, she was vehement and impulsive. visage étoit alors immobile, excepté un sourire She stigmatized him as an enemy to rational vague qu'il plaçoit sur ses lèvres à tout hasard, freedom; and he pronounced her to be an pour dérouter quiconque voudroit observer les signes extérieures de sa pensée." * intriguing and exaltée woman. They both loved influence dearly; and neither would During her fourteen years of exile, Madsuccumb to the influence of the other. All ame de Staël led a wandering life; somethe Emperor's power and prestige could not times residing at Coppet: ever and anon extort from the woman one instant of sub- returning for a short time to France, in hopes mission or applause, all the woman's wea of being allowed to remain there unmopons of fascination and persuasion were lested, but soon receiving a new order to wasted and blunted on the impenetrable quit. She visited Germany twice, Italy cuirasse of the despot. Their hatred was once, and at length reached England, by something instinctive, and almost physical, way of Russia, in 1812. It was at this -as natural and incurable as that of cat and dog. Madame de Staël has left a very graphic description of the impression he produced upon her : cœur one by one her friends were prevented from visiting her, or punished with exile and dis grace 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'épanche ment, almost worse than death. The des period of her life that she produced the works which have immortalized her-De la Littérature, De l'Allemagne, and Corinne, and enjoyd intercourse with the most celebrated men of Europe. Nevertheless they "Loin de me rassurer, en voyant Buonaparte were years of great wretchedness to her; plus souvent il m'intimidoit chaque jour d'avant- the charms of Parisian society, in which age. Je sentois confusément q'aucune émotion du ne pouvoit agir sur lui. [Hinc illae she lived, and moved, and had her being, lacrima the lady felt herself disarmed before were forbidden to her; she was subjected the man of cold heart.] Il regarde une créature to the most annoying and petty, as well as humaine comme un fait ou comme une chose, to the most bitter and cruel persecutions; mais non comme un semblable. Il ne hait pas plus qu'il n'aime; il n'y a que lui pour lui; tout fe reste des créatures sont des chiffres. La force de sa volonté consiste dans l'imperturbable calcul de son egoïsme. . . . Ses succès tiennent autant aux qualités tiennent autant aux qualités qui lui manquent, qu'aux talents qu'il possède. Ni la pitié, ni l'attrait, ni la religion, ni l'attachement à une idée quelconque, ne sauroient le détourner de sa direction principale. Chaque fois que je l'entendois parler, j'étois frappée de sa supériorité; elle n'avoit pourtant aucun rapport avec celle des hommes instruits et cultivés par l'étude ou la société, tels que l'Angleterre et la France peuvent en offrir des exemples. Mais ses discours indiquoient le tact des circonstances, comme le chasseur a celui de sa proie. Quelquefois il racontait les faits politiques et militaires de sa vie d'une façon très-intéressante; il avoit même, dans les récits qui permettoient la gaieté, un peu de l'imagination italienne. Cependant rien ne pouvait triompher de mon éloignement pour ce que j'apercevois en lui. Je sentois dans son ame une épée froide et tranchante qui glaçoit en bless ant; je sentois dans son esprit une ironie profonde à laqueiie rien de grand ni de beau, pas meme sa propre gloire, ne pouvoit échapper; car il méprisoit le nation dont il vouloit les suffrages; et nulle étincelle d'enthousiasme ne se meloit à son besoin d'étonner l'espèce humaine. Ce fut dans l'intervalle entre le retour de Buonaparte [d'Italie] et son départ pour * Considérations sur la Révol. Française, ii. 187. "Je ne dissimule point que le séjour de Paris m'a toujours semble le plus agréable de tous; j'y suis née; j'y ai passé mon enfance et ma première jeunesse; la génération qui a connu mon père, les amis qui ont traversé avec nous les périls de la Révolution, c'est là seulement que je puis les retrover. Cet amour de la patrie qui a saisi les âmes les plus fortes, gouts de l'esprit se trouvent réunis aux affections du s'empare plus vivement encore de nous quand les cœur et aux habitudes de l'imagination. La conversation Française n'existe qu'à Paris, et la conversation a été, depuis non enfance, mon plus grand plaisir. J'éprouvois une telle douleur à la crainte d'être privée de ce séjour, que ma raison ne pouvoit rein contre elle. J'étois alors dans toute la vivacité de la vie, et c'est précisement le besoin des jouissances animées qui conduit le plus souvent au désespoir, car il rend la résignation bien difficile, et sans elle on ne peut supporter les vicissitudes de l'existence."-Dix Années d' Exil, p. 61. "On s'étonnera peut-être que je compare l'exil à la mort; mais de grands hommes de l'antiquité et des temps modernes ont succombé à cette peine. On rencontre plus de braves contre l'échafaud que contre la perte de sa patrie."