great earnestness, all the objections that were stated to this extraordinary union.

Her temper appears from the very first to have been delightful, and her heart full of generosity and kindness. Her love for her father rose almost to idolatry; and though her taste for talk and distinction carried her at last a good deal away from him, this earliest passion seems never to have been superseded, or even interrupted, by any other. Up to the age of twenty, she employed herself chiefly with poems and plays;-but took after that to prose. We do not mean here to say any thing of her different works, the history and analysis of which occupies two-thirds of the Notie before us. Her fertility of thought, and warmth of character, appeared first in her Letters on Rousseau; but her own character is best portrayed in Delphine-Corinne showing racher what she would have chosen to be. During her sufferings from the Revolution, she wrote her works on Literature and the Passions, and her more ambitious book on Germany. After that, with more subdued feelings-more confirmed principles-and more practical wisdom, she gave to the world her admirable Considerations on the French Revolution; having, for many years, addicted herself almost exclusively to politics, under the conviction which, in the present condition of the world, can scarcely be considered as erroneous, that under "politics were comprehended morality, religion, and literature."

tageously contrasted with Rousseau; who, with the same warmth of imagination, and still greater professions of philanthropy in his writings, uniformly indicated in his individual character the most irritable, suspicious, and selfish dispositions; and plainly showed that his affection for mankind was entirely theoretical, and had no living objects in this world. Madame de Staël's devotion to her father is sufficiently proved by her writings;-but it meets us under a new aspect in the Memoir now before us. The only injuries which she could not forgive were those offered to him. She could not bear to think that he was ever to grow old; and, being herself blinded to his progressive decay by her love and sanguine temper, she resented, almost with fury, every insinuation or casual hint as to his age or declining health. After his death, this passion took another turn. Every old man now recalled the image of her father! and she watched over the comforts of all such persons, and wept over their sufferings, with a painful intenseness of sympathy. The same deep feeling mingled with her devotions, and even tinged her strong intellect with a shade of superstition. She believed that her soul communicated with his in prayer; and that it was to his intercession that she owed all the good that afterwards befell her. Whenever she met with any piece of good fortune, she used to say, "It is my father that has obtained this for me!"

She was, from a very early period, a lover In her happier days, this ruling passion took of cities, of distinction, and of brilliant and occasionally a more whimsical aspect and varied discussion-cared little in general for expressed itself with a vivacity of which we the beauties of nature or art-and languished have no idea in this phlegmatic country, and and pined, in spite of herself, when confined which more resembles the childish irritability to a narrow society. These are common of Voltaire, than the lofty enthusiasm of the enough traits in famous authors, and people person actually concerned. We give, as a of fashion and notoriety of all other descrip- specimen, the following anecdote from the tions: But they were united in her with a work before us. Madame Saussure had come to warmth of affection, a temperament of enthu- Coppet from Geneva in M. Necker's carriage; siasm, and a sweetness of temper, with which and had been overturned in the way, but withwe do not know that they were ever combined out receiving any injury. On mentioning the in any other individual. So far from resem- accident to Madame de Staël on her arrival, bling the poor, jaded, artificial creatures who she asked with great vehemence who had live upon stimulants, and are with difficulty driven; and on being told that it was Richel, kept alive by the constant excitements of her father's ordinary coachman, she exclaimnovelty, flattery, and emulation, her great ed in an agony, "My God, he may one day characteristic was an excessive movement of overturn my father!" and rung instantly with the soul-a heart overcharged with sensibility, violence for his appearance. While he was a frame over-informed with spirit and vitality. coming, she paced about the room in the All her affections, says Madame Necker,-her greatest possible agitation, crying out, at every friendship, her filial, her maternal attachment, turn, "My father, my poor father! he might partook of the nature of Love-were accom- have been overturned!"—and turning to her panied by its emotion, almost its passion-friend, "At your age, and with your slight and very frequently by the violent agitations person, the danger is nothing-but with his which belong to its fears and anxieties. With age and bulk! I cannot bear to think of it." all this animation, however, and with a good The coachman now came in; and this lady, deal of vanity-a vanity which delighted in recounting her successes in society, and made her speak without reserve of her own great talents, influence, and celebrity-she seems to have had no particle of envy or malice in her composition. She was not in the least degree vindictive, jealous, or scornful; uniformly kind, indulgent, compassionat forgiving-or rather forgetful of inj #hese respects she is very justly a

so mild and indulgent and reasonable with all her attendants, turned to him in a sort of frenzy, and with a voice of solemnity, but choked with emotion, said, "Richel, do you know that I am a woman of genius?"The poor man stood in astonishment-and she went on, louder, "Have you not heard, I say, t I am a woman of genius?" Coachy was ate. "Well then! I tell you that I am n of genius-of great genius-of pro

digious genius!-and I tell you more-that all the genius I have shall be exerted to secure your rotting out your days in a dungeon, if ever you overturn my father!" Even after the fit was over, she could not be made to laugh at her extravagance; but was near beginning again-and said "And what had I to conjure with but my poor genius?"

