plied with air than any other part. The miners knew this too, doubtless, for on our arrival at the place in question, we found them trooping in from different quarters, until there might be above a hundred present; and I was much struck by one thing in them which was not according to my anticipations. I thought that men who were habitually exposed to any danger became callous to it, and faced it with indifference. It was not so with these miners; we, who scarcely understood the magnitude of the danger through which we had passed, were far cooler and more collected than they. Almost every one of them was thoroughly unmanned, and shook in every fibre. I know the ague well (experientia docet), and the uncontrollable shaking which bids defiance to the strongest exercise of the will, but I never saw a worse tremor in ague than in these men. While gathered together in this part of the mine a loud crack ran through the roof above our heads, which so alarmed the already nerveless miners that some of them actually sunk upon the ground. The explanation of this anomaly in men's courage is, I think, that where they see their danger, and can exert themselves to ward it off or escape it, familiarity with it will produce contempt for it; but where they are utterly helpless, and know that they are so, familiarity with it only adds to its terrors. This is the case with earthquakes. No familiarity with them enables a man to meet them with composure; the more he has felt, the more frightened he becomes. I remember seeing another instance of the same kind on board the Tyne, when she was wrecked on the rocks at St. Alban's Head. The sailors on deck were as cool as cucumbers, but the stokers and firemen below were unmanned exactly in the same They could not see their death, and they could do nothing to save themselves if the ship had foundered. way as the miners at West B more in the open air. The explosion had From the Examiner, 18th May. RUSSIA. THE Luxemburg hitch has been got over, but it unfortunately has displayed to the world how much of jealousy and mistrust is between France and Prussia. Before the Luxemburg quarrel it might all be denied, and was denied. The Prussian monarch or Government has never hitherto been in a position to defy or provoke France. The attitude is new, therefore; and the feeling which it excites is felt not only in the breast of the Emperor, but in that of every Frenchman. Bismarck and Napoleon the Third are, however, wary politicians. Each is a man to consider and prepare before he strikes. Besides, Bismarck's hand is held back by that of his sovereign, who is far more timid, more doubtful of the future, and unwilling to risk his crown in another venture. It After waiting a considerable time in this does not, indeed, require any great degree part of the mine - perhaps an hour we of prudence to be unwilling to enter upon again started, and made for the mouth of such a contest single-handed. Prussia the pit. As we approached it we heard would not do so last year, and has reason to shouts, and presently came upon a body of congratulate herself on the alliance she men, who, having heard the explosion, had formed. But where is the ally now? Bisbeen sent down to see what mischief had mark is said to have made a pressing overbeen done. Although the explosion had ture to Austria. Fight in your alliance! travelled so deliberately when it passed answered von Beust. "We did so in over us, it had had sufficient violence when Slesvig, and what was our reward? You it reached the shaft to blow the roof of the turned upon us the moment after." building adjoining the pit-mouth clean off. | Fortunately, it had not destroyed the gear there, and we were able to ascend without delay. Right glad was I to find myself once 66 We believe that there is but one ally possible for either party, and that is Russia. The Czar has thus the fortunes of Europe, and the fate of future wars in his hands. He is coming through Berlin to Paris, and no doubt will receive the offers and explications of both sides. For the next year, then, much, in all probability, depends upon the conduct and desires of the Russian Cabinet. Alexander's own character is soft and vacillating, and would, no doubt, incline him to remain friends with both parties. But this is an impossible policy. Russia would gain nothing by it, and would risk the loss of much. For an alliance she can command almost her own terms from either party. And these terms may be little less than the empire of the Levant. It would be idle to enter into particulars, or attempt to foreshadow what Prussia or what France might give to Russia as the price of her alliance and co-operation. Equally idle would it be to pretend to decide into which balance Russia would definitively throw her sword. All this is for the future. But certain it seems, that the peace of Europe for the next few years depends in no slight degree upon the Czar. The prudent French Emperor is not a prince to precipitate war without a powerful alliance. The King of of Prussia, though not so prudent or so completely master of his actions, still holds by the same principle. He never gave in fully to Bismarck until the latter brought him the Italian alliance. In the situation of rivalry into which France and Prussia have been brought, it is not alone to foreign alliances that they must look. Were the war between them to be immediate, these foreign alliances would be everything. But towards a more remote war, each Government has to seek strength at home. Strength of what sort? Napoleon the Third certainly sits heavy on the liberal aspirations of Frenchmen, and though the discontent will probably never break out against him personally, yet he is