—Ibid., p. 79. cription of her sufferings during this part of answered, in that deliberate and gentle her life, which she gives in her Dix Années voice which gave point to all his sharpest d'Exil, renders that book one of the most sayings, "Il faut avoir aimé Madame de harassing and painful we ever read; and Staël pour savourer le bonheur d'aimer une when we add to all that Buonaparte made bête!" Schiller, whom she infested dreadher endure, the recollection of the incalcul- fully during her stay in Weimar in 1803-4, able amount of individual mischief and writes thus to Goethe: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. "Madame de Staël you will find quite as you have, à priori, construed her she is all of a piece; there is no adventitious, false, pathological speck in her. Hereby it is that, notwithstanding the immeasurable difference in temper and 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 most interesting aspect. In all that we name philosophy, therefore, in all highest and ultimate questions, one is at issue with her, and remains so in spite of all arguing. But her naand her fine understanding rises to the rank of ture, her feeling, is better than her metaphysics; genial. She insists on explaining everything, 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 recognise the true. : 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 manners; and it is curious to observe how uniform and selfconsistent this impression everywhere 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 apt to become monologue and declamation. She was too vivacious for any but Frenchmen: her intellect was always in a state of restless and vehement activity; she seemed to need no 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 highly proper that, by such an act, at this time, the intimacy of such a genius as Madame you express your contradiction of our importu de Staël could find pleasure in the society of else.... Being sick at present, and gloomy, it nate visitress: the case would grow intolerable such a contrast to her as Madame Grant seems to me impossible that I should ever hold such discourses again. . . . Had she taken lesson of Jean Paul, she would not have staid so long in Weimar let her try it for other three weeks at her peril." "You will infer from these few words that her nature, cannot but affect one favourably. the clearness, decidedness, and rich vivacity of One's only grievance is the altogether unprecedented 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 "She says elsewhere: "Les échafauds peuvent à la fin réveiller le courage; mais les chagrins domestiques de tout genre, résultat du bannissement, affoiblissent la résistence, et portent seulement à redouter la disgrace du souverain qui peut vous infliger une existence si malheureuse."-Considérations sur, &c., Two months later he closes his notices of ii. 285. the lady by this merciless sarcasm ::-"I Madame de Staël's principal enjoyment was have not been at all well: the weather is not always in society; she had little relish for or appre-kind to me ;-besides, ever since the departure ciation of the beauties of nature. "Oh for the rivulet in the Rue du Bac !" she exclaimed, when of Madame, I have felt no otherwise than as some one pointed out to her the glorious Lake of Geneva. Many years later she said to M. Molé— "Si ce n'était le respect humain, je n'ouvrirais pas ma fenêtre pour voir la baie de Naples; tandis que je ferais cinq cents lieues pour aller causer avec un homme d'esprit." if I had risen from a severe sickness." Goethe's account of her is somewhat more deliberate and patient, but very similar in the main. He writes in his Dichtung und Wahreit "The great qualities of this high-thinking and | lent, and would be universally popular if, in sohigh-feeling authoress lie in the view of every ciety, she were to confine herself to her inferior ane; and the results of her journey through talents-pleasantry, anecdote, and literature-Germany testify sufficiently how she applied her which are so much more suited to conversation time there. Her objects were manifold: she than her eloquence and geniust." wished to know Weimar-to gain accurate acquaintance with its moral, social, literary as- Lord Byron also saw much of her both in pects, and whatever else it offered; further, London in 1813 and at Diodati in 1816. In however, she herself also wished to be known; the notes to the fourth canto of Childe and endeavoured, therefore, to give her own Harold, he records her virtues and attractions views currency, no less than to search out our mode of thought. Neither could she rest satis- in a piece of elaborate fine writing, fit only fied even here she must also work upon the for a tombstone, and which would be prosenses, upon the feelings, upon the spirit; must nounced inflated and tasteless even there. 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 un dertakes 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. 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 Staël at Mackintosh's :-it was the grand confluence of the Rhone and the Saone; "To philosophize in society, means to talk they were both so damned ugly that I could with vivacity about insoluble problems. This not help wondering how the best intellects was her peculiar pleasure and passion. Na- of France and Ireland could have taken up turally, too, she was wont to carry it, in such respectively such residences." "Maspeaking and counter-speaking, up to those concerns of thought and sentiment which properly dame de Staël-Holstein has lost one of her should not be spoken of, except between God young barons, who has been carbonadoed and the individual. Here, moreover, as woman by a vile Teutonic adjutant-kilt and killed and Frenchwoman, she had the habit of sticking in a coffee-house at Scrawsenhausen. Cofast on main positions, and, as it were, not hear- rinne is, of course, what all mothers must ing rightly what the other said. By all these be; but will, I venture to prophesy, do things the evil spirit was awakened in me, so what few mothers could-write an essay that I would treat whatever was advanced no otherwise than dialectically and problematically, upon it. She cannot exist without a grievand often by stiff-necked contradictions, brought ance-and somebody to see or