whatever is most pure in the real world, rather than make for it a world apart, always incomplete and artificial. "I have set before my children," said she, "life as it is; and I have used no artifice with them." Truth was the first basis on which she built; and not only all deception, but all affectation, seemed to her useless and dangerous. She equally disdained to assume with her children that tone of studied childishness, by which people think to put themselves on a level with their understandings: she raised them to the level of her own mind, and herself to the level of their innocence.

When children were not intimidated before-hand, by the idea given them of Madame de Staël, they were naturally pleased with her, and some were singularly fond of her. There was an ingenuousness, and consequently youthfulness, in her manner of speaking; and genius, with its unexpected impressions, has always something infantile about it. She watched young children with tenderness and curiosity. I have seen her divert herself very much with the whimsical impressions and grotesque associations of that age; people collected them, to relate to her, and they supplied food for her thoughts.

She was inclined to blame that too ostensible devotedness of parents to their children, which is a fault of the present mode of education. Little creatures, who see every thing calculated for them, become vain and selfish; and, far from acquiring the principle of studying the good of others, from the examples by which they are surrounded, they imagine themselves co-operating in the general purpose, by taking care of their own interests themselves. They exercise a capricious authority over those, whose sole object of attention they suppose themselves to be, and a contest of cunning on both sides is established. Madame de Staël expressed her will with decision. Having always entertained a high idea of paternal power, she gave the law in her family; and did not think the heart was debased by the religious inculcation of obedience.

A just and moderate exercise of authority saves a thousand tricks, a thousand falsehoods in education. Reasoning fails; entreaty lowers those who have recourse to it; affection, employed as a means, wears and finally hardens the heart. The ties between parents that command with mildness, and obedient children, are the only real, the only serious, the only peaceable ones; and infancy, weak and destitute as it feels itself at bottom, is not long attached to any thing but protecting firmness.

The motives of Madame de Staël's orders, however, were much too refined for her to refuse herself the pleasure of announcing them. She explained them distinctly, but without entering into discussion, and the preamble of the law did not render it less absolute.

She gave many lessons to her children herself; but, conformable to her principle of the necessity of sincerity, she rejected those little games, by means of which people pretend to teach the elements of all kinds of knowledge. When a study is not sufficiently interesting of itself, which must sometimes happen, the

simple idea of duty ought to supply the deficiency. This idea is readily conceived in infancy; and far from its being proper to reserve it for a subsequent stage of life, it never acquires any strength, unless it have slowly shot out deep roots in the mind. Children are not long the dupes of these compulsory diversions; and a thousand sallies, injurious to the end proposed, proclaim the right they have to play in their own way. Besides, as the principal advantage of study, at an early eage, consists in the exertion it obliges the mind to make; and that of amusement, in the scope it gives to the activity of the child; when we mix diversions with the lesson, and constraint with the pleasure, we lose the fruits of both.

But it was when beginning to enter on the period of youth, that the openness of Madame de Staël with her children was most remarkable. It is true, she was not so indiscreet as to say any thing to them, that should endanger the interests of others, or her own; but she exhibited herself to them in her natural colours, and in all sincerity: she displayed to them her character as it was, neither sparing herself, nor ascribing to herself a sentiment or a quality that she did not possess. Thus she always blamed herself in what occurred between her and her mother: thus she has said to her daughter in particular, that the vivacity of her affections and opinions had hurried her into dangers, from which nothing short of a mind like her own could have extricated her; and that her too great warmth, in politics for instance, had drawn upon her animosities, the effects of which, painful to her heart, might even have proved formidable, but for the lustre of her talents, and, perhaps, that of the services she had rendered. She had suffered too much herself, to wish her daughter to follow her steps. Accordingly, she did not advise her to seek after celebrity; and even in conversation, while she admitted her to be extremely witty, she cautioned her against imitation; whether because she judged, and with reason, that another must be inferior to her in her own way; or that her own manner did not please her in another. She did not love copies. "Echoes tire me," she said. "I have enough of myself in myself, and I want to hear something else than the sound of my own voice.".

