fully and laboriously during his years of loved France too well not to mourn over vigour and maturity has earned a right to her prospects and blush for her savagery repose in the decline of life; who contem- and her crimes; so he sat in his garden plates with a mind enriched by reflection, at Coppet, dejected and remorseful, pining and not soured by failure, the evolution of over the past, and full of gloomy forebodthose great problems of human destiny ings for the future; and deaf to the consolaquorum pars magna fuit, and brings the ex- tions of his faithful wife and his adoring perience of the man of action to modify the daughter. Gibbon, who saw much of him conclusions of the man of thought, and who, at this period of his career, says that he with that serenity of soul which is the last should have liked to shew him in his then achievement of wisdom and of virtue, and condition to any one whom he desired to which belongs only to those who have cure of the sin of ambition. He passed fought the good fight, striven through the whole days in gloom and silence; all atangry tempest, and reached the quiet haven tempts to engage him in conversation were -can look with a vivid interest which has vain; he felt like a vessel wrecked and no touch of scorn on the combatants who stranded: "Othello's occupation was gone.' are still intent upon the battle or struggling By degrees, however, this depression left in the storm, can aid them by his counsel him, and he roused himself again to interest and cheer them by his sympathy;-on the and action. He sent forth pamphlet after other hand, there are few sadder spectacles pamphlet of warning and remonstrance to than that presented by the politician cast hostile readers and unheeding ears. He ofout from power, unable to accept his fate, fered himself to Louis as his advocate, when and sitting unreconciled, mourning, and re- that monarch was brought to trial, and when sentful amid the ruins of his greatness. his offer was declined, published a generous Such was Necker in his last retirement. and warm defence of his old master. The For a long time he said he could think of remainder of his life was passed in the nothing but the coup de foudre which had enjoyment of family affection, of literary overthrown him. In one short year he had labours, and of philosophical and religious fallen from the pinnacle of prosperity to speculations; and he died in 1804, at the the depths of disgrace and neglect; and as age of 72, happy in the conviction that he he had relished the former more keenly per- was o ly exchanging the society of his chehaps than befitted a philosopher, so he felt rished daughter for that of his faithful and the latter more bitterly than became a wise long-respected wife, who had died some man or a Christian. His mortification and years before. regret, too, were enhanced by a somewhat On the whole, Necker was worthy of all morbid conscientiousness;* he could not honour and of long remembrance. History shake off the idea that there was something tells us of many greater statesmen, but of culpable in failure; he felt that he had not few better men. Without going so far as been equal to the crisis, and that he had his enthusiastic daughter, who more than committed many errors; he could not divest once declares that his genius was bounded himself of the dread that his own measures only by his virtue, we quite admit that his might have let loose that tide of national weakness and indecision were often attribufury which was now so fearfully avenging the heaped up wrongs of centuries; and the annoyance of failure was aggravated by the sense of guilt. Besides all this, too, he

table to his scrupulosity, and that more pliant principles and a harder heart might occasionally have fitted him better to deal with the evil days on which he has fallen. In truth, for such a crisis as that of the French *"Cette terreur du remords a été toute puissante Revolution he was somewhat too much of sur la vie de mon père: il étoit prêt à se condamner the preacher and the prude. He was well dès que le succès ne répondoit pas à ses efforts, sans aware On a cru of his own deficiencies. He told

cesse il se jugeait lui-même de nouveau.

qu'il avoit de l'orgeuil, parcequ'il ne s'est jamais Louis XVI. that if moral purity and admincourbé ni sous l'injustice ni sous le pouvoir, mais il se istrative skill were all that was needed in prosternoit devant un regret du cœur, devant le plus the Government, he might be able to serve subtil des scrupules de l'esprit ; et ses ennemis peuvent

apprendre avec certitude qu'ils ont eu le triste succès him, but that if ever the times should rede troubler amèrement son repos, chaque fois qu'ils quire a genius and a will like Richelieu's, l'ont accusé d'être la cause d'un malheur, ou de then he must resign the helm to abler n'avoir pas su le prévenir. Il est aisé de concevoir hands. His portrait and his justification qu' avec autant d'imagination et de sensibilité, quand

l'histoire de notre vie trouve mêlée aux plus terri- may be given in a single sentence: he was bles évènemens politiques, ni la conscience, ni la a good man fallen upon times that required raison, ni l'estime même du monde ne rassurent en- a great man: his failure was the inevitable tièrement l'homme de génie, dont l'ardente pensée, dans la solitude, s'acharne sur le passé."-Vie privée one of mediocrity entrusted with a task de M. Necker, par Madame de Staël, p. 55. which scarcely the rarest genius could have

