the chief Greek measure for itinerary distances, which was adopted by the Romans chiefly for nautical and astronomical measurements. It consisted of 600 Greek feet, or 625 Roman feet, or of 606 English feet. (See WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.)

STAËL, MADAME DE ANNE MARIE LOUISE GERMAINE NECKER, was born at Paris in 1766; her father settled in that capital since 1749, and gradually by his industry and his integrity, raised himself to a very important position. He was at the head of one of the first banking-houses; his opinion on financial matters always commanded attention; his salon was the favourite resort of the beau esprit, who inaugurated, during the eighteenth century, the reign of public opinion. Under such circumstances, M. Necker could not fail to be popular; from the same cause he soon began to think that the man whose name had become a household word—that the man whom Marmontel admired and Turgot listened to—that the friend of princes, economists, and academicians—in short, that M. Necker was the wonder of his age. It is quite certain that M. Necker's vanity acted as a drawback upon his otherwise estimable character; but some allowances should be made for the peculiar circumstances in which he was placed. We do not allude now to the species of worship which Madame de Staël cherished—the exaggeration of filial love; but the implicit reliance placed in all quarters upon the financier's sage dixit was really ridiculous. Mademoiselle Susanne Curchod, before marrying M. Necker, had attracted the attention of Gibbon the historian, who was deterred, it is said, from any proposals by the threats of his father. The contrast between an extra-polished English gentleman and a simple unaffected Swiss country-girl would have been most striking; Susanne Curchod's exchange of a village school-house for the crowded drawing-rooms of Paris was quite pitiful. She, however, soon gave evidence of a natural tact, which enabled her to do honour to the new position in which her lot was cast; and if it be true that real merit alone is exposed to the attacks of jealousy, no one ever deserved more praise than Madame Necker.

The education of the future Corinne was, if we may so say, begun, continued, and finished in her mother's salon. "We entered the drawing-room," writes Mdlle. Huber. "By the side of Madame Necker's arm-chair was a little wooden stool on which her daughter was expected to sit, and to keep herself very upright. Hardly had she taken her accustomed place, when three or four old people came round her, and spoke to her with the deepest interest. One of them, who wore a little round wig, took her hands in his, where he kept them a long time, talking to her all the while, as if she had been five-and-twenty years old. This was the Abbé Raynal; the others were MM. Thomas, Marmontel, the Marquis De Pesay, and Baron De Grimm. Mademoiselle Necker at that time was only eleven." Fortunately, from her strong feelings and her generous affectionate disposition, she could entertain no permanent sympathy for the heartless sneering and the analytical philosophy of the Vol-

tarian school, and the perusal of her works amply evidences that she had nothing in common with that clever but dangerous coterie. Another writer, more powerful, perhaps, than the patriarch of Ferney—a writer whose doctrines, at all events, have contributed in a considerably large proportion to the intellectual and political education of the present generation—Rousseau, was the idol of Mademoiselle Necker's earliest literary worship. The author of La Nouvelle Héloïse was a chef d'école in literature; he counteracted very decidedly the critical tendencies so prevalent towards the close of the eighteenth century, by powerful appeals to what M. Sainte-Beuve aptly calls the instinctive forces of the soul—melancholy, compassion, enthusiasm for genius, for nature, for virtue, for misfortune. Mademoiselle Necker was peculiarly qualified to appreciate Rousseau; full of passion as she was, and acting from impulse rather than principle, she espoused a code of tenets which had the merit of awakening the soul; and with the exception of a few literary trifles, which hardly deserve noticing, her first performance as an author was a work devoted to the apology of Jean Jacques. The Letters on Rousseau were published in the year 1788. Written in the pride of youth, they have the merits and faults peculiar to the production of an ardent imagination, which pours out its treasures without restraint. "An unreasonable admiration of her subject," says a critic, "has betrayed her into some extravagances, which would have been avoided had she treated the theme in after years; but the same cause has given birth to passages glowing with eloquence, and prophetic of the glories she was to achieve."

The very disposition which drew Mdlle. Necker's sympathies towards Rousseau, rendered her perfectly competent to judge and to censure some of the more prominent faults of that eloquent writer. She has noticed the sophisms contained in the Nouvelle Héloïse, and the masterly critique she has given of that work will ever keep its place as a monument of skill and of discrimination. When the Letters were first published, the charge of affectation was brought against the authoress. She might have been accused, perhaps, of rashness, but certainly no person in the world was ever less affected. The reverse is in reality her case. She yields too much to what the French call entrainement; it is her soul that guides her pen.

