Her first visit to Italy was made when the submit to be lengthened or shortened by their own wound inflicted on her heart by the death of a Procustean bed. Yet those who are so prudish father whom she literally adored, was yet green. at home, not unfrequently throw off restraint She was therefore predisposed to serious thought, when beyond their own circle. We need not such as well accorded with the melancholy wrecks wonder, therefore, that Lady Edgermond, who of past grandeur, which every where met her eye had been shocked at a young lady's love-songs in Italy. Her relative, Madame Necker of Saus- and love-verses in her own house, carried her sure, in her eloquent sketch of her character and daughter without a protector to a crowded Lonwritings, tells us that she then imbibed that strong don theatre, and that too just after the death of a admiration for the works of art and scenes of na-near relative, whose property she had inherited. ture which is displayed in the pages of Corinne. Yet we cannot believe that she is a representShe was also prepared to delineate a charac-ative of English ladies, or that Madame de Stael, ter like Lord Nelvil, in whose mind grief and with all her admiration of British people and inreverence for a father were such prominent traits; stitutions, could fully appreciate their feelings but his remorse for having neglected his father's and manners. Although intending to be just and advice and possibly hastened his death, were the liberal, she could not get rid of the continental suggestions of her imagination and not of her taint. experience. It may be admitted that the English, and perWhile her own consciousness furnished Mad-haps the Americans, are not sufficiently indulame de Staël with the ground of Corinne's char- gent towards differences of national manners and acter, the colors which she laid on were doubt-habits, and are too prone to consider, as indisless more glaring than those of the original. pensable to virtue, those usages which are its She superadds to her own qualities those which safeguards among themselves. It may also be she represents as produced by the heroine's Ital-conceded that both nations would be better and ian education and heightened by her enforced more liberal if their charity were more extended. temporary residence in England. But let them beware of exchanging their own Oswald is more ordinary, and less colored. faults for the far more dangerous faults of the His talents, his heroism, a sort of moral excite-Italians. ment to relieve despondency, and his filial affec- When therefore a being of exquisite beauty, tion, although a striking combination, are not genius, and sensibility, engrossing almost the grossly improbable. The surrender of his old whole interest of this splendid romance, stepe prejudices and opinions to the influence of his beyond the boundaries of even Italian license, mistress. his irresolution, his impulsive promises and yet remains pure and spotless to the lavi, of fidelity, and his violation of those promises, while the manners of English ladies, with whom when the meshes of early habit close around she is contrasted, are also caricatured, the effect him, strengthened as they were by his father's on young ladies of keen sensibility and ardent wishes, are true to nature. One of less sensi-imagination must be decidedly pernicious. Ide bility and honor would either never have con- not accuse or even suspect the author of any ceived an honorable passion for Corinne, or would such design, but on the contrary believe that it sooner have forgotten her wrongs in the charms was her purpose to give a true picture of huma of a lovely wife, high rank, fortune, and military nature and national peculiarities. But while ac glory. Yet, while we may reason thus, his inde-quitting her of a design, contradicted by the pure. cision, a defect in a man's character, that almost moral and religious sentiment which pervade the always excites something akin to contempt, di-book, I cannot be blind to the effect. minishes the interest which we should otherwise A young lady of strong feelings, superior and cultivated intellect, surrounded it may be by un D'Erfeuil, the type of the French, represents congenial society, is delighted, as every one mas them better than Mr. and Lady Edgermond do be, with the heroine. Yet that heroine not the English. The latter are mere caricatures of leaves England secretly, and lives in Italy: their nation, and Miss Lucilia Edgermond is a years without protection, and without her trat girl of undeveloped character. name, a step in itself sufficient to blast the repa feel in his individual fortunes. We should think the description of the English tation of an English or American woman; b provincial town highly colored, if not assured she afterwards roams about Italy with Lord Nel that immediately after the publication of the ro-vil, just as if she were his wife, and in utter de mance, a certain town appropriated and resented fiance of the censures of even her lenient Ital the ridicule. Small