Vos

successfully accomplished. Disinterested | votre société nous feront oublier encore une fois Nous nous réunissons, almost to a fault, in a period of unexampled les peines de la vie. rapacity and corruption; stainless and rigid d'une tendre amitie; et il me semble qu'en me M. Necker et moi, pour vous offrir l'hommage in his morals amid universal laxity and li- doublant ainsi, je répare auprès de vous tout ce cense; ardently and unaffectedly religious, que le temps m'a fait perdre. Malgré in a howling wilderness of impiety and votre silence volontaire, malgré le silence invoatheism; conscientious, while all around lontaire que j'ai gardé avec vous, vous n'avez him were profligate and selfish; moderate, jamais cessé un instant d'être l'objet de mon while every one else was excited and intem- admiration, et de cette tendre et pure affection perate, he was strangely out of place in sur laquelle le temps ne peut avoir d'empire. that wild chaos of the old and new: ouvrages ont fait mes délassemens les plus the doux. Vos paroles sont pour moi age demanded sterner stuff than he was ces fleuves de lait et de miel de la terre promade of other services than he could ren- mise; et je croise entendre leur doux murmure: der. "To be weak (says Carlyle) is not so cependant je regrette encore le plaisir que miserable; but to be weaker than our task. j'avois à vous entretenir pendant le jour, de Wo the day when they mounted thee, a mes pensées de la veille. Je vivois ainsi deux fois avec vous, dans le temps passé et dans le peaceable pedestrian, on that wild Hippogryff of a Democracy, which spurning the temps présent; et ces temps s'embellisscient l'un par l'autre-puis-je me flatter de retrouver firm earth, nay, lashing at the very stars, ce bonheur dans nos allées de Coppet? Milles no yet known Astolpho could have ridden !" tendres amitiés." Madame Necker, too, was in her way remarkable enough. The daughter of a Swiss Protestant minister of high repute for piety and talent, and herself early distinguished both for beauty and accomplishments, her spotless character and superior intellectual ble affection. powers attracted the admiration of Gibbon during his early residence at Lausanne. He proposed, and was accepted; but his father, imagining that his son might well aspire to some higher connexion, was very indignant, and forbade the fulfilment of the engage

Again,

"Vous m'avez toujours été cher, Monsieur, mais l'amitié que vous montrez à M. Necker ajoute encore à celle que vous m'inspirez à tant de titres; et je vous aime à présent d'une douNous pensons souvent, Monsieur, aux jours pleins de charmes que nous avons passés avec vous à Genève. J'ai éprouvé pendant cette époque un sentiment nouveau pour moi, et peutêtre pour beaucoup de gens. faveur bien rare de la Providence, une des douces Je réunissois dans un même lieu, et par une et pures affections de ma jeunesse, avec celle qui fait mon sort sur la terre, et qui le rend si digne d'envie.

"Quel prix mon cour n'attache-t-il point à votre santé, à l'intérêt que votre amitié répand sur notre retraite. En arrivant ici, en n'y retrouvant que les tombeaux de ceux que j'ai tant aimé, vous avez êté pour moi comme un arbre solitaire, dont l'ombre couvre encore le désert qui me sépare des premières années de ma vie.

ment. Gibbon submitted and moralized: "I sighed as a lover (says he) and obeyed as a son, and Mademoiselle Curchod is now the wife of the favoured minister of a great kingom, and sits in the high places of the earth." They renewed their acquaintance in after years, and remained fast friends till death. There is something, to our feelings, very touching in this lasting attachment beL'ame de M. Necker est embrasée tween those who had been lovers in their par la douleur des évènemens, et j'ai besoin de youth, but who had been prevented from toutes les ressources de l'amitié la plus tendre uniting their lots in life; and the letters of pour faire diversion aux tourmens qu'il endure. Votre conversation me donnera des moyens en Madame Necker, many of which are prece genre, auquels il est impossible de résister; served, give us a most pleasing impression cependant votre bonheur m'est trop cher pour of both her character and powers, and con- que je voulusse vous faire perdre aucun des invey the idea of far greater tenderness and stans de la societé dont vous jouissez. Revenez poetry of soul than, judging from other à nous quand vous serez rendu à vous même; sources of information, she was generally c'est le moment qui doit toujours appartenir à supposed to possess. Faithfully and ardently attached to her husband, whose consolation and strength she had supplied during long years of trial, prosperity, and sorrow, and who repaid her with a fondness

votre première et à votre dernière amie:-je ne saurois découvrir encore lequel de ces deux titres est le plus doux et le plus cher à mon

cœur.'