not immortal; still less so is his system. Whilst the Prussians rejoice at this crevice in French armour, the French regard with no less hope the wide splits in the German panoply. From north to south the land is full of disaffection towards Prussia; and if southern States and populations have abetted in the quarrel just ended, it was more with the hope of recovering their own power and independence in the struggle than from the patriotic desire to make Germany triumph over France. Peasants and gentry, from the Rhine to the Vistula, abhor the Prussian government. Taxes are doubled, military service and oppression ditto. The Customs union, for the present in pieces, will not be put together again with out being made fiscally profitable to the ruling country. Prussia, in fact, has, by distrust of a liberal domestic policy, made as many foes and grievances as friends or causes of attachment; and it is still a problem how far united Germany would support Berlin in a lengthened war against France. The French, therefore, gather hope from time, as the Prussians do. From the Saturday Review. MADAME RECAMIER.* IN France, where the influence of women has always been exceptionally great, whether as regards the manners, the literature or the politics of any epoch, the salon has at all times had a place approaching that of a national institution. Be it by dint of intellect, wit, skill and vivacity in intrigue, or even sheer beauty of person, it is hard to name a period on which some female leader of society or other has failed to set her mark. With all its changes, the Revolution could only so far modify this traditional feature of French life as to open the doors of the salon to queens of another order. Nor did the women of the new era fall short of the occasion. In the freer play of intellect and action that followed upon the relaxation of etiquette, there was even much to make up for any loss in the more stilted or aristocratic graces of the vieille cour. The brief but bright career of Madame Roland was followed by the still more transient yet brilliant sway of Madame Tallien. The interval between the setting of the star of Notre Dame de Thermidor and the glittering dawn of the Empire was lit by the genius of Madame de Staël, whose enforced eclipse left in turn the firmament of Parisian Society open to the ascendency of her friend and pupil, Madame Récamier. If there was any degeneracy to be detected in the long line of female sovereignty it was in superficial splendour only that the falling off was to be seen. The courtly but prudish graces of the Hotel de Rambouillet, the select gatherings of the little court at Sceux, and the lively coteries of the Marchioness du Deffand were not unworthily represented in the quiet and unadorned parlour of the Abbaye aux Bois. With nothing like the talents which im *Memoirs of Madame Recamier. Translated from the French and Edited by Isaphine M. Luyster. London: Sampson Low, Son, & Marston. 1867. mortalized the author of Corinne, Madame | ame Récamier. From all that we learn of Récamier won herself a place of not less so- her, it is plain that the flame of her genius cial influence among the men and women of was calm and steady rather than intense. her day. It is to no special gift of intellect It drew its heat and light far more from the or talent for intrigue that we are able to heart than from the head. And her warmth trace this ascendancy. The most direct and of heart was of a nature to kindle rather common test of intellectual power is indeed, than to consume. There was something, we in her case, wholly lacking. No pressure of are led to infer, in her constitutional temher friends and admirers could ever prevail perament which, even beyond her delicate upon her to publish a line. Whatever im- and indefinable tact, may afford the real pulse she might be capable of giving to the clue to much of her mysterious ascendancy. thoughts of others, a kind of constitutional Love seems to have existed in her as a yearnreluctance restrained her from making pub-ing of the soul almost entirely free from lic her own. Her friends speak in raptures those elements of passion which are groundof her letters, but she herself, it appears, was ed in the difference of the sexes. There at pains to get them back towards the end of was in it not so much of the desire which her life, and left orders to burn, after her centres in a single object, as of the emotion death, the packet which contained them which seeks to diffuse itself over the very together with certain fragmentary memoirs widest sphere of objects. It could thus be which she had begun to put together in her warm and deep, while pure and inaccessible 1 half blind state. Of all her correspondence, to evil. Sainte-Beuve's remark, that she which was known to be voluminous, no had carried the art of friendship to perfecmore than a bare half-dozen scraps find tion, helps us here to give the true key to a place in the biography which we owe to her character. A warm and constant friend, her niece, Madame Lenormant. Ballanche, she never admitted, never showed herself, a who addressed her as the muse who inspir- lover. Satisfied with the arrangement ed his utterances, so far worked upon her at which gave her from an early age nothing one time as to engage her upon a translation more than the name and status of a wife, of Petrarch, but we do not find that she ever she could let her natural affection range made any great way with it. It is surpris- with freedom and security wherever it met ing, indeed, how little echo has come down with a response that left intact her dignity to us of the wit and wisdom that held her and self-respect. Such coquetry as she contemporaries