towns and villages are pro-friends. verbially intolerant of every thing which varies Now it is barely possible that one woman, under a hair's breadth from their own standard of man- such circumstances may escape infamy and run ners, and regularly anathematize all who do not but it would be just as safe for others to follow her example, as it would have been for a man to have ancient. The "eternal Roman empire," whose jumped down Niagara after Sam Patch. It may terminus, according to prophecy, was to remain be said that none will imitate her. Perhaps not, forever fixed, had left no other moral relic of its if we refer to exact imitation; but what will be existence, than the superstitious tyranny which the tendency with the ardent and imaginative, entered into the souls of the Italians, deadening already galled by restraints, perhaps a little too their sensibilities and making them the willing heavy, and conscious of their own innocence? victims of civil tyranny. As seen by Madame The spark of resistance to prudent custom may de Staël, they seemed utterly oblivious of their be smothered under ordinary circumstances, but glorious ancestry. The republics established by will blaze out when fanned by the breath of the French had perished with the bloody liberty temptation. tree of which they were but parasites, and Bonaparte's concordat with the Pope had restored the authority of the pontiff. We must deprecate every thing that encourages human passion to chafe at the barriers, which, although sometimes raised too high, are indispensable for the restraint of its excesses. We must be struck with the liberal and en-deeply moved by the contemplation of such a lightened views, the rare mixture of enthusiasm region, under such circumstances, nor fail to imand discrimination which characterize the author. press on others the result of her emotions and But we cannot help believing that, in some im-reflections. It is here accordingly the principal portant particulars, Madame de Staël would have value of the book lies. Coming from one deeply been a dangerous companion for an imaginative imbued with literature and history, it abounds girl, while in others her society would have been with remarks calculated to awaken the intellect, a rare blessing. Still more is Corinne, with all to rouse the feelings and stimulate the imaginaMadame de Staël's faults, and tried by circum- tion, in regard to the great questions of social, stances of peculiar tempation, a dangerous read-intellectual and political improvement. Few of ing associate to a class of young ladies who need either sex had examined these questions more A mind, so rich in thought and erudition as Madame de Staël's, could not be otherwise than and deserve most care. Yet the book is undoubtedly full of valuable thought, and well adapted to cultivate a taste not only for elegant literature and the fine arts, but for the sublime speculations on the political, moral and eternal destinies of mankind. profoundly and impartially than Madame de Staël. She had early imbibed a zealous attachment to rational liberty from her father, who although unable to avert the great crisis of the French revolution, possessed distinguished intelligence and probity. She said just before the ruins of Rome, Gibbon, once the suitor of death—J'ai aimé Dieu, mon père, liberté. Amid her mother, was inspired with that enthusiasm, which sustained him through the arduous labors necessary to the erection of the proudest historic monument of modern times. Disfigured it unfortunately is by scepticism and philosophic cant; but its accuracy is regarded as unquestionable, and its value as incalculable. But we must consider Corinne not merely as a romance, but as a picture of Italy, such as it then appeared to the eye and mind of the gifted author. Naturally it is one of the finest countries on the globe. Its fertile soil, its delightful climate, its extensive sea coast, give it the elements of wonderful prosperity. It is in Italy accordingly that we find one of the most remarkable developments of human greatness. There The impression of the same scene led to the arose the people which left the impress of its composition of Corinne. We may find in it an arts, its literature, and jurisprudence on so large occasional extravagance of sentiment and lana portion of the civilized world, and whose story guage, which, however, characterized the age and forms the connecting link between ancient and the continent, more than the individual author. modern history. There too was formed that mu- On the other hand, it abounds in thoughts that seum of the arts, the study of modern artists, are not unworthy the author of the Decline and which originating in wholesale robbery, has in turn become the prey of modern plunderers. It is a singular fact that those works of art that long constituted the pride of modern Rome, are about We English and Americans are much inclined being sold, to sustain the republic which has to say, with the Pharisee, “we are not as other there sprung