When Gibbon left Lausannne for London even more feminine than her own, she had in 1793 to undergo a painful and critical yet much true, warm, and watchful affection operation, Madame Necker writes once to spare for her early and now famous friend. In 1792 she writes to him from Coppet,―

more:

"Vous m'annonciez de Douvres, Monsieur, une lettre par le courier prochain; je l'attends "Nous vous attendrons ici, et les charmes de encore et chaque jour avec plus d'angoisse. Je

me consume en conjectures inquiétantes. Ce-Gibbon, the Abbé Raynal, Baron Grimm, and pendant il faut être juste; vous ne pouvez pen- Marmontel, were among these habitués of ser à nous aussi souvent, que nous vous rappro- Necker's society at that time, and we can chons de notre cœur. A Londres tout vous well comprehend the stimulus which the inramène aux idées de ce monde, tandis que tout nous en éloigne ici; près de vous les souvenirs que tercourse with such minds must have given vous me rappelliez m'étoient doux, et les idees to the budding intellect of his daughter. présentes que vous faisiez naître s'y réunissoient The frivolity of French society was already sans peine; l'enchainement d'un grand nombre wearing away under the influence of the d'années sembloit faire toucher tous les temps l'un great events which were throwing their shaà l'autre, avec une rapidité électrique; vous dows before them; and even if it had not étiez à la fois pour moi à vingt ans et à cin been So, Necker's own taste would have sequante; loin de vous, les différens lieux que j'ai habité ne sont plus que les pierres itinérai- cured a graver and more solid tone than res de me vie; il m'avertissent de tous les milles prevailed in common circles. The deepest que j'ai déjà parcourus." interests of life and of the world were conold era still lingered; the gravity of the stantly under discussion. The grace of the

It is difficult to believe that the woman who at the age of fifty could write with this simple and overflowing tenderness to the friend of her youth, could be the cold and somewhat rigid puritan she is represented. There seems, however, to have heen a certain reserve in her character which approached to roideur; she was pre-eminently a woman of principle, and lived perhaps too much by rule and line to be easy and amiable in the general intercourse of the world. This peculiarity rendered her peculiarly unfit to manage or even to comprehend her daughter's nature, which was as full of vehemence and abandon, as hers was of strictness and precision; and in one of her letters

she intimates how she felt the want of an

"intermediaire ou plutôt un interprète" between them. Certain it is, that she contrived to give to those around her the impression of a somewhat unamiable severity of virtue and frigidity of temperament, and though universally esteemed and greatly admired, was too faultless to be generally

loved.

How such a child as Mademoiselle Necker came to spring from two parents who resembled her so little, were a vain conjecture. She was from the first the very incarnation of genius and of impulse. Her precocity was extraordinary, and her vivacity and vehemence both of intellect and temperament baffled all her mother's efforts at regulation and control. Her power of acquisition and mental assimilation were immense. At twelve years of age she wrote a drama of social life, which was acted by herself and her young companions. Her remarkable talent for conversation, and for under standing the conversation of others, even at that early period, attracted the attention and excited the affectionate interest of many of the celebrated men who frequented her father's salon; and in spite of Madame Necker's disapproving looks, they used to gather round her, listening to her sallies, and provoking her love of argument and repartee.

new era

was stealing over men's minds; and the vivacity and brilliancy which has never been wholly lost at Paris, bound the two elements together in a strangely fascinatdevelopment of a vigorous young brain like ing union. It was a very hot-bed for the that of Mademoiselle Necker. Her father, too, aided not a little to call forth her powers; he was proud of her talents, and loved to initiate her into his own philosophic notions, and to inoculate her with his generous and lofty purposes;-and from her almost constant intercourse with him, and his tenderness and indulgent sympathy-so different from her mother's uncaressing and somewhat oppressive formalism—sprung

that vehement and earnest attachment with which she regarded him through life. This existence; it was in fact the strongest and affection coloured and modified her whole her delineation of it (in her Vie privée de M. most pertinacious feeling of her nature; and Necker) is, in spite of its exaggeration, singularly beautiful and touching. It partook, perhaps, a little of the somewhat excessive vivacity which characterized all her sentiments:* it seem in its impressive fervour to have resembled rather the devotion of a woman to a lover she adores, than the calm and tender love of a daughter to a cherished parent. Indeed she more than once, in her writings, regrets that they belonged to dif ferent generations, and declares that Necker

