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great earnestness, all the objections that were stated to this extraordinary union.

Her temper appears from the very first to have been delightful, and her heart full of generosity and kindness. Her love for her father rose almost to idolatry; and though her taste for talk and distinction carried her at last a good deal away from him, this earliest passion seems never to have been superseded, or even interrupted, by any other. Up to the age of twenty, she employed herself chiefly with poems and plays;-but took after that to prose. We do not mean here to say any thing of her different works, the history and analysis of which occupies two-thirds of the Notice before us. Her fertility of thought, and warmth of character, appeared first in her Letters on Rousseau; but her own character is best portrayed in Delphine-Corinne showing rather what she would have chosen to be. During her sufferings from the Revolution, she wrote her works on Literature and the Passions, and her more ambitious book on Germany. After that, with more subdued feelings-more confirmed principles-and more practical wisdom, she gave to the world her admirable Considerations on the French Revolution; having, for many years, addicted herself almost exclusively to politics, under the conviction which, in the present condition of the world, can scarcely be considered as erroneous, that under "politics were comprehended morality, religion, and literature."

She was, from a very early period, a lover of cities, of distinction, and of brilliant and varied discussion-cared little in general for the beauties of nature or art-and languished and pined, in spite of herself, when confined to a narrow society. These are common enough traits in famous authors, and people of fashion and notoriety of all other descriptions: But they were united in her with a warmth of affection, a temperament of enthusiasm, and a sweetness of temper, with which we do not know that they were ever combined in any other individual. So far from resembling the poor, jaded, artificial creatures who live upon stimulants, and are with difficulty kept alive by the constant excitements of novelty, flattery, and emulation, her great characteristic was an excessive movement of the soul-a heart overcharged with sensibility, a frame over-informed with spirit and vitality. All her affections, says Madame Necker,-her friendship, her filial, her maternal attachment, partook of the nature of Love-were accompanied by its emotion, almost its passionand very frequently by the violent agitations which belong to its fears and anxieties. With all this animation, however, and with a good deal of vanity-a vanity which delighted in recounting her successes in society, and made her speak without reserve of her own great talents, influence, and celebrity-she seems to have had no particle of envy or malice in her composition. She was not in the least degree vindictive, jealous, or scornful; but uniformly kind, indulgent, compassionate, and forgiving or rather forgetful of injuries. In these respects she is very justly and advan

tageously contrasted with Rousseau; whe, with the same warmth of imagination, and still greater professions of philanthropy in his writings, uniformly indicated in his individual character the most irritable, suspicious, and selfish dispositions; and plainly showed that his affection for mankind was entirely theoretical, and had no living objects in this world. Madame de Staël's devotion to her father is sufficiently proved by her writings;-but it meets us under a new aspect in the Memoir now before us. The only injuries which she could not forgive were those offered to him. She could not bear to think that he was ever to grow old; and, being herself blinded to his progressive decay by her love and sanguine temper, she resented, almost with fury, every insinuation or casual hint as to his age or declining health. After his death, this passion took another turn. Every old man now recalled the image of her father! and she watched over the comforts of all such persons, and wept over their sufferings, with a painful intenseness of sympathy. The same deep feeling mingled with her devotions, and even tinged her strong intellect with a shade of superstition. She believed that her soul' communicated with his in prayer; and that it was to his intercession that she owed all the good that afterwards befell her. Whenever she met with any piece of good fortune, she used to say, "It is my father that has obtained this for me!"