up, like one of the volcanic isles nations." Conscious of our political and social on the sea-coast, and which, we fear, is des- advantages, we are prone to feed our vanity by tined soon to fall under the combined attacks uncharitably exulting over others less favored. of anarchy withip, and invasion from with- We never dream of deriving improvement, as well as amusement from the study of national out. Fall, and are often more elevated, because pointing to an immortality, the brightest evidence of which he labored to destroy. Modern Italy presents a painful contrast to the peculiarities and institutions. Madame de Staël has a more liberal spirit and I same time share the fears and anxieties which more enlarged views. Painfully conscious of recent events have occasioned all thinking men Italian degradation, she does not fail to discover as to the result. the redeeming traits of Italian character. Those whose attention has not been specially directed to the subject, are apt to regard the whole population of the Peninsula as an uniform mass of corruption and imbecility. The following remarks show this to be a great mistake. If the Italians have not the dignity and energy of ancient Romans, they are exempt from their overweening pride and arrogance. If they seek revenge even by assassination, when unprovoked they are exceedingly kind and affectionate. If "It is true that governments form the characQui ne sait pas feindre, ne sait pas vivre, forms, ter of nations; and that in this same Italy, you as it were, their national motto, they can urge the see remarkable differences of manners between slave's as well as the tyrant's plea, necessity. If the states which compose it. The Piedmontese, they have not the brilliant coteries of Paris, nor who formed a small national body, have a more the shining clubs of London, they are not disturbed entines, who have had either liberty, or princes military spirit than the rest of Italy; the Florby the vanity and envy which the spirit of soci- of a liberal character, are enlightened and mild; ety excites. If public sentiment tolerates an the Venetians and the Genoese show themselves undue freedom of manners, and even an illicit capable of political ideas, because there is among intercourse between the sexes, there is little of them a republican aristocracy; the Milanese are that baneful curiosity, which, unlike the quicksil-have long since introduced this character among more sincere, because the nations of the North ver used with gold ores, accumulates the dirt, them; the Neapolitans might easily become warwhile rejecting the glittering particles that are like, because they have been united for several borne down by the current of human society. We ages under a government imperfect indeed, but The Roman noblesse having ought to remember also that want of chastity in still their own. that country does not necessarily imply the total nothing to do, either in politics or war, are of course ignorant and idle; but the mind of the depravity which almost always follows it in ecclesiastics, who have a career and an occupation, are far more developed than those of the nobles; and, as the Papal government admits no distinction of birth, but, on the contrary, is purely elective in the order of the clergy, the conse habits, which makes Rome the most agreeable quence is a sort of liberality, not in ideas, but in residence for all who have no longer the ambition, nor the possibility of playing a part in the stricter communities. If we must lament and denounce the dreadful superstition, which has converted the simple, spiritual worship of the gospel into pompous mummery, the freemen of Jesus Christ into Papal slaves, and the strict purity of the New Testament into licensed immorality, we must avoid extending our indignation to all individuals liv-world." ing under that system, and to those fine arts which have been so ill employed in making its forms attractive. If Italian literature is miserably deficient in substance and simplicity, we are led by Madame de Staël to observe the imaginative character of the people, the elegant expressions familiar to the mouths of the lowest, their passionate devotion to the fine arts, the softness and flexibility of their language, and their latent capacities of improvement under more favorable auspices. How far this estimate of the different nations in Italy corresponds with their recent conduct, I have not time to inquire. In regard to Madame de Staël's high genius, there has been little difference of opinion among literary men. The characteristics of that ge nius are too well known to need description here. She sometimes wandered into a cloudland, in which even the clear vision of Robert Hall could not follow her progress. This, however, is to be attributed, as much to the speculative genius of She could have little anticipated that a Pope the age, and her intercourse with the Germans, would ever strike a blow for the emancipation of as to the tendency of her own mind. Her colItaly; but if he should, it was