But ere this, in 1786, Mdlle. Necker had married Baron De Staël, the King of Sweden's ambassador to the French court. It was a mariage de convenance in every sense of the word, and was attended with the usual unpleasant consequences which render unions of the kind so fatal to both parties concerned in them. Baron De Staël's principal fault seems to have been an utter disregard for the value of money—a curious failing for so near a connection of the greatest financier then living. The immense dowry which M. Necker gave with his daughter, speedily felt the influence of the baron's thoughtless liberality; and had not Madame De Staël subsequently placed herself and her children under the protection of M. Necker, it is likely that the improvident diplomatist would have seriously diminished, if not completely destroyed the fortunes of his young family.

The low ideas of morality which unhappily prevailed during the last century rendered matrimonial catastrophes such as Madame De Staël's matters of everyday occurrence; and if they did not always lead to an open rupture, it was because the husband and wife could quietly make up their minds to accept on both sides what society considered as an event of course. Madame De Staël never gave the slightest occasion for calumny, but she saw at once that marriage ought not to be made a question of marketable profit. Putting things in the most favourable position, the husband of a femme célèbre is speedily metamorphosed into a non-entity. One day an habitué of Madame Geoffrin's dinner

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1 See on that subject a very curious passage in La Bruyère's Caractères, edit. Jannet., vol. i., pp. 221, 222. "Il y a telle femme," &c. parties asked her what had become of that nice quiet old gentleman whom he used to meet every Wednesday evening at her house, and whose absence he had noticed for the last month. "That gentleman, sir," answered Madame, "was my husband; he is dead." Madame De Staël felt to its full extent the evil resulting from the immoral conventionalism adopted by the fashionable world, and she stigmatised it most energetically in *Delphine*, a novel which was published for the first time in 1802. This work produced the greatest sensation when it first came out; it was a revolution in the style of romance-writing. "Delphine," says Madame Necker de Saussure, "is Madame De Staël in her youth." Those fond of studying an author's character through the creations of his fancy, must have felt interested whilst perusing *Delphine*; but besides this, Madame De Staël there endeavoured to defend an idea, which is nothing else but a dangerous paradox. "Men ought to know how to set public opinion at defiance; woman must submit to it." Such is the text selected—a text so attractive, and at the same time so unsound, that it has, since 1802, been the favourite motto of a school in metaphysical literature. If Madame De Staël invented the *femme incomprise*, George Sand may be said to have vulgarised her. The principle which serves as a fundamental axiom to *Delphine* is essentially false. To quote Chénier, "Man ought not to defy public opinion; woman ought not blindly to bend before it. They should both sit it; accept it when it is legitimate; and reject it when it is erroneous. Right and wrong are invariable: the rules of propriety differ, it is true, according to the sexes; but nature does not condemn man to a life of scandal, and woman to a course of hypocrisy. Virtue and reason exist equally for both, and before those eternal limits all conventionalisms must stop. *Delphine*, as a novel, is more interesting from the sketches of character it contains than from the plot itself: M. de Talleyrand is painted to the life under the name of Madame de Vernon.

It is not our intention to give here a detailed account of Madame de Staël's numerous voyages during the revolution and the empire. We find her in 1793 at Coppet in Switzerland, where was her father's estate; she also visited England, and established herself at a house called Juniper Hall at Mickledham, near Richmond. There a colony of French refugees was speedily formed; the pressure of the times drove to foreign countries the most illustrious families of France, and several distinguished personages were the constant companions of Madame de Staël at Richmond. Count de Narbonne, Madame de la Châtre, M. de Talleyrand, General d'Arblay—such are a few names taken at random. Under the most distressing circumstances, the colony managed to keep up their spirits and to weather the storm. Occasionally they were reduced to very ludicrous shifts; we are told that this little party could afford to purchase only one small carriage, which took two persons, and that MM. de Narbonne and De Talleyrand alternately assumed the post of footman as they rode about to see the country, removing the glass from the back of the coach in order to join the conversation of those inside.

It was not without the greatest difficulty that Madame de Staël contrived to escape from Paris during the Reign of Terror. She had given dire offence by the independent way in which she acted, and by the sympathy she openly manifested for persons whom the "sovereign people" had visited with a sentence of proscription. Her letters on Jean Jacques Rousseau contain the following remarkable passage:

"Néglacez point le sceau de raison et de paix que le destin veut apposer sur votre constitution; et quand l'accord unanime vous permet de compter sur le but que vous voulez atteindre, prétez à la gloire de l'obtenir sans l'avoir passé."

