self in knowledge of business; in fine, spent a good remainder of his life with her, sometimes at his own house and sometimes at hers; and when he died, repaid the tenderness with which she had rewarded his care, by leaving her all his property. The Abbé, with some little irritable particularities, and a love of extra-comfort and his bottle, appears to have been, as she was fond of calling him, bien bon, a right good creature; and posterity is to be congratulated, that her faculties were allowed to expand under his honest and reasonable indulgence, instead of being cramped, and formalized, and made insincere, by the halfwitted training of the convent.

Young ladies at that time were taught little more than to read, write, dance, and embroider, with greater or less attention to books of religion. If the training was conventual, religion was predominant, (unless it was rivalled by comfit and flower making, great pastimes of the good nuns ;) and in the devout case, the danger was, either that the pupil would be frightened into bigotry, or, what happened oftener, would be tired into a passion for pleasure and the world, and only stocked with a sufficient portion of fear and superstition to return to the bigotry in old age, when the passion was burnt out. When the education was more domestic, profane literature had its turn-the poetry of Maynard and Malherbe, and the absurd but exalting romances of Gomberville, Scudery, and Calprenede. Sometimes a little Latin was added; and other tendencies to literature were caught from abbés and confessors. In all cases, somebody was in the habit of reading aloud while the ladies worked; and a turn for politics and court-gossip was given by the wars of the Fronde, and by the allusions to the heroes and heroines of the reigning gallantries, in the ideal personages of the romances. The particu lars of Madame de Sévigné's education have not transpired; but as she was brought up at home, and we hear something of her male teachers, and nothing of her female, (whom, nevertheless, she could not have been without,) the probability is that she tasted something of all the different kinds of nurture, and helped herself with her own cleverness to the rest. She would hear of the example and reputation of her saintly grandmother, if she was not much with her; her other religious acquaintances rendered her an admirer of the worth and talents of the devotees of Port-Royal; her political ones interested her in behalf of the Frondeurs; but, above all, she had the wholesome run of her good uncle's books, and the society of his friends Chapelain, Menage, and other professors of polite literature; the effect of which is to fuse particular knowledge into general, and to distil from it the spirit of a wise humanity. She seems to have been

not unacquainted with Latin and Spanish; and both Chapelain and Menage were great lovers of Italian, which became part of her favourite reading.

To these fortunate accidents of birth and breeding were joined health, animal spirits, a natural flow of wit, and a face and shape which, if not perfectly handsome, were allowed by every body to produce a most agreeable impression. Her cousin Bussy Rabutin has drawn a portrait of her when a young woman; and though he did it half in malice and resentment, like the half-vagabond he was, he could not but make the same concession. He afterwards withdrew the worst part of his words, and heaped her with panegyric; and from a comparison of his different accounts we probably obtain a truer idea of her manners and personal appearance, than has been furnished either by the wholesale eulogist or the artist. It is, indeed, corroborated by herself in her letters. She was somewhat tall for a woman; had a good shape, a pleasing voice, a fine complexion, brilliant eyes, and a profusion of light hair; but her eyes, though brilliant, were small, and, together with the eyelashes, were of different tints; her lips, though well-coloured, were too flat; and the end of her nose too square.' The jawbone, according to Bussy, had the same fault. He says that she had more shape than grace, yet danced well; and she had a taste for singing. He makes the coxcombical objection to her at that time of life, that she was too playful for a woman of quality;' as if the liveliest genius and the staidest conventionalities could be reasonably expected to go together; or as if she could have written her unique letters, had she resembled every body else. Let us call to mind the playfulness of those letters, which have charmed all the world; let us add the most cordial manners, a face full of expression, in which the blood came and went, and a general sensibility, which, if too quick perhaps to shed tears, was no less ready to die with laughter' at every sally of pleasantry-and we shall see before us the not beautiful but still engaging and ever-lively creature, in whose countenance, if it contained nothing else, the power to write those letters must have been visible; for, though people do not always seem what they are, it is seldom they do not look what they can do.

The good uncle, the Abbé de Coulanges, doubtless thought he had made a happy match of it, and joined like with like, when, at the age of eighteen, his charming niece married a man of as joyous a character as herself, and of one of the first houses in Brittany. The Marquis de Sévigné, or Sevigny, (the old spelling,) was related to the Duguesclins and the Rohans, and also to Cardinal de Retz. But joyousness, unfortunately, was