Her insensibility to natural beauty is rather unaccountable, in a mind constituted like hers, and in a native of Switzerland. But, though born in the midst of the most magnificent scenery, she seems to have thought, like Dr. Johnson, that there was no scene equal to the high tide of human existence in the heart of a populous city. "Give me the Rue de Bae," said she, when her guests were in ecstasies with the Lake of Geneva and its enchanted shores "I would prefer living in Paris, in a fourth story, with an hundred Louis a year." These were her habitual sentiments;-But she is said to have had one glimpse of the glories of the universe, when she went first to Italy, after her father's death, and was engaged with Corinne. And in that work, it is certainly true that the indications of a deep and sincere sympathy with nature are far more conspicuous than in any of her other writings. For this enjoyment and late-developed sensibility, she always said she was indebted to her father's intercession.

escape the seductions of a more sublime &
perstition. In theology, as well as in ever
thing else, however, she was less dogmat
than persuasive; and, while speaking fac
the inward conviction of her own heart, pour!
out its whole warmth, as well as its conve
tions, into those of others; and never seene
to feel any thing for the errors of her com
panions but a generous compassion, and
affectionate desire for their removal. Ste
rather testified in favour of religion, in shor
than reasoned systematically in its support
and, in the present condition of the work
this was perhaps the best service that cock
be rendered. Placed in many respects in the
most elevated condition to which humanity
could aspire-possessed unquestionably of the
highest powers of reasoning-emancipated.
a singular degree, from prejudices, and enter-
ing with the keenest relish into all the feelings
that seemed to suffice for the happiness and
occupation of philosophers, patriots, and loven
she has still testified, that without relig
there is nothing stable, sublime, or satisfying!
and that it alone completes and consummates
all to which reason or affection can aspire.—
A genius like hers, and so directed, is, as her
biographer has well remarked, the only Mis
sionary that can work any permanent effect on
the upper classes of society in modern times;-
upon the vain, the learned, the scornful, and ar
gumentative, they "who stone the Prophets
while they affect to offer incense to the Muses."

The world is pretty generally aware of the brilliancy of her conversation in mixed company; but we were not aware that it was Both her marriages have been censured;— generally of so polemic a character, or that the first, as a violation of her principles-the she herself was so very zealous a disputant, second, of dignity and decorum. In that with -such a determined intellectual gladiator as M. de Staël, she was probably merely passive. her cousin here represents her. Her great It was respectable, and not absolutely undelight, it is said, was in eager and even vio-happy; but unquestionably not such as suited lent contention; and her drawing-room at Coppet is compared to the Hall of Odin, where the bravest warriors were invited every day to enjoy the tumult of the fight, and, after having cut each other in pieces, revived to renew the combat in the morning. In this trait, also, she seems to have resembled our Johnson, though, according to all accounts, she was rather more courteous to her opponents. These fierce controversies embraced all sorts of subjects-politics, morals, literature, casuistry, metaphysics, and history. In the early part of her life, they turned oftener upon themes of pathos and passion-love and death, and heroical devotion; but she was cured of this lofty vein by the affectations of her imitators. "I tramp in the mire with wooden shoes," she said, "whenever they would force me to go with them among the clouds." In the same way, though sufficiently given to indulge, and to talk of her emotions, she was easily disgusted by the parade of sensibility which is sometimes made by persons of real feeling; observing, with admirable force and simplicity, "Que tous les sentiments naturels ont leur pudeur."