The gifted writer had thus strikingly prophesied, six months before the convocation of the States General, the excesses into which the spirit of demagoguery was speedily to lead the revolution. The national convention, or rather the members of the famous comité de salut public, did go beyond the limits of legitimate reform; and they were not likely to deal mercifully with those, above all, who maintained the rights of liberty and protested against the tyranny of the mob. How to preserve her friends, how to harbour them, how to facilitate their escape, was the task Madame de Staël firmly and exclusively undertook, at a time when every attempt of the kind rendered her amenable to the guillotine. She thus saved the life of M. de Talleyrand, M. de Jaucourt, and M. de Lally-Tollendal. M. de Narbonne, ex-minister of war, was one of the persons on whose behalf she devoted herself most energetically. She watched the streets anxiously during one night when the police were hunting for him. His fate, if he were seized, would be instant death, and she knew that the search of her house must discover him. In this critical circumstance, the government agents called at the house of the Swedish embassy to make their dread domiciliary visit; one would think that only nerves of iron could maintain a calm appearance at such a moment. But she assures us that with her the case was otherwise. "We can always," she adds, "master our emotion, however violent it may be, when we feel that its indulgence would expose the life of another." Was there ever a nobler sentence penned?

Prior to the appearance of *Delphine*, Madame de Staël had published a work, which, together with the volumes on Germany to be presently noticed, contains the programme of her aesthetic system. It appeared in 1800, exactly one year previous to the literary coup d'état of M. de Chateaubriand. The title is, *On Literature considered in its relation to Social Institutions*. Thus, nearly at the same time, from two opposite points of the horizon, rose two standards more intimately allied with one another than was thought at first; and round them were soon gathered those who had long felt the necessity of a literary revival. M. de Chateaubriand's fame has cast into the shade Madame de Staël's treatise, but the impression produced by the work we are now mentioning was strong and lasting. It was, in truth, a bold undertaking, both from the novelty of the opinions stated, and the frequent allusions to passing events; and Madame de Staël expected to meet with much bitter opposition.

Literature holds the closest and the most essential connection with the virtue, the glory, the liberty, and the happiness of a state; humanity is ruled by a law of perfectibility; and it is this law which, from time to time, has elevated the standard of public morality, together with the criteria of taste. The law of perfectibility is indefinite; guaranteed to the future as it was enjoyed by the past, it must follow the development of the social institutions; and its distinctive character in the present day will be the predominance of the serious principles over wit, the triumph of the spirit of the north over the literary aspirations of the south. Such is, in a few words, the argument chosen by Madame de Staël for the subject-matter of her two volumes. They are composed of two parts quite distinct, and ought to be judged each by itself. The historical explanations are not generally very correct, nor the quotations apposite; this, of course, impairs more than once the strength of the best arguments. Madame de Staël may be said to have often guessed uncommonly well; but everything is not a matter of guess, and she has repeatedly adduced errors in support of truths. Imperfectly acquainted as she was with ancient literature, she might have been expected to stumble at the name of a Greek philosopher or a Roman poet, but the Paris Aristarchi could not forgive her a few gross mistakes in

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1 De la Littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les Institutions Sociales. modern lore: they insinuated that she had blundered purposely in order to make good a Utopian system; and when she gave the name of "father of modern poetry" to Ossian—that is, to the notorious Macpherson—no wonder that a hue-and-cry was immediately raised by the public press.

If we consider Madame de Staël's work as a development of the idea of perfectibility, it is open to the severest discussion. There is in it much to blame, much that is questionable; at the same time the author's faith and generous impulses are entitled, on our part, to respect and admiration. Nay, if we believe in Divine revelation, we also acknowledge the principle of perfectibility, although modified and corrected by the influence of the Gospel. Madame de Staël is too dogmatical, but we sincerely admire her fervent hope, her thirst for truth, her thorough contempt and hatred for everything that tends to sever us from immortality, and to bind us to the present moment.