read how her to despair; when she for the first time grew much grief becomes her." ... "To-day rightly amiable, and in the most brilliant man- I dine with Mackintosh and Mrs. Stale-(as ner exhibited her talent of thinking and re- John Bull may be pleased to denominate plying. Corinne)-whom I saw last night at CoventGarden, yawning over the humour of Falstaff." To-day (Tuesday) a very pretty billet from Madame la Baronne de Staël-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 intellectually than all the rest of them together;she ought to have been a man." ed for Wednesday to dine and meet the "On my return I found the whole fashionable Staël. I don't much like it; she always and literary world occupied with Madame de talks of myself or herself, and I am not (exStaël, the most celebrated woman of this or per- cept in soliloquy, as now) much enamoured haps any age.... She treats me as the person of either subject-especially of one's works. whom she most delights to honour: I am gene- What the devil shall I say about De l'Allerally ordered with her to dinner, as one orders beans and bacon; I have, in consequence, dined magne? I like it prodigiously; but unless with her at the houses of almost all the Cabinet I can twist my admiration into some fantasMinisters. She is one of the few persons who surpass expectation; she has every sort of taIt is interesting, after reading what Schiller and Goethe thought of Madame de Staël, to read what the lady, in her turn; thought of them. (See her L'Allemagne, part ii. ch. vii. and viii.) She was more complimentary than the gentlemen. "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 despatch the deepest concerns, the weightiest occurrences, as lightly as if it were a game at shuttlecock."* Some years after her first visit to Germany, she came to England, and Sir James Mackintosh, who saw much of her, thus de scribes her: 66 "Ask tical expression, she won't believe me; and I know by experience that I shall be overwhelmed by fine things about rhyme, &c." "The Staël was at the other end of the table, and less loquacious than hereto † Memoirs of Mackintosh, ii. 264. ... fore. We are now very good friends; | sound; but they are always ingenious and though she asked Lady Melbourne whether suggestive. L'Allemagne, though incomplete I really had any bonhommie. She might as and often superficial, is perhaps as nearly a well have asked that question before she told true delineation of Germany as France could C. L. 'c'est un démon.' True enough-but take in, and shows wonderful power of rather premature, for she could not have thought, as Corinne shows wonderful depth found it out." When in Switzerland of insight and of feeling. These are the two he wrote: "Madame de Staël has made works-Corinne especially-by which she Coppet as agreeable as society and talent will live; and both were the production of can make any place on earth." "She her mature years: she was thirty-eight when was a good woman at heart, and the clever- she wrote the latter, and forty-two when she est at bottom, but spoilt by a wish to be-finished the former. Yet in both there is she knew not what. In her own house she the passionate earnestness-the vehement was amiable: in any other person's you eloquence, the generous warmth of youth, wished her gone, and in her own again." From first to last there was nothing frivol These extracts will serve to shew what ous, artificial, or heartless, in Madame de Madame de Staël was in miscellaneous so-Staël: she had nothing French about her, ciety; in the more intimate relations of life except her untiring vivacity and her sparkfew persons were ever more seriously or ling wit. On the contrary, a tone of the steadfastly beloved. She was an excellent profoundest melancholy runs throughout all hostess, and one of the most warm, constant, her writings. A short time before her death and zealous of friends-on the whole, an ad- she said to Chateaubriand: "Je suis ce que mirable, loveable, but somewhat overpow- j'ai toujours été-vive et triste." It is in ering woman. On the abdication of Napo- Corinne, especially, but also in Delphine, leon she rushed back to Paris, and remained that we trace that indescribable sadness there with few intervals till her death, filling which seems inseparable from noble mindsher drawing-rooms with the brilliant society the crown of thorns which genius must ever which she enjoyed so passionately, and of wear. It was not with her, as with so many, which she was herself the brightest orna- the dissipation of youthful illusions-the dis ment. But she survived the restoration of enchantment of the ideal life. On the conthe Bourbons only a short time; her consti- trary, the spirit of poetry, the fancies and tution had been seriously undermined by paintings of enthusiasm, were neither the fatigues and irritations she had under dimmed nor tarnished for her, even by the gone, and she died in July 1817, on the an-approach of death; she could dream of niversary of the taking of the Bastile, at the earthly happiness and thirsted for it still; age of fifty-one. Her last literary production but she felt that she had never tasted it as was the " Considérations sur la Revolution she was capable of conceiving it; she had Française," which she began with a view of never loved as she could love and yearned vindicating her father's memory, and in- to love; of all her faculties, she touchingly tended as a record of his public life. 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 un "Les Romains n'avoient pas cet aride principe d'u tilité, 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." It was rather esprit than what we generally inean by "wit:" she was eminently spirituel in her conversation, but not a sayer of bons mots. 