entranced. Not an epigram showed rose rather from an instinctive deof hers, scarcely a mot or a sally of humour sire to please and attract than from anything or imagination from her lips, has been pre- approaching to a vicious instinct, or a silly served to us. Men of the highest mark for desire to swell the list of her conquests. energy and discrimination of mind held What seemed to begin in flirtation never went converse with her as with an oracle, yet they to the point of danger, and men who at first have put nothing on record beyond a vague sight loved her passionately usually ended and general acknowledgment of her intel- by becoming her true friends. The nearest lect. It was not her beauty either, by itself, approach ever made by her towards a love that lent this singular power of fascination affair was the short and romantic passage in to all that she said, for that power remained her life when the ardent admiration of unimpaired long after she became conscious, Prince Augustus of Prussia seemed to have as she used to say, that the little Savoyards aroused a responsive flame. But even this no longer turned back in the streets to look faint passion died away before the pathetic at her. Nor would such elements of attrac- appeal of her husband. The child-wife tion have gone for much with her own sex; could not find it in her to break off, when yet we know how women clever women age and adversity had settled upon him, the 100-bowed to her autocracy without be- platonic ties of an earlier and more prospertraying a suspicion that anything illusory lay ous day. She at once withdrew the appliat the bottom of what passed for a quality of cation for a divorce. Madame Lenormant's the mind. If wealth and social position, statement of this delicate matter is such as again, went any way toward establishing her decisively to set aside the singular supposiearly prestige, we cannot forget that her tion entertained by some that Juliette Berweight in society was to the full as great nard was the daughter of M. Récamier. The long after riches had made themselves wings relation between the pair was, however, in and flown away. We must clearly look else- other respects, parental and filial rather than where than either to intellect, wealth, beau- conjugal. The banker was forty-two, and or all three combined, for the secret of his beautiful bride but fifteen, when their that witchery which was so distinctive of Mad- marriage took place in 1793. It was not 1 till the break-up of the Reign of Terror that society awoke to the recognition of its new queen and goddess. At eighteen she emerged from childhood into all the splendour of youth. Her beauty became the talk of Par13. Her saloons, the abode of wealth and taste, and lit with her charms and wit, were the centre of the fashionable world. A graphic account of the splendours and the personages assembled there is given by Miss Berry. The Duke de Guignes, Adrien and Matthieu De Montmorency, M. de Narbonne, Madame de Staël, Camille Jordan, and others who had returned from exile, met with Barrière, Eugène Beuharnais, Fouché, Bernadotte, Masséna, Moreau, M. de la Harpe, and all rising actors of the new régime. Lucien Buonaparte first as Romeo, then openly under his own name-made fierce love to the beautiful but unimpressionable Juliette. The First Consul she met but twice, and whatever admiration her beauty may have inspired in him seems to have been lost in jealousy of her influence. Napoleon was weak enough to give out publicly, in the salon of Josephine, that he should regard as his personal enemy any foreigner who frequented the house of Madame Récamier. She was, however, successful in obtaining from him, partly through Bernadotte, her father's release, when M. Bernard was compromised in the Vendéan conspiracy. One of the fragments we have from Madame Récamier's own pen gives touching instances of her sympathy and active share in the trial of Moreau, Polignac, and George Cadoudal. In spite, however, of Napoleon's anger at her opposition, he certainly made overtures through Fouché, in the year 1805, with the view of attaching Madame Récamier to the Imperial household. Her refusal was never forgiven by him, and no doubt added weight to the motives which led, in 1811, to the decree for her exile beyond forty leagues from Paris. With the other members of the Buonaparte family she contracted a close and romantic friendship. Hortense, in every trouble and perplexity, found refuge in her sympathy and her counsels. Caroline, Madame Murat, gave her, when in exile, the warmest welcome at Naples, and a letter of the widowed queen which forms part of the present memoir speaks of the tender affection which subsisted between these two women. When in England, the beautiful Frenchwoman received the most flattering attentions from the Prince of Wales and the highest English aristocracy, as well as from the exiled Duke of Orleans and his brothers the Princes of Beaujolais and Montpensier. By the populace she was actually mobbed, like the beautiful Gunnings in Kensington gardens. The enthusiasm of Madame de Staël for the Duke of Wellington was far from being shared by Madame Récamier. If we can believe that the Duke said to her, on calling at her house the day after Waterloo, "I have given him a good beating," we may understand that dislike of Napoleon failed to qualify the disgust of a loyal Frenchwoman. Her door was thenceforth closed against the Duke's awkward overtures. A couple of notes from the hero speak more of his appreciation of female charms than of his mastery either of the language of France or of that of ordinary gallantry. It was at the bedside of Madame de Staël that Madame Récamier made the acquaintance