In her happier days, this ruling passion took occasionally a more whimsical aspect; and expressed itself with a vivacity of which we have no idea in this phlegmatic country, and which more resembles the childish irritability of Voltaire, than the lofty enthusiasm of the person actually concerned. We give, as a specimen, the following anecdote from the work before us. Madame Saussure had come to Coppet from Geneva in M. Necker's carriage; and had been overturned in the way, but without receiving any injury. On mentioning the accident to Madame de Staël on her arrival, she asked with great vehemence who had driven; and on being told that it was Richel, her father's ordinary coachman, she exclaimed in an agony, "My God, he may one day overturn my father!" and rung instantly with violence for his appearance. While he was coming, she paced about the room in the greatest possible agitation, crying out, at every turn, "My father, my poor father! he might have been overturned!"-and turning to her friend, "At your age, and with your slight person, the danger is nothing-but with his age and bulk! I cannot bear to think of it." The coachman now came in; and this lady, so mild and indulgent and reasonable with all her attendants, turned to him in a sort of frenzy, and with a voice of solemnity, but choked with emotion, said, "Richel, do you know that I am a woman of genius?"—The poor man stood in astonishment-and she went on, louder, "Have you not heard, I say, that I am a woman of genius?" Coachy was still mute. "Well then! I tell you that I am a woman of genius-of great genius—of pro

digious genius!-and I tell you more-that escape the seductions of a more sublime su all the genius I have shall be exerted to se- perstition. In theology, as well as in eve cure your rotting out your days in a dungeon, thing else, however, she was less degra if ever you overturn my father!" Even after than persuasive; and, while speaking tu the fit was over, she could not be made to the inward conviction of her own heart, por laugh at her extravagance; but was near be-out its whole warmth, as well as its core ginning again—and said "And what had I to conjure with but my poor genius?"

tions, into those of others; and never seem to feel any thing for the errors of her e Her insensibility to natural beauty is rather panions but a generous compassion, and c unaccountable, in a mind constituted like hers, affectionate desire for their removal & and in a native of Switzerland. But, though rather testified in favour of religion, in ster born in the midst of the most magnificent than reasoned systematically in its suppor scenery, she seems to have thought, like Dr. and, in the present condition of the ac Johnson, that there was no scene equal to the this was perhaps the best service that es high tide of human existence in the heart of be rendered. Placed in many respects in the a populous city. "Give me the Rue de Bae," most elevated condition to which humar. said she, when her guests were in ecstasies could aspire-possessed unquestionably of th with the Lake of Geneva and its enchanted highest powers of reasoning-emancipated, a shores-"I would prefer living in Paris, in a a singular degree, from prejudices, and ette fourth story, with an hundred Louis a year." ing with the keenest relish into all the feels These were her habitual sentiments;-But that seemed to suffice for the happiness a she is said to have had one glimpse of the occupation of philosophers, patriots, and res glories of the universe, when she went first-she has still testified, that without religi to Italy, after her father's death, and was engaged with Corinne. And in that work, it is certainly true that the indications of a deep and sincere sympathy with nature are far more conspicuous than in any of her other writings. For this enjoyment and late-developed sensibility, she always said she was indebted to her father's intercession.

The world is pretty generally aware of the brilliancy of her conversation in mixed company; but we were not aware that it was generally of so polemic a character, or that she herself was so very zealous a disputant, --such a determined intellectual gladiator as her cousin here represents her. Her great delight, it is said, was in eager and even violent contention; and her drawing-room at Coppet is compared to the Hall of Odin, where the bravest warriors were invited every day to enjoy the tumult of the fight, and, after having cut each other in pieces, revived to renew the combat in the morning. In this trait, also, she seems to have resembled our Johnson, though, according to all accounts, she was rather more courteous to her opponents. These fierce controversies embraced all sorts of subjects—politics, morals, literature, casuistry, metaphysics, and history. In the early part of her life, they turned oftener upon themes of pathos and passion-love and death, and heroical devotion; but she was cured of this lofty vein by the affectations of her imitators. "I tramp in the mire with wooden shoes," she said, "whenever they would force me to go with them among the clouds." In the same way, though sufficiently given to indulge, and to talk of her emotions, she was easily disgusted by the parade of sensibility which is sometimes made by persons of real feeling; observing, with admirable force and simplicity, "Que tous les sentiments naturels ont leur pudeur."