In a literary point of view, the work we are now noticing is a complete manifesto of what the French term romanticism. It is not absolutely necessary, says the author, that we should do better than our forefathers, but we must do otherwise; we must not be imitators, we must be ourselves. Let us, as regards literature, yield to the inspirations which, after the downfall of the Roman Empire, came upon society; let us make room for the Christian element and the Germanic principle. Madame de Staël may not have suspected the extent of the literary revolution which she so strongly advocated; but her views were correct, and have only been explained and carried out by the Hugo school of French authors. At the time when she wrote, amidst all the anxieties of a revolutionary government, and the din of European warfare, it must have seemed extraordinary to many thinkers, that northern poetry should be considered as the necessary substratum for a new literary construction. Then, the idea of turning melancholy into an aesthetic axiom, appeared ridiculous beyond description. Critics laughed at that poetry which mingled its strains with the roaring of the waves and the moaning of the winds. The wits of the time of the Directoire shrugged up their shoulders when told that melancholy was the true source of inspiration, that authors ought to be gloomy, and that every genuine poet was, more or less, under the influence of despondency. In fact, Madame de Staël's axioms were so unexpectedly announced that they were rejected altogether as traits of sophistry, Chénier, Delille, Fontanes, and many others who enjoyed a large amount of well-deserved reputation for their poetical talent, were, besides, far from melancholy; and what was worse than all, Madame de Staël advocated her gloomy theory just at the moment when France, escaping from the Reign of Terror, was already half-intoxicated with glory and pleasure.

The asperity of the public press against both Delphine and the work On Literature went beyond the bounds of common politeness. Could the critics have become Dominicans for the nonce, they would assuredly have made an auto-da-fe of Madame de Staël and of her productions. Her exile towards the end of 1803, her travels, her long residence at Coppet, the friendship she formed with the most eminent German thinkers, directed her ideas into a new channel, and diverted her attention from the small talk of the Paris feuilletons. During the Directoire, when French society was endeavouring to reorganise itself; two salons served in Paris as centres where those persons met who had attained some taste for intellectual pleasures and for the amenities of elegant conversation. The celebrated Madame Tallien gathered together in her drawing-room the supporters of the new order of things, the real republicans, the men of Thermidor; around Madame de Staël might be found assembled, in a small but brilliant array, the thinkers, the enthusiasts who aimed at effecting a compromise between monarchy and the principles of 1789. Their ideal was derived from a deep acquaintance with England and English institutions; they thought that liberty could exist most harmoniously in connection with loyalty, a hereditary line of kings, and even a powerful aristocracy. These discussions, these meetings proved of very short duration; the eventful 18th of Brumaire occurred, and it became quite clear that, under the rule of the Consul Buonaparte, no room would be left for discussions of any kind. Compelled to quit France, Madame de Staël immediately went to Germany, studied the language of that country, visited Weimar and Berlin, and became acquainted with Goethe and the Princes of Prussia. At that time she was already collecting materials for the work which a second excursion (1807-8) enabled her to complete. The tidings of M. Necker's illness reached her in the midst of this new society, so suited to her taste, so calculated to draw out her brilliant conversational powers. Easily alarmed on account of one so fondly beloved, Madame de Staël felt a sad presentiment that she had seen her father alive for the last time. She instantly set out for Coppet, with her son and his tutor, August Wilhelm Von Schlegel. In a state of the greatest anxiety she arrived at Zurich, where she was met by Madame Necker de Saussure, who confirmed her worst fears. Her father was already at rest. Her grief was agonizing to witness, her whole perspective of the future seemed suddenly obliterated; life and death, earth and heaven, were equally at war against her; the one compelled her to wander desolate in strange countries, the other snatched from her her father—her first, most faithful, and dearest friend; her last support seemed gone, and hopeless of relief, she resigned herself to the most afflicting despair. Baron de Staël was dead since 1802. Thus severed from those whom she had a right to regard as her natural guardians, she sought in the delights of friendship both the protection she needed and a diversion to the sad thoughts which the state of her country could not fail to excite. Benjamin Constant, Mathieu de Montmorency, Madame Récamier, were then the favourite habitués of Coppet; and she watched with increased anxiety over the education of a son and daughter, whose amiable dispositions more than compensated for the bitter disappointments she had found in marriage. After a short stay in Italy, Madame de Staël passed a year in Switzerland. During this interval she was busy in the composition of Corinne, and needed little other employment. But as her work drew to a close, she felt an anxious desire of revisiting Paris, partly that she might correct the proof-sheets of the novel with greater care, partly to be near her son, who was then preparing for the polytechnic school under the direction of Wilhelm Schlegel. A police order prohibiting her from coming within 40 leagues of the metropolis, by dint of manoeuvring, and thanks to the kindness of the minister Fouché, she obtained leave to reside at half that distance—at Acosta, a country-house belonging to Madame de Castellane. Poor Corinne! she could find nothing enjoyable far from the atmosphere of a salon; and that impassioned poetess whom we love to fancy, as Gerard's picture represents her, sitting on Cape Misenum, would have exchanged without a pang the Lake of Geneva for the muddy gutter which runs along the pavement of the Rue du Bac! Buonaparte was determined not to allow her the simple gratification she so ardently longed for. Corinne ou l'Italie appeared for the first time in 1807. Being quite foreign to political subjects, it might reasonably have been thought incapable of giving umbrage to the emperor. But its sudden popularity, and the vivid interest in awakened for Madame de Staël throughout Europe, awoke the detestable spirit of jealousy which characterised a sovereign for whose assaults nothing was too noble or too hopeless. On the 9th of April 1807, the very anniversary of her father's death, she received a new sentence of exile. It was now too evident that nothing but the giving up of her independence could satisfy her enemy. Counting the bitter cost, and sighing to reflect that she disposed, perhaps, of the future of others as well as her own, she proudly resolved to maintain her consistency, and once more, at the bidding of her tyrant, said adieu to all that remained of her once brilliant connections in France. It was impossible, indeed, that she could please the emperor. Her last sentence breathed a spirit of generous enthusiasm which was distasteful to him. He is said to have remarked peevishly, "It is no matter what she writes, let it be politics, history, or romance; it comes to the same thing in the end: after reading her, people do not like me."