the sum-total of his character. He had none of the reflection of his bride. He was a mere laugher and jester, fond of expense and gallantry; and, though he became the father of two children, seems to have given his wife but little of his attention. He fell in a duel about some female, seven years after his marriage. The poor man was a braggart in his amours. Bussy says, that he boasted to him of the approbation of Ninon de l'Enclos; a circumstance which, like a great number of others told in connexion with the modern Leontium,' is by no means to be taken for granted. Ninon was a person of a singular repute, owing to as singular an education; and while, in consequence of that education, a license was given her, which, to say the truth, most people secretly took, the graces and good qualities which she retained in spite of it, ultimately rendered her house a sort of academy of good breeding, which it was thought not incompatible with sober views in life to countenance. Now, it is probable, from the great reputation which she had for good sense, that she always possessed discernment enough to see through such a character as that of Monsieur de Sévigné. The wife, it is true, many years afterwards, accused her, to the young Marquis, of having spoilt (or hurt) his father,' (gâté,) and it may have been true to a certain extent; for a false theory of love would leave a nature like his nothing to fall back upon in regard to right feeling; but people of the Marquis's sort generally come ready spoilt into society, and it is only an indulgent motive that would palm off their faults upon the acquaintances they make there. Be this as it may, BussyRabutin, who had always made love to his cousin after his fashion, and who had found it met with as constant rejection, though not perhaps till he had been imprudently suffered to go the whole length of his talk about it, avows that he took occasion, from the Marquis's boast about Ninon, to make her the gross and insulting proposal, that she should take her revenge.' Again she repulsed him. A letter of Bussy's fell into her husband's hands, who forbade her to see him more; a prohibition, of which she doubtless gladly availed herself. The Marquis perished shortly afterwards; and again her cousin made his coxcombical and successless love, which, however, he accuses her of receiving with so much pleasure as to show herself jealous when he transferred it to another; a weakness, alas! not impossible to very respectable representatives of poor human nature. But all which he says to her disadvantage must be received with caution; for, besides his having no right to say any thing, he had the mean and uncandid effrontery to pretend that he was angry with her solely because she was not generous in money matters. He tells us, that

VOL. LXXVI. NO. CLIII.

after all he had done for her and her friends, (what his favours were, God knows,) she refused him the assistance of her purse at a moment when his whole prospects in life were in danger. The real amount of this charge appears to have been that Bussy, who, besides being a man of pleasure and expense, was a distinguished cavalry officer, once needed money for a campaign; and that, applying to his cousin to help him, her uncle the Abbé, who had the charge of her affairs, thought proper to ask him for securities. The cynical and disgusting, though well-written book, in which the Count libelled his cousin, (for, as somebody said of Petronius, he was an author purissimæ impuritatis,) brought him afterwards into such trouble at court, that it cost him many years of exile to his estates, and a world of servile trouble and adulation to get back to the presence of Louis the Fourteenth, who could never heartily like him. He had ridiculed, among others, the kind-hearted La Vallière. Madame de Sévigné, in consequence of these troubles, forgave him; and their correspondence, both personally and by letter, was renewed, pleasantly enough on his part, and in a constant strain of regard and admiration. He tells her, among other pretty speeches, that she would certainly have beengoddess of something or other,' had she lived in ancient times. But Madame de Sévigné writes to him with evident constraint, as to a sort of evil genius who is to be propitiated; and the least handsome incident in her life was the apparently warm interest she took in a scandalous process instituted by him against a gentleman whom his daughter had married, and whose crime consisted in being of inferior birth; for Count Bussy-Rabutin was as proud as he was profligate. Bussy tried to sustain his cause by forged letters, and had the felicity of losing it by their assistance. It is to be hoped that his cousin had been the dupe of the forgeries; but we have no doubt that she was somewhat afraid of him. She dreaded his writing another book.

We know not whether it was during her married life, or afterwards, that Bussy relates a little incident of her behaviour at court, to which his malignity gives one of its most ingenious turns. They were both there together at a ball, and the King took her out to dance. On returning to her seat, according to the Count's narrative, It must be owned,' said she, that the King possesses great qualities: he will certainly obscure the lustre of all his predecessors.-I could not help laughing in

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* See a strange, painful, and vehement letter, written by her on the subject, to the Count de Guitaut. Vol. xiii. of the duodecimo Paris edition of 1823-4, p. 103.

'her face,' observes Bussy, 'seeing what had produced this pane'gyric.' I replied, There can be no doubt of it, madam, after what he has done for yourself.' I really thought she was going to testify her gratitude by crying Vive le Roi. *

This is amusing enough; but the spirit which induces a man to make charges of this nature, is apt to be the one most liable to them itself. Men at the court of Louis used to weep, if he turned his face from them. The bravest behaved like little boys before him, vying for his favour as children might do for an apple. Racine is said to have died of the fear of having offended him; and Bussy, as we have before intimated, was not a whit behind the most pathetic of the servile, when he was again permitted to prostrate himself in the court circle. Madame de Sévigné probably felt on this occasion as every other woman would have felt, and was candid enough not to hide her emotion; but whether, instead of pretending to feel less, she might not have pleasantly affected still more, in order to regain her self-possession, and so carry it off with a grace, Bussy was not the man to tell us, even if his wit had had good-nature enough to discern it.

The young widow devoted herself to her children, and would never again hear of marriage. She had already become celebrated for her letters; continued to go occasionally to court ; and frequented the reigning literary circles, then famous for their pedantry, without being carried away by it. Several wits and men of fashion made love to her, besides Bussy. Among them were the learned Menage, who courted her in madrigals compiled from the Italian; the superintendent of the finances, Fouquet, who, except in her instance and that of La Vallière, is said to have made Danaës wherever he chose to shower his gold; and the Prince of Conti, brother of the great Condé, who, with the selfsufficient airs of a royal lover, declared that he found her charming, and that he had a word or two to say to her next winter.' Even the great Turenne is said to have loved her. On none of them did she take pity but the superintendent; and not on his heart, poor man! but on his neck; when it was threatened with the axe for doing as his predecessors had done, and squandering the public money. Fouquet was magnificent and popular in his dishonesty, and hence the envious conspired to pull him down. Some of the earliest letters of Madame de Sévigné are on the subject of his trial, and show an interest in it so genuine, that fault has been found with them for not being so witty as the rest!

* Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules. Tom. i. p. 158. Cologne, 1709.