*We remember to have heard a rather amusing exemplification of this. Whilst living at Coppet, a coachman of her father's had overturned some of his guests, who, however, were not injured. When she heard of it, her first thought was, " Mon Dieu ! il aura pu verser mon père." She rang the bell, and summoned the unfortunate coachman instantly to her presence. As soon as he appeared, she opened out upon the assuis une femme d'esprit ?" Poor François, not knowtonished victim thus: "François ! savez-vous que je ing whether he stood on his head or his tail, could only answer by a bewildered stare. "Sachez, donc, (she continued) sachez donc que j'ai de l'esprit-beaul'esprit que j'ai je l'emploierai coup d'esprit-infiniment de l'esprit.-eh bien ! tout vous faire passer votre vie dans un cachot si jamais vous versez m n père!"

was the only man she had ever known to greatest distinction. whom she could have consecrated her life.

We can well imagine

that her singular union of brilliant fancy, At the age of twenty she had attained a solid reflection, and French vivacity, must dangerous reputation as a wit and a prodigy; have made her, in spite of the entire absence she was passionately fond of the brilliant of personal beauty, one of the most attrac society in which she lived, but set at naught tive and fascinating of women. The times its restraints, and trampled on its conven- too were beyond all others pregnant with tionalities and bienséances in a style that was that strange excitement which gives to social then rare, especially among young women, intercourse its most vivid charm. Everybut which the men forgave in consequence where the minds of men were stirred to of her genius, and the women in considera- their inmost depths; the deepest interests tion of her ugliness. Her intellect was pre- were daily under discussion; the grandest ternaturally developed, but her heart seems events were evidently struggling towards not to have been touched; she wrote and their birth; the greatest intellects were spoke of love with earnestness, with grace, bracing up their energies for a struggle even with insight, but as a subject of spe- "such as had not been seen since the world culation and delineation only, not of deep was;" the wildest hopes, the maddest prosand woful experience. She made a mariage pects, the most sombre terrors, were agitatde convenance with as cool and business-like ing society in turn; some dreamed of the an indifference as if she had been the most regeneration of the world-days of halcyon cold and phlegmatic of women. She was a bliss-a land flowing with milk and honey; great heiress, and Eric Baron de Staël was some dreaded a convulsion, a chaos, a final a handsome man, of noble birth and good and irrecoverable catastrophe; everything character. The consideration which appears to was hurrying onward to the grand dénouehave chiefly decided the choice, both of herself ment;-and of this dénouement Paris was and her parents, was that he was an attaché to be the theatre, and Necker, the father of to the Swedish Embassy, was to become our heroine, the guiding and presiding genius. Ambassador himself, and was expected to All her powers were aroused, and all her reside permanently at Paris. Parisian soci- feelings stimulated to the uttermost; she ety had now become, what it always re- visited, she talked, she intrigued, she wrote; mained, an absolute necessity of existence-her first literary performance, the Lettres to Mademoiselle Necker; and in the ar- sur Rousseau, belong to this date. They rangement she now made, she married it are brilliant and warm in style; but their rather than the Baron. She never seems to tone is that of immaturity. have dreamed of domestic happiness, or at These days soon past. Then followed least of any satisfaction of the heart, in this the Reign of Terror. And now it was that deliberate selection of a husband; nor, we all the sterling qualities of Madame de are bound to say, does she ever complain Staël's character came forth. Her feelings of not having found what she did not seek. of disappointment and disgust must have She probably solaced herself by the proverb been more vivid than those of most, for her -true enough, but we should have thought hopes had been pre-eminently sanguine, and exquisitely sad to a young and ardent girl her confidence in her father's powers and of twenty-"Paris est le lieu du monde où destiny unbounded. Now all was lost: l'on se passe le mieux de bonheur.' After her father was discarded, her monarch slain, the ceremony, we hear very little of M. de Staël, either from his wife or her friends. Sometimes circumstances separate them; sometimes reunite them; they seemed to have lived harmoniously, but as comfortably when apart as when together. Her husband seems to have been tacitly ignored, except in as far as he made her "Madame l'Ambassadrice."

her society scattered and decimated, and Paris had lost all its charms. Still she remained; as Necker's daughter she was still beloved by many among the people; as the wife of an Ambassador she was as inviolable as any one could be in those dreadful days. With indomitable courage, with the most daring and untiring zeal, and the most truly feminine devotion, she made The three years that followed her marri- use of both her titles and influence to aid age were probably the happiest of her life. the escape of her friends, and to save and She was in Paris, the centre of a varied and succour the endangered. She succeeded in brilliant society, where she could not only persuading to temporary mercy some of the enjoy intercourse with all the greatest and most ferocious of the revolutionary chiefs; most celebrated men of that remarkable she concealed some of the menaced emigrés epoch, but could give free scope to those in her house; and it was not till she had wonderful and somewhat redundant conver- exhausted all her resourses, and incurred sational powers which were at all times her serious peril to herself and her children, that