Corinne is a wonderful work; whether considered as a description of Italy, or as a work on the fine arts, or as a sort of autobiography, we are equally delighted and surprised. Her characters are drawn with the most consummate power, and the psychological analysis which it evinces is not surpassed by any book professing to lay before us the strife of the passions in the human heart. Corinne is the offspring of enthusiasm and of grief; it is no fiction. Madame de Staël was recording her own struggles when she described the hesitation of a woman who cannot decide in her choice between the happiness which springs from the affections, and the emotions to which talent and glory give rise.

We find by glancing at the innumerable memoirs written during the last century, interesting accounts of the coterie over which Voltaire presided at Ferney; a few particulars respecting Madame de Staël's salon at Coppet would be still more welcome, if we could procure them. As many as thirty persons were often at a time the guests of the illustrious exile. Benjamin Constant, Schlegel, Bonstetten, Sismondi, M. de Barante, Madame Récamier, M. de Sabran, were among the most assiduous. Zacharias Werner was introduced in 1809; Lord Byron and "Monk" Lewis represent the genius of England in 1816. The days were spent in intellectual enjoyments, discussions on literature, and critical readings; a spirited opposition was maintained against antiquated formulas and despotism of every description. The book on Germany (de l'Allemagne) may be considered as the result of this epoch in the life of Madame de Staël. It was written with the manifest intention of protesting against a threefold tyranny. Buonaparte had enslaved France; philosophy withered under the oppression of the materialist school; and literature knew nothing beyond a blind acknowledgment of tradition. Madame de Staël felt how much her adopted country stood in need of some stimulant to awaken it to a consciousness of its powers, and she sent l'Allemagne to the press. It was launched, as it were, to defy the violence of the tempest, and to rescue sinking France itself, which, as Madame de Staël believed, had well-nigh lost all its dearly-bought liberties. Convinced that nations should guide and support one another, she sought in the bosom of defeated and humbled Germany the safety of France. There was more patriotism than national pride in the book of Madame de Staël. Buonaparte's police gave it a character which it did not deserve. Despite a persecution quite in accordance with the traditions of military despotism, the spirit of the times, and the general bent of the public mind, insured success to the obnoxious work. Two ideas it contained became popular: the men whom victory had not rendered insensible to freedom, felt that a powerful voice had embodied, in an eloquent address, their hopes and their fears; the panegyric of the descendants of the Teutons appeared in its true light—a proclamation of resistance.