not difficult to fore-loquial vanity disgusted the fastidious taste of see that he himself would be crushed under the Lord Byron, who was in truth not a whit behind mighty car, which he had set in motion down the her in love of excitement and admiration. It "easy descent" to anarchy. Every thing seem- may be that a remark in Corinne will in part ed then to be retrograding towards the despotism explain his aversion. "However distinguished which had driven the oppressed to resistance in a man may be, he never enjoys, without a mixso many parts of Europe, and moderate politi-ture of pain, the superiority of a woman." cians had nothing to cheer them in the contem- Speaking of Lord Byron, it may be well to plation of the future. If permitted now to witness what is going on upon earth, she would doubtless rejoice that the Italians have again participated in the European notice the resemblance between a celebrated pas sage in his Childe Harold, and one in Corinne. The passage in Childe Harold commences with the 179th stanza of the 4th Canto, and as all bis movement towards liberal institutions, and at the readers remember, runs thus: Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll! Then after an intervening passage of the same tenor, the 182nd stanza concludes with the well known lines: Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow- In describing the church at Ancona, Madame de Staël uses the following language. "The Catholic church is on the top of the mountain, and hangs over the sea; the noise of the waves is mingled with the songs of the priests; the church is overcharged in the interior with a crowd of ornaments in sufficiently bad taste; but when we stop under the portico of the temple, we love to connect the purest of all the sentiments with the spectacle of that proud sea, on which man can never impress his trace. The earth is cultivated by him; the mountains are cut by his roads; the rivers are confined in canals to carry his merchandize; but, if vessels furrow the ocean for a moment, the wave comes immediately to efface that slight mark of servitude; and the sea re-appears such as it was at the moment of creation." I do not pretend to charge Lord Byron with a censurable plagiarism; for it is very likely that the genealogy of these ideas may be traced much farther back than either author. But it is interesting to note the coincidence, and also the fact that Childe Harold was published some years after Corinne. Napoleon persecuted Madame de Staël, and endeavored to bring her into contempt. But his whole conduct towards her manifests his fear of her great powers. Censorship and exile are never used against those believed to be contempt ible. dominant among her intellectual powers; for she had long planned a French prose poem, on the subject of Richard Coeur de Lion, like Fenelon's Telemaque. She regarded French verse as too restricted and monotonous for her purpose. I had marked a number of brilliant passages for quotation, but will omit all except three or four, which are hardly fair specimens. "The religion of grief, Christianity, contains the true secret of man's pilgrimage on earth." "Nothing contributes so much to render works of imagination unnatural, as having a purpose." "The grief of our modern times, in our social state so cold and so oppressive, is that which is most noble in man; and, in our days, he who has not suffered, cannot have felt or thought. But there was in antiquity something more noble than grief; it was the heroic calm, the feeling of his power which could be developed among free institutions. The finest statues of the Greeks have scarcely ever indicated any thing but repose. The Laocoon and the Niobe are the only ones which represent violent griefs; but it is the vengeance of heaven of which they remind us, and not the passions born in the human heart." This passage shows how profoundly her intellect and imagination were exercised on the fine arts, as well as every other subject to which her attention was directed. Again she remarked, "That sculpture was the art of Paganism, as painting was that of Christianity, and that there was found in those arts, as in poetry, the qualities which distinguish ancient and modern literature." "Among the arts music alone can be purely religious." Now I do not vouch for the truth of the opinions contained in these passages, but merely quote them as characteristic, and, to use a fashionable word, suggestive. We shall find the same traits pervading all her other works, and exhibited on all the topics of which they treat. She was fortunate in the character of her parents, for her mother, as well as her father, was In politics, in historical and philosophical dis- highly intellectual and thoroughly educated. But quisition, in romance and literary criticism, her her father seems to have been her favorite, and genius shone forth, if not with equal, yet uncom- indeed her idol. In his house, she early attracmon lustre. We are sometimes, as it were, ted the attention of the most celebrated literary