Such

are to

she followed her friends into exile. Her nected by family ties, can be friends without husband, whose diplomatic character was being lovers; and what we do not nndersuspended for a while, remained in Holland, stand it is our custom invariably to condemn. to be ready to resume his functions at the If we ever sanction such connexions it is on first favorable opening. Madame de Staël the tacit condition that the affection shall be joined her friends in England, and established limited in its scope, untender in its character, herself in a small house near Richmond, and reserved in its manifestations. where an agreeable society soon gathered devoted friendship as that which subsisted round her, consisting, besides a few English, between Gibbon and Madame Necker, M. of M. de Talleyrand, M. de Narbonne, de Narbonne and Madame de Staël, Cha(whose life she had saved by concealing him teaubriand and Madame Recamier,* in her house, and then dismissing him with us a mystery and offence. Yet it is impos a false passport,) M. d'Arblay, (who after-sible to read without the deepest sympathy wards married Miss Burney,) and one or the description of Chateaubriand, wheeled two female friends. Here, in spite of into the drawing-room of Madame Recamier, poverty, exile, and the mortification of when no longer able to walk thither, but failure, and the fearful tidings which reached them by nearly every post, they continued to lead a cheerful and not unprofitable life. "Their funds (says Miss Norris) were not in the most flourishing condition; and the prospect of war did not favour the continuance of such remittances as they might otherwise hope to get; yet their national gaiety seems to have borne them through their difficulties with considerable credit to themselves. We are told When the re-establishment of something that this little party could afford to purchase like regular government in France in 1795 only one small carriage, which took two persons, and that M. de Narbonne and Talleyrand alter- permitted the Swedish Ambassador to resume nately assumed the post of footman as they his functions, Madame de Staël returned to rode about to see the country, removing the Paris, and passed her time very happily for glass from the back of the coach in order to the next four years, alternately there and join in the conversation of those within. with her father at Coppet. Then came the "The neighbourhood they had chosen for their establishment of the Napoleonic rule, and residence is one naturally beautiful, and so cha-with that ended Madame de Staël's peace racteristically English as to seem racy and fresh to the eye of a foreigner; grateful to those storm-tossed spirits must have been the scenes of rural peace which there spread about them; and still more grateful the kindly English hospitality which awaited them. It was, indeed, a new element infused into the half city, half

rural life, of the then courtly suburb; and almost every day some fresh comer brought new tidings of trouble, and desolation, and narrow escapes."-P. 164.

unable to forego the accustomed society where he had spent every evening for so many happy and eventful years,-and of the touching attentions of his friend to cheer his sinking spirits, and sustain and stimulate his failing faculties. Madame de Staël herself has left us a picture of a somewhat similar friendship,-that of the Prince Castel-forte for Corinne.

and enjoyment for nearly fifteen years. Buonaparte disliked her, feared her, persecuted her, exiled her, and bullied and banished every one who paid her any attentions, or showed her any kindness. He first prohibited her residence in Paris, then in France; and exile from her native land, and from the scene of her social pleasures and social triumphs, was to her almost as dreadful as a sentence of death. Of course she

their views, in their position, in every feeling of their hearts, in every fibre of their cha racter. Madame de Staël was a passionate lover of constitutional liberty: Buonaparte was bent upon its overthrow. The brilliancy and varied attractions ef Madame de Staël's society made her an actual puissance in Paris; and Buonaparte hated rivalry and

The harmony of this little coterie conti-repaid her tyrannical persecutor in his own nued without interruption: "the kindly hos- coin, and with liberal interest. We need pitality" did not. The scandal-lovers of not seek far for the explanation of their England began to think evil things, and to mutual animosity. They were antipathic in whisper evil thoughts respecting the tender friendship that subsisted between Madame de Staël and M. de Narbonne; they fancied it necessary to frown upon an affection which was alien to their national habits, and some of them, Miss Burney among the rest, began to look coldly upon the colony of foreigners, who ventured to live in Engiand as naturaiiy and simply as they could have done in France. There was no foundation whatever for the vulgar insinuations that were whispered about; but their existence can scarcely excite surprise. For in this country we do not understand that man and woman, uncon

To all who wish to comprehend this peculiar and most beautiful phase of French character, we earnestly recommend a most interesting and affecwhich appeared in Fraser's Magazine for September 1849, from the pen of Mrs. Austin.

tionate tribute to the memory of Madame Recamier,