Many a battle was fought in the arena of periodical criticism for or against l'Allemagne, and it soon became manifest that Madame de Staël had successfully maintained her own doctrine on literature and the fine arts. Already a decided tendency might be traced throughout the reading public towards something more true to nature than the dull and fastidious imitations of Racine and Corneille; the veil was drawn, and from behind it a glorious landscape burst upon the sight of the astonished gazers; for many a young and ardent mind, l'Allemagne was replete with the perfumes and emanations of unknown but fragrant stores. That literature described by Madame de Staël, strange, wild, as it appeared, brought to the imagination pleasing fancies and beautiful ideas. Germany became to France as a long-forgotten sister, who had treasured in her heart, and was ever discoursing old family traditions, otherwise lost for ever. Then there came along with her the bewitching prestige of liberty, a literature free from all restraints, whose resources were to be increased a hundred-fold; and the young generation, tired of a classicism which was nothing more than the echo of an echo, thought that, with independence, they had recovered all the earnest of real happiness, whether for good or for evil. Madame de Staël's new work had an immediate influence. It brought to a close the coldness, the enmity which had so long existed between two great people. Many years after, Goethe wrote thus of the book we are now alluding to. "It ought to be considered as a powerful battery which made a wide breach in the sort of wall raised up between the two nations by superannuated prejudices. Thus, beyond the Rhine, we were once more exactly inquired after; and we could not, consequently, fail to acquire great influence throughout the whole western part of Europe."

The principle which Madame de Staël sought to inculcate on her side of the Rhine was enthusiasm. But she pursued her plan cleverly, without proclaiming it, without any flourish of trumpet. Considering her country as an invalid, to whom change of air is prescribed as the first remedy, she accompanied the patient on a tour through Germany. In reading her work, one can fancy a well-informed and judicious guide pointing out to her friend the most striking features of a foreign land. There is nothing polemical, no attack upon particular feelings or tastes; calmness and impartiality prevail, on the contrary, throughout all the descriptions. Madame de Staël's purpose is not to preach a crusade on behalf of Germany. She simply states the facts, and leaves her readers to judge. Of the Teutonic race she is a decided champion; yet in spite of her acknowledged predilection, she did not find favour in the sight of all her Trans-Rhenish cities. Many accused her of having disguised the truth, and of being a very superficial judge. It is true that she had not within her reach all the information which should have formed the proper ground-work of her observations. As for society itself, she knew nothing beyond the manners of aristocratic circles and the fashionable world; whereas, amongst the higher orders, cosmopolitanism is too prevalent, and the national character is worn away by a constant moral and mental friction with those around.

No one will be astonished at hearing that Madame de Staël's Memoirs contain a very unfavourable account of Napoleon Buonaparte. Besides the complete antagonism which must exist between military despotism and intellectual powers of the highest description, the French emperor's behaviour towards the author of Corinne had been marked by a want of courtesy doubly inexcusable. When a man is so circumstanced that he can say, sit pro ratione voluntas, rudeness is the characteristic of petty cowardice. At the same time the evident unfairness stamped upon most of the verdicts pronounced in Dix Années d'Exil, is much to be regretted; Madame de Staël would certainly have best considered the interest of her glory had she not stooped to the tone of a common pamphlet writer.

Illusions, however, were beginning to vanish around Corinne; her circle of friends lost, one by one, its choicest gems;

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1 Such is the title of Madame de Staël's autobiography. sufferings, disappointments, persecutions, the weight of years, all told upon her mental energies. For a short time she believed she saw in M. Rocca's attachment to her, and in her marriage with him, the phantom of that happiness which genius had failed to give her; but gradually the brightest pictures of her fancy lost their hues, and she wisely sought in the solid joys of religion both peace here and hope for hereafter. The restoration of the Bourbon family brought her back to France, so completely altered from what she was when she left it, that to those who knew her at both periods of her life, the difference could not but be painful. And yet it was a change for the better; it was a shaking off of "every weight," a preparation for the last struggle. The friendship of persons such as Madame de Duras, M. du Chateaubriand, and Sir James Mackintosh, made up, in some measure, for old ties which the rude hand of death had broken asunder; but she did not lean too much upon those earthly supports; and when, in July 14, 1817, she breathed her last, it was with those firm hopes that alone can light up the passage through the dark valley.

Madame de Staël left two children, who were both removed from this world in the midst of a career of piety and of usefulness. Baron Auguste de Staël died in 1827, at the early age of thirty-seven; he had already evinced talents, energies, and dispositions which caused him to be regarded as a new Duplessis Mornay, or as the Wilberforce of Protestant France. He took a prominent part in the establishment of the Bible Society, of savings-banks, and in the abolition of the slave trade. His Letters on England, published in 1825, are full of interesting remarks, though necessarily incomplete, from the fact that the author died before he could finish the second volume. Madame de Staël's daughter had married, in 1816, the Duke de Broglie. Her death, in 1838, was felt throughout France as a public calamity. M. Rocca did not long survive his wife. He went into Provence, to be near a brother whom he loved, and there he succumbed under the pressure of sorrow and disease.