She had at all times a deep sense of religion. Educated in the strict principles of Calvinism, she was never seduced into any admiration of the splendid apparatus and high pretensions of Popery; although she did not altogether

her. Of that with M. Rocca, it will not perhaps be so easy to make the apology. We have no objection to a love-match at fifty:But where the age and the rank and fortune are all on the lady's side, and the bridegroom seems to have little other recommendation than a handsome person, and a great deal of admiration, it is difficult to escape ridicule,— or something more severe than ridicule. Mad. N. S. seems to us to give a very candid and interesting account of it; and undoubtedly goes far to take off what is most revolting on the first view, by letting us know that it origi nated in a romantic attachment on the part of M. Rocca; and that he was an ardent suitor to her, before the idea of loving him had entered into her imagination. The broken state of his health, too-the short period she survived their union-and the rapidity with which he followed her to the grave-all tend not only to extinguish any tendency to ridicule, but to disarm all severity of censure; and lead us rather to dwell on the story as a part only of the tragical close of a life full of lofty emotions.

Like most other energetic spirits, she des pised and neglected too much the accommodation of her body-cared little about exercise, and gave herself no great trouble about health. With the sanguine spirit which belonged to her character, she affected to triumph over infirmity; and used to say "I might have

been sickly, like any body else, had I not re- other trammels, those which had circumscribsolved to vanquish all physical weaknesses." ed the liberty of thinking in that great counBut Nature would not be defied!-and she try. The genius of Madame de Staël co-opedied, while contemplating still greater under-rated, no doubt, with the spirit of the times, takings than any she had achieved. On her and assisted its effects-but it was also acted sick-bed, none of her great or good qualities upon, and in part created, by that spirit-and abandoned her. To the last she was kind, her works are rather, perhaps, to be considerpatient, devout, and intellectual. Among other ed as the first fruits of a new order of things, things, she said "J'ai toujours été la même that had already struck root in Europe, than -vive et triste. J'ai aimé Dieu, mon père, as the harbinger of changes that still remain et la liberté !" She left life with regret-but to be effected.* felt no weak terrors at the approach of death —and died at last in the utmost composure and tranquillity.

cause que j'aurois été capable de plier devant la tyrannie-si l'exemple de mon père, et son sang qui coule dans mes veines, ne l'emportoient pas sur cette foiblesse."-Vol. iii. p. 8.

tion; and that nothing but a little perseverance is required to restore the plastic frame of on nature, to its natural appetite and relish for the new pleasures and occupations that may yet await it, beyond the precincts of Paris or London. We remember a signal testimony to this effect, in one of the later publications, we think of Volney, the celebrated traveller;

misery he suffered when he first changed the society of Paris for that of Syria and Egypt; and the recurrence of the same misery when after years of absence, he was again restored to the importunate bustle and idle chatter of Paris, from the tranquil taciturnity of his warlike Mussulmans!-his second access of home sickness, when he left Paris for the United States of America,-and the discomfort he experienced, for the fourth time, when, after being reconciled to the free and substantial talk of these stout republicans, he finally returned to the amiable trifling of his own famous metropolis.

We think this rather a curious trait, and not very easily explained. We can quite well understand how the feeble and passive spirits who have been accustomed to the stir and variety of a town life, and have had their in--who describes, in a very amusing way, the anity supplied by the superabundant intellect and gaiety that overflows in these great repositories, should feel helpless and wretched when these extrinsic supports are withdrawn: But why the active and energetic members of those vast assemblages, who draw their resources from within, and enliven not only themselves, but the inert mass around them, by the radiation of their genius, should suffer in a similar way, it certainly is not so easy to comprehend. In France, however, the people of the most wit and vivacity seem to have always been the most subject to ennui. The letters of Mad. du Deffand, we remember, are full of complaints of it; and those of De Bussy also. It is but a humiliating view of our frail human nature, if the most exquisite arrangements for social enjoyment should be found thus inevitably to generate a distaste for what is ordinarily within our reach; and the habit of a little elegant amusement, not coming very close either to our hearts or understandings, should render all the other parts of life, with its duties, affections, and achievements, distasteful and burdensome. We are inclined, however, we confess, both to question the perfection of the arrangements and the system of amusement that led to such results; and also to doubt of the permanency of the discomfort that may arise on its first disturbance. We are persuaded, in short, that at least as much enjoyment may be obtained, with less of the extreme variety, and less of the overexcitement which belongs to the life of Paris, and is the immediate cause of the depression that follows their cessation; and also, that, in minds of any considerable strength and resource, this depression will be of no long dura

It is an affliction, certainly, to be at the end of the works of such a writer-and to think that she was cut off at a period when her enlarged experience and matured talents were likely to be exerted with the greatest utility, and the state of the world was such as to hold out the fairest prospect of their not being exerted in vain. It is a consolation, however, that she has done so much;-And her works will remain not only as a brilliant memorial of her own unrivalled genius, but as a proof that sound and comprehensive views were entertained, kind affections cultivated, and elegant pursuits followed out, through a period which posterity may be apt to regard as one of universal delirium and crime;-that the principles of genuine freedom, taste, and mo rality, were not altogether extinct, even under the reign of terror and violence-and that one who lived through the whole of that agitating scene, was the first luminously to explain, and temperately and powerfully to impress, the great moral and political Lessons, which it should have taught to mankind.