She had at all times a deep sense of religion. Educated in the strict principles of Calvinism, she was never seduced into any admiration of the splendid apparatus and high pretensions of Popery; although she did not altogether

there is nothing stable, sublime, or satisfyer and that it alone completes and consummate all to which reason or affection can aspre – A genius like hers, and so directed, is, as b biographer has well remarked, the only Me sionary that can work any permanent effect the upper classes of society in modern times — upon the vain, the learned, the scornful, ardagumentative, they "who stone the Prophec while they affect to offer incense to the Muses

Both her marriages have been censured:the first, as a violation of her principlessecond, of dignity and decorum. In that w M. de Staël, she was probably merely passive It was respectable, and not absolutely happy; but unquestionably not such as sulle. her. Of that with M. Rocca, it will not perhaps be so easy to make the apology. W have no objection to a love-match at fifty:But where the age and the rank and forture are all on the lady's side, and the bridegrou seems to have little other recommendatio than a handsome person, and a great deal c admiration, it is difficult to escape ridicule.— or something more severe than ridicule. Mad N. S. seems to us to give a very candid an interesting account of it; and undoubtedly goes far to take off what is most revolting of the first view, by letting us know that it orig nated in a romantic attachment on the pa of M. Rocca; and that he was an ardent suitor to her, before the idea of loving him had entered into her imagination. The broken state of his health, too-the short period she survived their union-and the rapidity with which he followed her to the grave-all tend not only to extinguish any tendency to ridicule, but to disarm all severity of censure; and lead us rather to dwell on the story as a part only of the tragical close of a life full of lofty emotions.

Like most other energetic spirits, she despised and neglected too much the accommodation of her body-cared little about exercise. and gave herself no great trouble about health. With the sanguine spirit which belonged to her character, she affected to triumph over infirmity; and used to say-“I might have

been sickly, like any body else, had I not re- other trammels, those which had circumscribsolved to vanquish all physical weaknesses." ed the liberty of thinking in that great counBut Nature would not be defied!—and she try. The genius of Madame de Staël co-opelied, while contemplating still greater under-rated, no doubt, with the spirit of the times, akings than any she had achieved. On her sick-bed, none of her great or good qualities abandoned her. To the last she was kind, patient, devout, and intellectual. Among other things, she said-"J'ai toujours été la même -vive et triste. J'ai aimé Dieu, mon père, et la liberté !" She left life with regret-but felt no weak terrors at the approach of death —and died at last in the utmost composure and tranquillity.

We would rather not make any summary at present of the true character and probable effects of her writings. But we must say, we are not quite satisfied with that of her biographer. It is too flattering, and too eloquent and ingenious. She is quite right in extolling the great fertility of thought which characterises the writings of her friends;and, with relation to some of these writings, she is not perhaps very far wrong in saying that, if you take any three pages in them at random, the chance is, that you meet with more new and striking thoughts than in an equal space in any other author. But we cannot at all agree with her, when, in a very imposing passage, she endeavours to show that she ought to be considered as the foundress of a new school of literature and philosophy -or at least as the first who clearly revealed to the world that a new and a grander era was now opening to their gaze.

In so far as regards France, and those countries which derive their literature from her fountains, there may be some foundation for this remark; but we cannot admit it as at all applicable to the other parts of Europe; which have always drawn their wisdom, wit, and fancy, from native sources. The truth is, that previous to her Revolution, there was no civilised country where there had been so little originality for fifty years as in France. In literature, their standards had been fixed nearly a century before: and to alter, or even to advance them, was reckoned equally impious and impossible. In politics, they were restrained, by the state of their government, from any free or bold speculations; and in metaphysics, and all the branches of the higher philosophy that depend on it, they had done nothing since the days of Pascal and Descartes. In England, however, and in Germany, the national intellect had not been thus stagnated and subdued-and a great deal of what startled the Parisians by its novelty, in the writings of Madame de Staël, had long been familiar to the thinkers of these two countries. Some of it she confessedly borrowed from those neighbouring sources; and some she undoubtedly invented over again for herself. In both departments, however, it would be erroneous, we think, to ascribe the greater part of this improvement to the talents of this extraordinary woman. The Revolution had thrown down, among other things, the barriers by which literary enterprise had been so long restrained in France- and broken, among