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 Frencha profundity which is almost German. You Few of cannot read a page without meeting with her repartees or witticisms have been recorded. One some reflection which you wish to transfer indeed we remember, which shows how formidable to your memory, or your commonplace she might have been in this line. An unfortunate book.* These reflections are not always man, finding himself seated between her and her friend Madame Recamier, could think of nothing * For example, we have just met with the follow- better to open the conversation with than the fade ing in her chapter "de l'amour dans le mariage," compliment-"Me voici entre l'esprit et la beauté." (L'Allemagne.) "La gloire elle-même ne saurait Now, Madame de Staël neither chose that she should être pour une femme qu'un deuil éclatant du bonheur." be considered destitute of beauty nor that her friend In Corinne we find "Ce sont les caractères pas- should be considered destitute of wit: she was theresionnés, bien plus que les caractères legèrs, qui sont fore far from flattered by the rapprochement, and capables de folie." L'aspect de la nature enseigne turned round upon her smirking victim with-"Oui! la résignation, mais ne peut rien sur l'incertitude." et sans posséder ni l'une ni l'autre !" 66 surpassed attractions, she was yet doomed and we question whether strict justice has to mourn "the solitude of life." No affec- yet been done to either. Talleyrand has tion filled up her whole heart, called forth been especially maltreated by common fame. all her feelings, or satisfied her passionate By most who know his name he is regarded longings after felicity; the union of souls, as a second Macchiavelli-as little underwhich she could imagine so vividly, and stood and as ruthlessly slandered as the first paint in such glorious colours, was denied to an intriguing and unprincipled diplomaher-and all the rest "availed her nothing." tist -a heartless persifleur-the very incar With a mind teeming with rich and brilliant nation of political profligacy and shameless thoughts, with a heart melting with the tergiversation. His portraits have almost tenderest and most passionate emotions, she all been drawn by his foes-by those whom had no one-no ONE-to appreciate the one he had baffled, or by those whom he had and reciprocate the other; she had to live deserted-by those whom his pungent sar"the inner life" alone; to tread the weary casms had wounded, or whom his superior and dusty thoroughfares of existence, with address had mortified; and his own memoirs, no hand clasped in hers, no sympathizing from his own hand, are to remain a sealed voice to whisper strength and consolation book till, by the death of every one whom when the path grew rough and thorny, and they could compromise, (or, say his enemies, the lamp burnt flickering and low. Nay who could contradict them,) they have be more, she had to "keep a stern tryste with come interesting to the historian alone. death,”—to walk towards the Great Dark- Talleyrand was something very different ness with none to bear her company to the from the popular conception of him. He margin of the cold stream, to send a cheer- was a profound thinker; he had strong poing voice over the black waters, and to give litical opinions, if he had no moral principles; her rendezvous upon the further shore. What he was at least as bold, daring, and decided wonder then that she sometimes faltered and in action as he was sagacious in council; his grew faint under the solitary burden, and political and social tact-which is wisdom so "sickened at the unshared light!" The con- quick and piercing as to seem unreasoningsolation offered by a poet of our own day to had the promptitude and certainty of an the sorrowing children of genius did not al- instinct; and living in constant intercourse, ways suffice for her-rarely at all times can hostile or friendly, with the ablest men of it suffice for any. that stirring epoch, he acquired an undisputed ascendancy over them all, by the simple influence of a keener intellect and a subtler tongue. "Because the few with signal virtue crowned, The heights and pinnacles of human mind, True that the small delights which every day 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."* Far from being devoid of political predi lections and convictions, his whole career, from the time he entered the States-General, shewed 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 and scorn of his fellow-men mingled with course he took, and that much of egotism and alloyed his lofty and persevering ambition, cannot be denied, and is not to be Two of the most remarkable men of wondered at. We must read his character France were associated with Madame de and career by the light which his early Staël both socially and historically. Both history throws over it, and we shall find there lived in her intimacy for a longer or shorter enough amply to explain both his steady period, and both were closely connected with preference for constitutional liberty after the the great events with which she, either as an English model, and the ardour and determi actor or a sufferer, was mixed up. Talley-nation with which he threw himself into the rand 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 delinea. tion and analysis than we can afford them. Each was the type of a class and of a genus, *R. M. Milnes.-"Poems of many years." 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 of everything 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 |