her unequalled conversational powers in after-life were owing.

It is curious that her father, whom she loved and venerated almost to excess, had a dislike to female writers, and prohibited his wife from indulging in the use of her pen, for the seemingly petty reason, that it would distress him to disturb her on entering her chamber. Her filial affection, however, and obedience, great as they were, were totally unequal to the suppression of the passion for writing in his young daughter. Baron Grimm, in his memoirs, mentions that Mademoiselle Necker, at the age of twelve years, amused herself by writing little comedies after the manner of M. de Saint Mark. The scenes of one of these dramas, he says, were so ably written and well connected together, that Marmontel, on seeing it performed by the author and some of her young companions at Saint Owen, Necker's country-seat, was affected even to tears. From this open performance of her dramas, we may gather that the success of our heroine's compositions had, even thus early, overcome her father's objections. In her fifteenth year, she wrote an abstract of Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws, which shows that at this time her avocations were not entirely histrionic. Her first published works were three playsSophia, a comedy; and Lady Jane Grey, and Montmorency, tragedies. These were given to the world in 1786, and in the same year she was married to the Baron de Staël Holstein, ambassador from Sweden to France. This was not a marriage of affection; and Madame Necker has been blamed for hurrying her daughter into a union with a man much older than herself, and when her affections were known to be engaged to another. A desire to secure to her daughter a husband of the Protestant persuasion, is assigned as the reason for Madame Necker's conduct.

Madame de Staël-which contraction of her husband's name she bore thought life-did not arrest public attention by her dramas. Her Letters upon Rousseau had a different fate; they attracted notice at once, and are still popular with all who endeavor to fathom the extraordinary character who was their subject. Great events, however, in which, from her father's situation, she was necessarily deeply implicated, were now at hand. In 1787, the revolutionary ferment in France first

assumed an open and formidable front. It was impossible that a mind like Madame de Staël's could have looked, so closely as she was enabled to do, upon the political affairs of that country, without forming strong opinions, and imbibing a deep interest. The period, too, was one in which many women of brilliant talents flourished in France, and exercised a powerful influence on its destinies; when they were consulted in the management of public affairs, and interfered, by speech and pen, in support of the doctrines to which they were attached.. Of all her father's maxims of political economy, she was a strenuous and conscientious advocate. It may be conceived, then, with what concern, both in a public and private point of view, M. Necker's banishment, in 1787, affected her, and how joyously she shared in the triumph of his recall in the following year. The gratification was short-lived. Within a very little time, she saw her father again necessitated to withdraw from the helm of public affairs. After his departure, the revolutionary storm rapidly increased in violence, and Madame de Staël beheld with grief the monarchy tottering to its fall. With a degree of courage that redounds to her honor, she issued, in the very height of Robespierre's power, a powerful and eloquent defence of the queen, from whom, it should be remembered, she had always experienced aversion rather than favor. This publication probably would have sealed Madame de Staël's fate, had she not escaped the clutches of the assassins, almost accidentally, on the night of the 2d of September, up till which period she had lingered in Paris, unwilling to leave her friends in danger. She was for a period detained by the agents of the Jacobins, but made her way at last from the scene of bloodshed. Her father's house in Switzerland was the place of refuge which received her.

In 1795, the French Republic was recognised by Sweden, and Madame de Staël, in that year, left her retirement, and returned to Paris with her husband, who was again appointed ambassador. Our heroine had not spent her hours of retirement in idleness, as appeared by the publication, in 1796, of her work on the Influence of the Passions on Individual and National Happiness. Before this, however, she had recorded her views respecting the condition of France, in two political pamphlets upon peace, general and internal. A circumstance

connected with the history of an eminent character shows the influence she had acquired over the leading men shortly after her return to Paris. Talleyrand came home in the end of 1795 from his American exile. By her influence with Barras, and his colleagues in the Directory, Madame de Staël procured for Talleyrand the appointment of foreign minister.

Madame de Staël's work on the Passions was peculiarly calculated to attract the admiration of a nation like the French. The views it contained were lively, striking, and enlightened, but it was deficient in the subdued, practical wisdom, and sustained depth of her later philosophical writings. As it was, it placed her on the very pinnacle of female Parisian society; an elevation which her powers of conversation, now progressing to maturity, enabled her with ease to maintain. In the year 1797, she saw, for the first time, the man whose enmity was destined to imbitter her future life. Bonaparte had then returned to Paris, after the conclusion of the peace of Campo-Formio. Madame de Staël, like others, was dazzled by the brilliancy of his reputation, and it is undeniable, that she at first courted his friendship. Her views in doing this were, to secure his aid, if possible, in establishing the independence of her native Switzerland. From the very outset, however, they found themselves unsuited to each other. Bonaparte has said, that she took a dislike to him on account of an answer made by him to a question of hers, as to what sort of woman deserved most-which was the most meritorious member of society?' 'She who bears most children, madame,' was the reply. Madame de Staël denies that the conversation, as stated here, ever took place; and that, even had it been so, she could not have taken offence.