and assisted its effects-but it was also acted upon, and in part created, by that spirit—and her works are rather, perhaps, to be considered as the first fruits of a new order of things, that had already struck root in Europe, than as the harbinger of changes that still remain to be effected.*

In looking back to what she has said, with so much emphasis, of the injustice she had to suffer from Napoleon, it is impossible not to be struck with the aggravation which that injustice is made to receive from the quality of the victim, and the degree in which those sufferings are exaggerated, because they were her own. We think the hostility of that great commander towards a person of her sex, character, and talents, was in the highest degree paltry, and unworthy even of a high-minded tyrant. But we really cannot say that it seems to have had any thing very savage or ferocious in the manner of it. He did not touch, nor even menace her life, nor her liberty, nor her fortune. No daggers, nor chains, nor dungeons, nor confiscations, are among the instruments of torture of this worse than Russian despot. He banished her, indeed, first from Paris, and then from France; suppressed her publications; separated her from some of her friends; and obstructed her passage into England ;-very vexatious treatment certainly, but not quite of the sort which we should have guessed at, from the tone either of her complaints or lamentations. Her main grief undoubtedly was the loss of the society and brilliant talk of Paris; and if that had been spared to her, we cannot help thinking that she would have felt less horror and detestation at the inroads of Bonaparte on the liberty and independence of mankind. She avows this indeed pretty honestly, where she says, that, if she had been aware of the privations of this sort which a certain liberal speech of M. Constant was ultimately to bring upon herself, she would have taken care that it should not have been spoken! The truth is, that, like many other celebrated persons of her country, she could not live happily without the excitements and novelties that Paris alone could supply; and that, when these were withdrawn, all the vivacity of her genius, and all the warmth of her heart, proved insufficient to protect her from the benumbing influence of ennui. Here are her own confessions on the record :—

Montaigne a dit jadis: Je suis François par Paris;
"J'étois vulnérable par mon goût pour la société.
et s'il pensoit ainsi, il y a trois siècles, que seroit-ce
depuis que l'on a vu réunies tant de personnes
d'esprit dans une même ville, et tant de personnes
accoutumées à se servir de cet esprit pour les plaisirs
Le fantôme de l'ennui m'a
de la conversation?
toujours poursuivie ! C'est par la terreur qu'il me

A great deal of citation and remark, relating chiefly to the character and conduct of Bonaparte, and especially to his persecution of the fair author, is here omitted-the object of this reprint being solely to illustrate her Personal character.

cause que j'aurois été capable de plier devant la tyrannie-si l'exemple de mon père, et son sang qui coule dans mes veines, ne l'emportoient pas sur cette foiblesse."-Vol. iii. p. 8.