To judge of her attachments, in all their energy, as in all their excellence, it is necessary to have known that which she felt for her father: a wonderful sentiment, that embraced the whole of her existence; and which acquired still more strength from the idea of death, than from that of the most sacred bond of life. Besides, as this tenderness made part of herself, as it was mixed up with all her thoughts, and affected them all, we cannot lay it aside in speaking of Madame de Staël.

There was such an understanding between Mr. Necker and his daughter, they felt such pleasure in conversing together, and their minds so well agreed, that Madame de Staël was led to exaggerate to herself the idea of her resemblance to her father; and the more numerous the points were, in which she thought she traced this resemblance, the more enthusiastically did she admire those qualities

qualities in which he was really superior to her. She saw in him a being similar to herself, whom the excess of virtue would have captivated. He supported retirement, dispensing equally with pleasure and with admiration. Conscience and a sentiment of dignity were the sole springs of a life simplified by wisdom. He even resisted the power of the strongest affection he had upon earth, when he refused to live with his daughter at Paris: this refusal might give her pain, but she bowed to his decision. She ascribed to him her own thirst of action, all the fire of her cha- | racter, in order to enhance the value of the sacrifices he imposed upon himself; ascribing to him the tastes of youth, to give greater merit to his privations; and thinking of his great age, only to enhance the wit and agreeableness he still retained, as being on that account the more wonderful.

Two sentiments, extremely vivid in Madame de Staël, gratitude and pity, had also their object in Mr. Necker; gratitude, the best founded, for a solicitude uncommon, even in a father, for its constancy and judicious direction; and pity, profound and piercing, for his sufferings; pity for that great mind, that excellent character, misunderstood and calumniated; pity for his age, and the ills with which it was threatened; pity, not on his own account alone, for the fatal moment that was approaching: so that the liveliest pleasures his daughter enjoyed in his company were sometimes closely followed by tears.

However, she was little disposed to anticipate future troùbles; and, if a sudden flash disclosed to her what was to come, the present moment soon re-occupied her thoughts. Heaven had made her improvident; and Mr. Necker has said, that she was like the savages, who would sell their hut in the morning, without thinking what they should do at night. With regard to him, she would pass instantly from the most anxious solicitude to the completest security. So full of life herself, she could scarcely believe in death. Unable to endure the thought of looking on her father as an old man, whatever she found in him, of pleasing and agree. able, his quick comprehension of her meaning, a certain freshness of imagination, of curiosity, of gaiety, which he still possessed, were incessantly cherishing illusions in her, She conversed with him as mentally her equal, and forgot the difference of their ages. Some person once telling her, that Mr. Necker had grown old, she repelled the idea with a sort of anger, answering, that she should consider the person who repeated such an expression as her greatest enemy, whom she would never see again as long as she lived.'

After the death of M. Necker, at some period here undefined, Mad. de Staël contracted a private marriage with M. Rocca, (a young man of good family and noble mind, who had been severely wounded in Spain,) for the account of which we cannot find room. It was but little known; and one motive for concealing it, no doubt, was the fear that the consequent loss of rank might obstruct her reception at the German courts.

• Madame

• Madame de Staël,' adds her biographer, was graceful in all her motions. Her face, without satisfying the eye in every respect, first attracted, and then fixed it, because it had a very uncommon advantage as an organ of the mind: a sort of intellectual beauty, if we may use the term, suddenly displayed itself in it. Her thoughts painted themselves in succession so much the more distinctly in her countenance, that, except her eyes, which were uncommonly fine, no very striking feature marked its character before-hand. She had none of those permanent expressions which ultimately mean nothing; and her physiognomy was created on the spot, as we may say, by her feelings. Perhaps when still, her eyelids were rather heavy, but genius suddenly sparkled in her eyes, her looks glowed with a noble fire, and announced like lightning the thunder of her words.

