MADAME DU DEFFAND. 227 (JAN. 1810.) Correspondance inédite de MADAME DU DEFFAND, avec D'Alembert, Montesquieu, le Président Henault, La Duchesse du Maine, Mesdames de Choiseul, De Staal, &c. &c. 3 tomes, 12mo. Paris: 1809. Lettres de MADEMOISELLE DE LESPINASSE, écrites depuis l'Année 1773 jusqu'à l'Année 1776, &c. 3 tomes, 12mo. 1809. Paris: THE popular works of La Harpe and Marmontel have made the names at least of these ladies pretty well known in this country; and we have been induced to place their correspondence under one article, both because their history is in some measure connected, and because, though extremely unlike each other, they both form a decided contrast to our own national character, and, taken together, go far to exhaust what was peculiar in that of France. Most of our readers probably remember what La Harpe and Marmontel have said of these two distinguished women; and, at all events, it is not necessary for our purpose to give more than a very superficial account of them. Madame du Deffand was left a widow with a moderate fortune, and a great reputation for wit, about 1750; and soon after gave up her hotel, and retired to apartments in the couvent de St. Joseph, where she continued to receive, almost every evening, whatever was most distinguished in Paris for rank, talent, or accomplishment. Having become almost blind in a few years thereafter, she found she required the attendance of some intelligent young woman, who might read and write for her, and assist in doing the honours of her conversazioni. For this purpose she cast her eyes on Mademoiselle Lespinasse, the illegitimate daughter of a man of rank, who had been boarded in the same con 228 MADAME DU DEFFAND. vent, and was for some time delighted with her election. By and by, however, she found that her young companion began to engross more of the notice of her visitors than she thought suitable; and parted from her with violent, ungenerous, and implacable displeasure. Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, however, carried with her the admiration of the greater part of her patroness's circle; and having obtained a small pension from government, opened her own doors to a society not less brilliant than that into which she had been initiated under Madame du Deffand. The fatigue, however, which she had undergone in reading the old Marchioness asleep, had irreparably injured her health, which was still more impaired by the agitations of her own inflammable and ambitious spirit; and she died before she had attained middle. age, about 1776,-leaving on the minds of almost all the eminent men in France, an impression of talent, and of ardour of imagination, which seems to have been considered as without example. Madame du Deffand continued to preside in her circle till a period of extreme old age; and died in 1780, in full possession of her faculties. Where the letters that are now given to the world have been secreted for the last thirty years, or by whom they are at last published, we are not informed in either of the works before us. That they are authentic, we conceive, is demonstrated by internal evidence; though, if more of them are extant, the selection that has been made appears to us to be a little capricious. The correspondence of Madame du Deffand reaches from the year 1738 to 1764;-that of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse extends only from 1773 to 1776. The two works, therefore, relate to different periods; and, being entirely of different characters, seem naturally to call for a separate consideration. We begin with the correspondence of Madame du Deffand, both out of respect to her seniority, and because the variety which it exhibits seems to afford room for more observation. As this lady's house was for fifty years the resort of every thing brilliant in Paris, it is natural to suppose, CHARACTER OF PARISIAN SOCIETY. 229 that she herself must have possessed no ordinary attraction and to feel an eager curiosity to be introduced even to that shadow of her conversation which we may expect to meet with in her correspondence. Though the greater part of the letters are addressed to her by various correspondents, yet the few which she does write are strongly marked with the traces of her peculiar character and talent; and the whole taken together give a very lively idea of the structure and occupations of the best French society, in the days of its greatest splendour. Laying out of view the greater constitutional gaiety of our neighbours, it appears to us, that this society was distinguished from any that has ever existed in England, by three circumstances chiefly:-in the first place, by the exclusion of all low-bred persons; secondly, by the superior intelligence and cultivation of the women; and, finally, by the want of political avocations, and the absence of political antipathies. By the first of these circumstances, the old Parisian society was rendered considerably more refined, and infinitely more easy and natural. The general and peremptory proscription of the bourgeois, excluded, no doubt, a good deal of vulgarity and coarseness; but it had a still better effect in excluding those feelings of mutual jealousy and contempt, and that conflict of