of Chateaubriand, and between this variously gifted pair grew up that romantic friendship which gave its chief tone to the subsequent life of each. Her friends at first trembled for her peace of mind from the contact with so tumultuous a nature. But the serene integrity and self-control of Madame Récamier became, on the contrary, the means of purifying and chastening the passionate and disordered soul of the poet. Idolized by his contemporaries, and spoiled especially by enthusiastic women, Chateaubriand had become enamoured of himself.. He had sunk, like Byron, into a morbid melancholy. To dispel the clouds that obscured his genius became the mission of Madame Récamier. And the change in his temper is soon made apparent, even from the tone of his correspondence. His selfabsorption is less conspicuous. His irritabil ity is soothed. He is telling the simple truth when he writes to his devoted friend, "You have transformed my nature." From that crisis in his life the memoirs of Madame Récamier do little more than follow the vicissitudes and struggles of Chateaubriand's career. In her retreat at the Abbaye aux Bois it was for him that she toiled to keep up her hold upon society, bringing together every lion of the literary or political world, at once to do him homage and to dispel his ennui. Thither came all the young intellects of the Restoration and the monarchy of July- Benjamin Constant, Thierry, David d'Angers, Delacroix, the Ampères father and son, Pasquier, Cousin, Villemain, Montalembert. Lamartine read there his Méditations, and Delphine Gay recited her first verses. Sir Humphrey Davy and his wife, Maria Edgeworth, Mary Berry, and Alexander Humboldt are among those who have left memorials of their visits. It was there that, in the summer of 1829, a brilliant assemblage heard the presiding genius read BOTH SIDES OF THE SHIELD. I. SHADE IN LIGHT. his tragedy of Moses. In her journeys in | lections afforded us by an intimate friendsearch of health, the first thought of Madame an Englishwoman, Madame Möhl; beside Récamier was how to take him with her, the copious notices in the Mémoires d'outreWhen that was impossible she pined with soli- tombe, and the suggestive and touching sketch tude on his behalf, while her shortest absence which forms one of the series of Causeries filled him with despair. Even his wife's first de Lundi by her friend M. Sainte-Beuve. eager question was, "What will be done Guizot, Lemoine, Madame d'Hautefeuille, then? What is to become of M. de Cha- and others who knew her well have contribteaubriand ?" As years run on, there be- uted many traits of character. But the gins to be even something of the ludicrous work of Madame Lenormant is fuller of dein this couple of old folks alternately cosset- tails, and gives the most complete narrative ing and complimenting each other. We of Madame Récamier's career. The original almost forget the minor satellites who cir- work itself was indeed faulty in execution, cled round the central glow of Madame the arrangement of materials confused, and Récamier's friendship. Poor Ballanche him- the style in places rambling and obscure. In self-her faithful shadow, the "hierophant," presenting it in an English dress, primarily as Chateaubriand patronizingly called him, for the sake of the American public, Mrs. of the little sect that gathered round her Luyster has done well in rendering it more altar-seems to shrink into nothingness; methodical and compact, without interfering while we have so long lost sight of M. Ré- with its integrity or with the individuality of camier that we soarcely become sensible of its authorship. the fact of his death till the decease of Madame de Chateaubriand leaves the poet free to offer his hand to the idol of his heart. "But why should we marry?" was the sensible reply of Madame Récamier, who probably felt the ridicule that might attach to such an union. There was no impropriety in her taking care of him. Years, and the blindness that had of late been stealing over her, seemed to confer that right. For his sake indeed she twice submitted, though uselessly, to an operation for the recovery of her sight. At his bedside, on the 4th of July, 1848, ber anguish was intensified by the thought that she could not see his dying looks. In losing him the mainspring of her life was gone. She could still speak of him as but momentarily absent, and at the daily hour of his visits, her niece tells us, she would still tremble with the sense of his presence. The friends were but a few months divided. The cholera, of which she had a perpetual dread, carried her off, after a short but severe struggle, on the 11th of May, 1849. All Madame Récamier's beauty, strange to say, returned after death. 'There were no traces of suffering - no wrinkles, or signs of age, to mar her features. Her expression was grave and angelic. She looked like a beautiful statue. The grace and sweetness of her last sleep seemed to be the ineffaceable impress of that spirit of tenderness and love which during life had acted like a talisman upon every heart. There is not much in the scanty and fragmentary memoirs compiled by her niece, to let us into the secret workings of Madame Recamier's mind and character. In that respect we owe perhaps more to the recol LIGHT! emblem of all good and joy ! A brighter glow Upon our books and work below. We could not bear unchanging day, Ere long the wearied eye would hail, The solace of the night. And who would prize our summer glow, The glad spring rays, How grateful in Arabian plain Of white and sparkling sand, Across the weary land. To meet the glare, Or blindness were our bitter share. Where is the soul, so meek and pure, Who through his earthly days |