• At the same time, she had neither in her countenance, nor in any feature, that restless mobility, which is so very equivocal an indication of intellect. A sort of exterior indolence rather prevailed in her; but her figure, a little inclined to stout, her striking and well-chosen postures, gave great energy and a singular weight to her discourse. There was something dramatic in her; and even her dress, though exempt from all singularity, was always more picturesque than fashionable.'

Perhaps her constitution, more feeble than was supposed, required the stimulus of amusement; for a sort of terror seized her at the idea of life standing still. In her youth she could not endure solitude; and the melancholy impressions that are painted with so much beauty in her works, had with her a formidable reality. It was not till very late in life, and when she was able to keep at a distance the monsters created by her imagination, that she was able, according to her own expression, "to live in company with nature."

Consequently ennui, which, in the world or elsewhere, is a solitude where we have not the company even of ourselves, was extremely dreaded by her. It was not sufficient for her that persons were witty; they must be animated: and perhaps those wits who would not take the trouble to amuse in society put her more out of humour than men of inferior talents. She could not endure people to talk with indifference. "How can he expect me to attend to him," she would say, "when he does not do himself the honour to attend to himself?" She could better endure certain defects of character than a mind dried up and disgusted; and she said one day of an egotist and caviller, "That man talks only of himself; but he does not tire me, because I am certain at least that he feels interested in what he says.'

• She never failed, however, to be ultimately out of patience with absurdity, and of extravagance she was quickly weary. She always sought, and often found, the point of junction between imagination and good sense. Folly," said she one day, "may be poetical, but irrationality is not."

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The imprudent expressions, which Madame de Staël may have uttered, were much more frequently occasioned by ennui

than

than by impetuosity. When a state of languor appeared irremediable, it sometimes occurred to her, to produce a revolution in the society: she broke the ice of an insipid conversation by some bold stroke, and scattered dismay among the grave of various kinds. Then, for a moment or two, she might fail in circumspection; but the more animated she was, the more firm and secure was her step. Once fairly entered on her career, there was no longer any false movement. Certain of her strength, she ran through the centre of danger, handled as she passed the most hazardous questions, touched on the most delicate points, and made her friends tremble for her; the indifferent for themselves. No one was aware on whom the fire of this flying artillery would fall; people heard the ball whistle round them, and alarm passed from one to another: but soon every one was at ease: the desired modification or exception was introduced just at the proper point; a commendation suddenly raised him, who believed himself the object of attack; and she emerged in triumph from the difficulties which she had accumulated around her. There was fear mixed with the pleasure she gave; as there is in that we feel at seeing the performances of a rope-dancer.'

The writings of Mad. de Staël form, after all, beautiful as they are, but a subordinate part of her merit; the opinions which she has recorded might have been born and preserved without her, but without her they would not have become at Paris, and hence throughout Europe, the genteel opinions of her age. It was she who made liberalism the substitute for chivalry; whose eyes rained influence on the champions in that tournament; and whose words imparted value to the scarf which was often to be the only recompence of the combatant.

From the account here given of the writings of Mad. de Staël, it appears that in early life she attempted a comedy called Secret Sentiments, and a tragedy on the death of Lady Jane Grey. They were followed by three novels, to which was prefixed an Essay on Fiction. Then came Letters on the Writings and Character of Rousseau: here Mad. de S. was first in her place as an author; the works of Rousseau, more than any other, had deeply imbued her mind and tinged her style; and though she was destined to acquire a grace, a variety, and a delicacy of expression not always displayed by her model, yet in the picturesque presentation of idea, in pathos, and in vehemence of eloquence, she never equalled her master.

The French Revolution having naturally and necessarily drawn the attention of Mad. de Staël to politics, she wrote a Defence of the Queen, an Epistle to Misfortune, and Reflections on Peace, and on Internal Peace. For the Reflections she was mentioned with applause by Mr. Fox in the British House of Commons.

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