tion; and that nothing but a little perseverance is required to restore the plastic frame of our nature, to its natural appetite and relish for the new pleasures and occupations that may We think this rather a curious trait, and not yet await it, beyond the precincts of Paris very easily explained. We can quite well London. We remember a signal testimony understand how the feeble and passive spirits to this effect, in one of the later publications. who have been accustomed to the stir and we think of Volney, the celebrated traveller variety of a town life, and have had their in--who describes, in a very amusing way, the anity supplied by the superabundant intellect misery he suffered when he first changed the and gaiety that overflows in these great re- society of Paris for that of Syria and Egypt. positories, should feel helpless and wretched and the recurrence of the same misery when when these extrinsic supports are withdrawn: after years of absence, he was again restored But why the active and energetic members to the importunate bustle and idle chatter of of those vast assemblages, who draw their Paris, from the tranquil taciturnity of his war resources from within, and enliven not only like Mussulmans!-his second access of home themselves, but the inert mass around them, sickness, when he left Paris for the United by the radiation of their genius, should suffer States of America,-and the discomfort he in a similar way, it certainly is not so easy to experienced, for the fourth time, when, after comprehend. In France, however, the people being reconciled to the free and substantial of the most wit and vivacity seem to have talk of these stout republicans, he finally realways been the most subject to ennui. The turned to the amiable trifling of his own faletters of Mad. du Deffand, we remember, are mous metropolis. full of complaints of it; and those of De Bussy also. It is but a humiliating view of our frail human nature, if the most exquisite arrangements for social enjoyment should be found thus inevitably to generate a distaste for what is ordinarily within our reach; and the habit of a little elegant amusement, not coming very close either to our hearts or understandings, should render all the other parts of life, with its duties, affections, and achievements, distasteful and burdensome. We are inclined, however, we confess, both to question the perfection of the arrangements and the system of amusement that led to such results; and also to doubt of the permanency of the discomfort that may arise on its first disturbance. We are persuaded, in short, that at least as much enjoyment may be obtained, with less of the extreme variety, and less of the overexcitement which belongs to the life of Paris, and is the immediate cause of the depression that follows their cessation; and also, that, in minds of any considerable strength and resource, this depression will be of no long dura

It is an affliction, certainly, to be at the end of the works of such a writer-and to think that she was cut off at a period when her enlarged experience and matured talents were likely to be exerted with the greatest utility, and the state of the world was such as to hold out the fairest prospect of their not being exerted in vain. It is a consolation, however, that she has done so much;-And her works will remain not only as a brilliant memorial of her own unrivalled genius, but as a proof that sound and comprehensive views were entertained, kind affections cultivated, and elegant pursuits followed out, through a period which posterity may be apt to regard as one of universal delirium and crime;-that the principles of genuine freedom, taste, and morality, were not altogether extinct, even under the reign of terror and violence-and that one who lived through the whole of that agitating scene, was the first luminously to explain, and temperately and powerfully to impress, the great moral and political Lessons, which it should have taught to mankind.

(October, 1835.)

Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh. Edited by his Son, ROBERT JAMES MACKINTOSH, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1835.*

THERE cannot be, we think, a more delightful book than this: whether we consider the

attraction of the Character it brings so pleasingly before us-or the infinite variety of ori

here reprint the greater part of it: and think I cannot better conclude the present collection, than with this tribute to the merits of one of the most distinguished of my Associates in the work out of which it has been gathered.

*This was my last considerable contribution to that memory. At all events, if it was an improthe Edinburgh Review; and, indeed, (with the ex-priety, it was one for which I cannot now submit to ception of a slight notice of Mr. Wilberforce's Me-seek the shelter of concealment: And therefore I moirs,) the only thing I wrote for it, after my advancement to the place I now hold. If there was any impropriety in my so contributing at all, some palliation I hope may be found in the nature of the feelings by which I was led to it, and the tenor of what these feelings prompted me to say. I wrote it solely out of affection to the memory of the friend I had lost; and I think I said nothing which was not dictated by a desire to vindicate and to honour

A considerable part of the original is omitted in this publication; but consisting almost entirely in citations from the book reviewed, and incidental remarks on these citations.

ginal thoughts and fine observations with which it abounds. As a mere narrative there is not so much to be said for it. There are but few incidents; and the account which we have of them is neither very luminous nor very complete. If it be true, therefore, that the only legitimate business of biography is with incidents and narrative, it will not be easy to deny that there is something amiss, either in the title or the substance of this work. But we are humbly of opinion that there is no good ground for so severe a limitation.

