is described as "thirty-two years old, of an elegant figure; well read, full of esprit, very charming;" Narbonne as "about forty, rather fat, but he would be handsome were it not for a squint in one eye. M. de Jancourt "is far from handsome, but has a very intelligent countenance, fine teeth, and is very expressive." He tells the English guests the story of Madame de Staël's heroism in rescuing him and others from the guillotine in Paris. "This lady,'

he says, "who was seven months gone with child, was indefatigable in her efforts to save everyone she knew from the dreadful massacres. She walked daily (for carriages were not then allowed in the streets), to the Hôtel de Ville, and was frequently shut up for five hours with the horrible wretches who composed the committee of surveillance by whom these murders were directed; and, by her eloquence and the consideration demanded by her rank and talents, she obtained the deliverance of above twenty unfortunate prisoners, some of whom she knew but slightly."

Madame de Staël is the cynosure of these conversazioni. If Talleyrand excels all in bon mots and epigrams, she dazzles all by the splendid variety and happy pertinence of her ideas, the richness of her style, and the generous enthusiasm of her sentiments. At one time she thrills the company by her passionate recitation of a tragedy; at another she entertains them, and particularly commands the applause of Talleyrand, by reading the first chapter of her work on the influence of the passions on the happiness of individuals and of nations, one of her most elaborate productions to which she now devoted occasional hours, but which was not published till the beginning of 1796.

Of Napoleon's harsh, cruel, and despotic character, we have many traces in these volumes. He could respect nothing that did not bend low before his

demands-genius was criminal if it would not submit directly to serve him. While Goethe was cringing and flattering him, Madame de Staël submitted to banishment and shame; and from her banishment from all the circles in which she found congenial society, we find her writing thus to the Emperor :

Ten years have passed since I have seen your Majesty ; during eight of them I have been exiled. As I am soon to embark for America, I entreat your Majesty to permit me to speak to you before I depart. I will allow myself but a single subject in this letter. It is the explanation

of the motives which induce me to leave the continent, if I do not obtain your permission to live in a country home near enough to Paris to render it convenient for my children to reside there. Persons in disgrace with your Majesty suffer from that fact throughout Europe. I cannot take a step without encountering its consequences; some of my friends fear to compromise themselves by seeing me; others defiantly brave that fear. The most ordinary relations of society thus become services that a proud soul cannot endure. I have passed my life for eight years between the fear of not obtaining these sacrifices and the pain of being their object. My sons are without careers; my daughter is thirteen years old; in a few years it will be necessary to establish her in life. It would be selfishness for me to force her to live with me in my banishment; is it then necessary to separate me from her? This life is not tolerable, and I see no remedy for it. What city on the Continent can I choose where my disgrace will not produce insurmountable obstacles to the settlement of my children, as well as to my personal repose?

see how unjust it is to class Lessing and Voltaire together, as is too often done. With respect to Voltaire's position, the Bishop writes :

.

Not a little remarkable is it that those only who have disputed the superior merit and excellency of our poet have also denied the value and authority of Holy Scripture. The disparagement of such judges-I allude especially to Voltaire and David Hume-is an additional confirmation of the otherwise unanimous panegyric with which he has been honoured. It will appear scarcely credible at the present day that the accepted Historian of England, in speaking of England's greatest poet, should have given vent to criticisms such as these:"A striking peculiarity of sentiment. Shakespeare frequently hits; a reasonable propriety of thought he cannot for any time uphold. It is vain we look [in him] for either purity or simplicity of diction. Both he and Ben Jonson were equally deficient in taste and elegance, in harmony and correctness. . . . . The English theatre has ever since taken a strong tincture of Shakespeare; and thence it has proceeded that the nation has undergone from all its neighbours THE REPROACH OF BARBARISM, from which its valuable productions in some other parts of learning would otherwise have exempted it."

The author of these remarks upon Shakespeare has himself informed us that the volume which contained them, when first published, so far from being popular, was received "with one cry of reproach, disapprobation, and even detestation," on account of its political views. Nor, if the rest of its contents had been equally erroneous with the passage which I have quoted, would it have deserved any better reception. And how did Hume console himself under the disappointment? He

proceeded to write his "Natural History of Religion," in which he gave the world to understand that, as he had looked in vain in Shakespeare for purity or simplicity of diction, for taste or elegance, for harmony or correctness, so he had been unable to derive anything but "doubt, uncertainty, and suspense of judgment " from the written. Word of God! The concluding remark of the passage quoted above, in which Shakespeare and Ben Jonson are accused of having brought upon us "as a nation the reproach of barbarism from all our neighbours," is evidently founded upon the strictures of Voltaire, who not long before had characterised our poet as "a writer of monstrous farces, called by him tragedies," had pronounced Hamlet to be the work of "a drunken savage," and had attributed "barbarism and ignorance" to the nation by which he was admired. What the same French author also thought and wrote of Divine Revelation and of the profession of Christianity need not be told.

A SUGGESTION ABOUT BUDDHISM.

IN some points we are compelled to say that Mr. Talboys Wheeler, in his short history of India, has grievously disappointed us. He has spared no investigation - he writes in a clear and effective, if far from brilliant, style he has studied and analysed as few other writers have done, or Indian epics-MahabhaFrom these he has, so to

probably could do, the old rata, Ramayana, &c., &c. say, compiled as complete and continuous a history of the earlier ages of India as is perhaps possible. But truth to say he is not mystical; he does not approach a truth from the side of sensibility, but of intellect. His light is too often dry light; and he is apt, unconsciously, to set aside as inadmissible what is after all the most natural interpretation His commentary on Buddha and Nirvana, how