MADAME DE STAËL,

ANYONE who has read that part of the correspondence of Goethe and Schiller respecting the visit of Madame de Staël to Weimar must have derived a very high impression of her tact and character, even though not a sentence of her own writings should have been read. The poetical magnates of Germany were both inclined to give her the go-by; they fancied she bore too much the character of a modern newspaper interviewer. Besides, they were then very busy on schemes in which both had a keen interest. They would rather she had not Goethe sulked a little, in fact, and went out of the way to be free. Schiller was reserved and distant, and only yielded out of pure gallantry to spend a little time in her society. Yet she soon made him feel at ease with her, in spite of his lack of quickness at French, and risk of misunderstand

ings and awkwardness; and when Goethe, at length summoned by the Duke to the Weimar Court to meet her, did come face to face, he had to acknowledge that he enjoyed it, that she interested him, and excited his curiosity. Jean Paul let out, in his review of her "D'Allemagne" when it came later, that the same feelings had been nursed a little at all events by others. Dr. Stevens has treated well all these matters, and indeed, has very efficiently done his work.

Madame de Staël was born in 1766, the daughter of M. Necker, of Geneva, whose father again had been Prussian. Her mother was the daughter of a Swiss pastor, a woman of great grace, attractiveness, and force of character, else scarcely could she, while young, have fascinated Edward Gibbon, the historian, who "sighed as a lover, and obeyed as a son," as he says, and to the end of his life remained unmarried, acknowledging that she was the only woman he had ever truly loved; through her grandmother again, who was French, she derived some of her most commanding qualities, gaiety, wit, and colloquial readiness. It is interesting to note such things as these in such a case as that of Madame de Staël; for, like the red strands, which we learn are twisted into the cables of the British Admiralty, absolutely

to identify them at any point they may be cut, we see inherited natural characteristics appear and re-appear throughout her career. From her mother's side Madame de Staël thus drew that gaiety, that wit, that éspieglerie, which might have seemed common-place in itself had it not been associated with German subtlety, thoroughness, and the power patiently to deal with details, and yet to rise to the highest region of principles, and to touch and idealise them by imagination; and, further, the Swiss self-devotion, patriotism, fervour, the power to renounce ease and comfort for the sake of convictions strongly held. Bacon says, "there is no beauty which hath not some strangeness in the proportion;" and the axiom recurs to us, as we think of the mingled strains which met in the character of Madame de Staël. The literary interest that circles round her name would suffice to make her take high rank amongst the famous women of all times. She wrote "Delphine." She wrote "Corinne." In them she clearly showed the power of wedding deep reflection with ideal glow, with warmth, with French ésprit and charm. But this many Frenchwomen have done. Madame de Sévigné in former, and Madame Sand in more recent times, might both claim to be ranked high in this regard. But Madame

de Staël's works will never be completely or even clearly read, apart from the story of her life; the works, indeed, are the sufficing commentaries upon the life; read apart from it, they are not seen in full light, and some of the links of vital connection cannot be realised. The service that Dr. Stevens has here done to literary students is thus as great as that he has performed for the memory of Madame de Staël. Till now, there has been no adequate biography of this master-spirit in any language-a defect the greater for the reason we have noted: the presence of a strong lyrical and autobiographical element in all her writings. Dr. Stevens says:

I have not been able to find, in any language, anything like an adequate biography of Madame de Staël—a woman who, more than any other (not excepting Madame Roland), represents her epoch, and that the epoch of the modern history of Europe. The best of French critics, Sainte-Beuve, has accorded to her this pre-eminence.

She not only lived and observed through the Terror of the Revolution; she was active, as it was her nature to be, in such a crisis, and when Napoleon, whom at first she had welcomed, rose to the highest place, as first Consul, and later as Emperor, she seeing the duplicity and meanness of his nature, and the demoralising effect his rule must have, not only

on France, but on the world, true to herself, she declined to bow down before him, or to prostitute her powers to his service. In preference to such prostitution, with wealth, influence, and honour as payment; she accepted exile and dishonour, and was content for many years to drag out a weary life at a distance from the society her quick sympathies made her so eagerly crave. During this period, too, it was that she made intimate acquaintance with Russia, and parts of Germany, as well as England. It is because of these things, and the noble spirit in which she acted, that she has a claim to a high place on the roll of heroic women as well as of women of genius. It is impossible for us in the short space now at our disposal, to do aught worthy in a substantive form to reinforce our views; but we may take up one or two points, and signalise them by means of little extracts from Dr. Stevens' book, which will suffice faintly to indicate our meaning here. The following passage is valuable as giving us a glimpse of her self-denying conduct in the Terror-the more valuable as the testimony occurs in company with a picture of the kind of society she drew round her when in England, and of the Meikleham meetings. Dr. Stevens writes:Talleyrand is the wit of the circle. Madame de Châtre