family pride and consequential opulence, which can only be prevented from disturbing a more promiscuous assembly, by means of universal and systematic reserve. Where all are noble, all are equal;—there is no room for ostentation or pretension of any sort ;-every one is in his place every where; and the same manners being familiar to the whole society from their childhood, manners cease in a great measure to be an object of attention. Nobody apprehends any imputation of vulgarity; and nobody values himself on being free from it. The little peculiarities by which individuals are distinguished, are ascribed, not to ignorance or awkwardness, but to caprice merely, or to peculiarity of disposition; and not being checked by contempt or derision, are indulged, for the most part, as caprice or disposition may dictate; and thus the 230 FRENCH AND ENGLISH SOCIETY. very highest society is brought back, and by the same causes, to much of the freedom and simplicity of the lowest. In England, we have never had this arrangement. The great wealth of the mercantile classes, and the privilege which every man here possesses of aspiring to every situation, has always prevented any such complete separation of the high and the low-born, even in ordinary society, and made all large assemblages of people to a certain degree promiscuous. Great wealth, or great talents, being sufficient to raise a man to power and eminence, are necessarily received as a sufficient passport into private company; and fill it, on the large scale, with such motley and discordant characters, as visibly to endanger either its ease or its tranquillity. The pride of purse, and of rank, and of manners, mutually provoke each other; and vanities which were undiscovered while they were universal, soon become visible in the light of opposite vanities. With us, therefore, society when it passes beyond select clubs and associations, is apt either to be distracted with little jealousies and divisions, or finally to settle into constraint, insipidity, and reserve. People meeting from all the extremes of life, are afraid of being misconstrued, and despair of being understood. Conversation is left to a few professed talkers; and all the rest are satisfied to hold their tongues, and despise each other in their hearts. The superior cultivation of French Women, however, was productive of still more substantial advantages. Ever since Europe became civilised, the females of that country have stood more on an intellectual level with the men than in any other, and have taken their share in the politics and literature, and public controversies of the day, far more largely than in any other nation with which we are acquainted. For more than two centuries, they have been the umpires of polite letters, and the depositaries and the agents of those intrigues by which the functions of government are usually forwarded or impeded. They could talk, therefore, of every thing that men could wish to talk about; and general conversation, EFFECTS OF POLITICAL OCCUPATIONS. 231 consequently, assumed a tone, both less frivolous and less uniform, than it has ever attained in our country. The grand source, however, of the difference between the good society of France and of England, is, that, in the former country, men had nothing but society to attend to; whereas, in the latter, almost all who are considerable for rank or for talents, are continually engrossed with politics. They have no leisure, therefore, for society, in the first place: in the second place, if they do enter it at all, they are apt to regard it as a scene rather of relaxation than exertion; and, finally, they naturally acquire those habits of thinking and of talking, which are better adapted to carry on business and debate, than to enliven people assembled for amusement. In England, men of condition have still to perform the high duties of citizens and statesmen, and can only rise to eminence by dedicating their days and nights to the study of business and affairs-to the arts of influencing those, with whom, and by whom, they are to act-and to the actual management of those strenuous contentions by which the government of a free state is perpetually embarrassed and preserved. In France, on the contrary, under the old monarchy, men of the first rank had no political functions to discharge-no control to exercise over the government-and no rights to assert, either for themselves or their fellow-subjects. They were either left, therefore, to solace their idleness with the frivolous enchantments of polished society, or, if they had any object of public ambition, were driven to pursue it by the mediation of those favourites or mistresses who were most likely to be won by the charms of an elegant address, or the assiduities of a skilful flatterer. It is to this lamentable inferiority in the government and constitution of their country, that the French are indebted for the superiority of their polite assemblies. Their saloons are better filled than ours, because they have no senate to fill out of their population; and their conversation is more sprightly, and their society more animated than ours, because there is no other outlet for the talent and ingenuity of the nation but society and |