Biographies, it appears to us, are naturally of three kinds-and please or instruct us in at least as many different ways. One sort seeks to interest us by an account of what the individual in question actually did or suffered in his own person: another by an account of what he saw done or suffered by others; and a third by an account of what he himself thought, judged, or imagined—for these too, we apprehend, are acts of a rational beingand acts frequently quite as memorable, and as fruitful of consequences, as any others he can either witness or perform..

Different readers will put a different value on each of these sorts of biography. But at all events they will be in no danger of confounding them. The character and position of the individual will generally settle, with sufficient precision, to which class his memoirs should be referred; and no man of common sense will expect to meet in one with the kind of interest which properly belongs to another. To complain that the life of a warrior is but barren in literary speculations, or that of a man of letters in surprising personal adventures, is about as reasonable as it would be to complain that a song is not a sermon, or that there is but little pathos is a treatise on geometry.

The first class, in its higher or public department, should deal chiefly with the lives of leaders in great and momentous transactions -men who, by their force of character, or the advantage of their position, have been enabled to leave their mark on the age and country to which they belonged, and to impress more than one generation with the traces of their transitory existence. Of this kind are many of the lives in Plutarch; and of this kind, still more eminently, should be the lives of such men as Mahomet, Alfred, Washington, Napoleon. There is an inferior and more private department under this head, in which the interest, though less elevated, is often quite as intense, and rests on the same general basis, of sympathy with personal feats and endowments-we mean the history of individuals whom the ardour of their temperament, or the caprices of fortune, have involved in strange adventures, or conducted through a series of extraordinary and complicated perils. The memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini, or Lord Herbert of Cherbury, are good examples of this romantic sort of biography; and many more might be added, from the chronicles of ancient paladins, or the confessions of modern malefactors.

The second class is chiefly for the compilers

of Diaries and journals-autobiographers who, without having themselves done any thing memorable, have yet had the good luck to live through long and interesting periods; and who, in chronicling the events of their own unimportant lives, have incidentally preserved invaluable memorials of contemporary manners and events. The Memoirs of Evelyn and Pepys are the most obvious instances of works which derive their chief value from this source; and which are read, not for any great interest we take in the fortunes of the writers, but for the sake of the anecdotes and notices of far more important personages and transactions with which they so lavishly present us; and there are many others, written with far inferior talent, and where the design is more palpably egotistical, which are perused with an eager curiosity, on the strength of the same recommendation.

The last class is for Philosophers and men of Genius and speculation-men, in short, who were, or ought to have been, Authors; and whose biographies are truly to be regarded either as supplements to the works they have given to the world, or substitutes for those which they might have given. These are histories, not of men, but of Minds; and their value must of course depend on the reach and capacity of the mind they serve to develope, and in the relative magnitude of their contributions to its history. When the individual has already poured himself out in a long series of publications, on which all the moods and aspects of his mind have been engraven (as in the cases of Voltaire or Sir Walter Scott), there may be less occasion for such a biographical supplement. But when an author (as in the case of Gray) has been more chary in his communications with the public, and it is yet possible to recover the precious, though immature, fruits of his genius or his studies,thoughts, and speculations, which no intelligent posterity would willingly let die,—it is due both to his fame and to the best interests of mankind, that they should be preserved, and reverently presented to after times, in such a posthumous portraiture as it is the business of biography to supply.

The best and most satisfactory memorials of this sort are those which are substantially made up of private letters, journals, or written fragments of any kind, by the party himself; as these, however scanty or imperfect, are at all events genuine Relics of the individual, and generally bearing, even more authentically than his publications, the stamp of his intellectual and personal character. We cannot refer to better examples than the lives of Gray and of Cowper, as these have been finally completed. Next to these, if not upon the same level, we should place such admirable records of particular conversations, and memorable sayings gathered from the lips of the wise, as we find in the inimitable pages of Boswell,-a work which, by the general consent of this generation, has not only made us a thousand times better acquainted with Johnson than all his publications put together, but has raised the standard of his intellectual

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