crowded by the multitude of her ideas, and at and scientific men in Paris, and cultivated her others dazzled by the glittering gems of fancy remarkable colloquial talents. with which they are encrusted. Those who require truth to be always unadorned, may regard er brilliant sentences as mere tinsel; but they will usually find a substratum of profound and aluable thought. Her imagination, vivid as it was, was little superior in power to her great ntellect. She afterwards travelled in Germany, Italy, England, and during her exile in Russia and Sweden, she appears to have studied the literature of the three first named countries with great industry and success. Notwithstanding her religious education, she did not escape the contagion of the prevalent But she evidently regarded imagination as pre-scepticism. It was a time when many were in clined to uproot all old institutions, and to class | Hampshire and Maine, in this country,it considers Christianity among those which should become as "outside barbarians." It looks upon talents as obsolete. Many passages in her works, as well indigenous to Boston and never heard of a great as the positive declaration of her friend and re- man, South of Mason and Dixon's line. lation Madame Necker, show that her speculative doubts were removed, if she did not become a practical believer. She often warmly eulogizes Christianity; but it is in the somewhat fanciful strain, which has since become fashionable with such French authors as Lamartine. Her separation from her first uncongenial husband, and her romantic and concealed marriage to her second are no evidences of her matrimonial prudence; but I am not aware of any imputations on her purity. In spite of her faults and eccentricities, her character and works deserve study, as proving her to be the most remarkable literary woman of her own, if not of any age. SONNET. SENEX. Poet! If on a stainless fame be bent AN ARTICLE After the style of the Review. I defy any man, familiar with this Review, to say that the following article is a caricature. It might pass for a "paper" from its last number. ART. V.-ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE POETS. From Passages in the Life of little Billy Vidkins. Drawn and designed by H. L. Stephens, Engraved by C. S. Hinckley. Philadelphia, 1819. Duodecimo-pp. 32. In reviewing the history of past events, the mind is incontrovertibly led to the contemplation of present circumstances, colored as they may be, in the future, by the glorious reminiscences of antediluvian deeds. The world commenced with the creation of Adam. He was the first man and Eve was the first woman. They had two sons, who were called Cain and Abel, the latter of whom was, on a certain occasion, killed by the former. The deluge, which, after a lapse of a considerable number of rolling years, inundated the world, so that the only persons saved were the patriarch Noah and his family, produced an entire change on the surface of affairs. To Shem and Ham and Japheth was committed the somewhat difficult, though not hopeless task of repopulating the Earth. They accordingly settled in different portions of this terraqueous globe and from them, the various races, which now occupy and replenish both Hemispheres, were sprung. It would give us pleasure, after the manner of each and every article that has ever appeared in this Review on any subject whatsoever, inclusive of a learned Treatise on Rowland's Macassar Oil and the Lectures of Professor Agassiz on Fishes, to trace the history of mankind from their earliest period down to the present epoch, to dilate on the remarkable events, which have succeeded, link by link, in the monstrous chain of being, and to fructify our minds on the results of that high philosophy, which teaches that there is, in the language of the most illus The following, Mr. Editor, is, I maintain no trious of British lexicographers, “a certain wildexaggerated imitation of the pretensive and pom- ness in the assumptions of manifest folly, which pous style of a certain celebrated Northern peri- calm and dignified reason cannot stoop to controodical. It always gives its opinions even upon vert." But, however much we might desire to trifles, with the most solemn seriousness. It expatiate on the past, touching on the Merovincannot take or make a joke. It is ever literally gian era, and giving detailed and elaborate inin earnest. It is in general dull and dignified. vestigations of the instigations of Alaric to lead It abounds in common-place Latin quotations, and is the very repository of universal knowledge. It knows but two portions of the habitable globe-namely, Old England and New Eng land. All but the inhabitants of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New on his Goths to desolate the Roman empire, we are forced, notwithstanding the pertinency of such retrospective review to the topic in handnamely, "Passages in the Life of little Billy Vidkins"-to pause, as it were, on the very thresh hold of the temple of criticism, and exclaim with |