The Baron de Staël died in 1798, leaving his widow with two children, a son and daughter. He had been lavish in his habits; and having a mind incapable of appreciating the talents of his wife, their union altogether had been marked by mutual coldness, if not disagreement. At the time of his death, he was on his way, in company with Madame de Staël, to her father's house at Coppet, whither she hastened on hearing of the danger impending over Switzerland from the French armies. When Geneva was incorporated with France, she returned with equal haste to Paris, to cause Necker's name to

be struck from the list of emigrants. Her father's future peace seemed thus in some measure assured; but he fell into an error some time afterwards, which was the ostensible cause of overturning his daughter's happiness. Bonaparte, before his passage of the Great St. Bernard, visited Coppet, and spoke with some freedom respecting his future views to the ex-minister of finance. Necker was injudicious enough, in a work issued in 1802, to tell the world that the First Consul intended to reestablish a monarchy in France. Napoleon had no wish to see his plans thus prematurely laid bare, and he sent a haughty message to Necker, not to meddle with public affairs. It is a point not clearly ascertained, whether or not Bonaparte's anger at this transaction was the real cause of his violent conduct to Madame de Staël. The true reason, some have surmised, was his fear of her influence, and her clear and enlightened understanding, in thwarting his ambitious plans. Whatever may be the truth of the matter, at this same period he accused her of sending information to her father, injurious to the French government, and banished her from Paris. She went to her father at Coppet.

It may save future allusions to Bonaparte's reasons for his continued oppressions of Madame de Staël after this time, if we now shortly advert to his own explanation of the point. He averred at St. Helena, that the lady, in season and out of season, in spite of all warnings of a gentle nature, made herself and his acts the subject of incessant sarcasm and unrelenting hostility; that she raised coteries and clubs against him; and, in short, that her interminable and injudicious babbling was dangerous to him, and caused all her own misfortunes. The observant reader will see that there are two sides of this matter, as of every other; and that what Napoleon termed babbling, might be but the free thoughts of a clear-headed and independent-minded woman.

Madame de Staël's literary fame, meanwhile, was widely increasing. In the very year of her banishment, two of her most celebrated works issued from the press at Paris-namely, her Considerations on the Influence of Literature on Society, and her romance of Delphine. The first of these publications is an attempt which might well have daunted the most masculine mind of this or any age; and the success with which it

has been executed by a woman, confers immortal lustre on the sex. From the early days of learning and science in Greece, she has traced the progress and effects of literature through all times and countries, and has laid bare the causes of national peculiarities of taste and thought in a manner singularly luminous and comprehensive, and with a generalising spirit of philosophy equal at all times to the magnitude of the subject. The task required the learning of a Gibbon, and a Gibbon's Yet this work was not fully appreciated, till her novels brought its author into the notice of Europe. Of Delphine, the first of these, it is hard to say whether it has received most praise or censure. The story charmed every one, but it has been condemned as injurious in its moral tendency. The author, in a distinct essay, denied the justice of the accusation, and defended her work. Into this point we shall not enter, though we cannot help expressing our opinion, that the censure was not altogether unmerited.

In 1803, Madame de Staël visited Germany, and had the misfortune to lose her beloved father before she could return to Coppet. At that place, she remained for the next two years, and in 1805 she published Necker's Manuscript Remains with a Life prefixed to them. At this time, she appears to have been in a state of the utmost mental depression. Her father's death, and her exile from Paris, the place she loved above all others, weighed heavily upon her. She went to Italy, in hopes of dispelling her grief; and when there, an intimate friendship sprang up between her and the German scholar, A. W. Schlegel, who became the inmate of her family, and superintended her son's education. The fruit of her Italian tour was the celebrated novel of Corinne, or Italy. The heroine of this work, which it would be superflous in us to praise here, is a picture, almost confessedly, of Madame de Staël herself, as she wished to be,' while the heroine of Delphine represents her as she was.' She resided chiefly, after the production of Corinne in 1807, at Coppet, yearning always for Paris and its society, and wandering sometimes on the verge of the proscribed circle, her banishment being only for forty leagues around the French capital. But she was soon to have the miseries of exile doubled to her.