(October, 1835.)

Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh. Edited by his Son, ROBERT JAMES MACKINTOSH, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1835.*

THERE cannot be, we think, a more delightful book than this: whether we consider the

attraction of the Character it brings so pleasingly before us-or the infinite variety of ori This was my last considerable contribution to that memory. At all events, if it was an improthe Edinburgh Review; and, indeed, (with the ex-priety, it was one for which I cannot now submit to ception of a slight notice of Mr. Wilberforce's Me- seek the shelter of concealment: And therefore I moirs,) the only thing I wrote for it, after my ad- here reprint the greater part of it; and think I canvancement to the place I now hold. If there was not better conclude the present collection, than with any impropriety in my so contributing at all, some this tribute to the merits of one of the most distin palliation I hope may be found in the nature of the guished of my Associates in the work out of which feelings by which I was led to it, and the tenor of it has been gathered. what these feelings prompted me to say. I wrote it solely out of affection to the memory of the friend I had lost; and I think I said nothing which was no dictated by a desire to vindicate and to honour

A considerable part of the original is omitted in this publication; but consisting almost entirely in citations from the book reviewed, and incidental re marks on these citations.

ginal thoughts and fine observations with which it abounds. As a mere narrative there is not so much to be said for it. There are but few incidents; and the account which we have of them is neither very luminous nor very complete. If it be true, therefore, that the only legitimate business of biography is with incidents and narrative, it will not be easy to deny that there is something amiss, either in the title or the substance of this work. But we are humbly of opinion that there is no good ground for so severe a limitation.

Biographies, it appears to us, are naturally of three kinds-and please or instruct us in at least as many different ways. One sort seeks to interest us by an account of what the individual in question actually did or suffered in his own person: another by an account of what he saw done or suffered by others; and a third by an account of what he himself thought, judged, or imagined-for these too, we apprehend, are acts of a rational being and acts frequently quite as memorable, aud as fruitful of consequences, as any others he can either witness or perform.

of Diaries and journals-autobiographers who, without having themselves done any thing memorable, have yet had the good luck to live through long and interesting periods; and who, in chronicling the events of their own unimportant lives, have incidentally preserv ed invaluable memorials of contemporary manners and events. The Memoirs of Evelyn and Pepys are the most obvious instances of works which derive their chief value from this source; and which are read, not for any great interest we take in the fortunes of the writers, but for the sake of the anecdotes and notices of far more important personages and transactions with which they so lavishly present us; and there are many others, written with far inferior talent, and where the design is more palpably egotistical, which are perused with an eager curiosity, on the strength of the same recommendation.

The last class is for Philosophers and men of Genius and speculation-men, in short, who were, or ought to have been, Authors; and whose biographies are truly to be regarded either as supplements to the works they have Different readers will put a different value given to the world, or substitutes for those on each of these sorts of biography. But at which they might have given. These are all events they will be in no danger of con- histories, not of men, but of Minds; and their founding them. The character and position value must of course depend on the reach and of the individual will generally settle, with capacity of the mind they serve to develope, sufficient precision, to which class his me- and in the relative magnitude of their contrimoirs should be referred; and no man of com-butions to its history. When the individual mon sense will expect to meet in one with the kind of interest which properly belongs to another. To complain that the life of a warrior is but barren in literary speculations, or that of a man of letters in surprising personal adventures, is about as reasonable as it would be to complain that a song is not a sermon, or that there is but little pathos is a treatise on geometry.

The first class, in its higher or public department, should deal chiefly with the lives of leaders in great and momentous transactions -men who, by their force of character, or the advantage of their position, have been enabled to leave their mark on the age and country to which they belonged, and to impress more than one generation with the traces of their transitory existence. Of this kind are many of the lives in Plutarch; and of this kind, still more eminently, should be the lives of such men as Mahomet, Alfred, Washington, Napoleon. There is an inferior and more private department under this head, in which the interest, though less elevated, is often quite as intense, and rests on the same general basis, of sympathy with personal feats and endowments-we mean the history of individuals whom the ardour of their temperament, or the caprices of fortune, have involved in strange adventures, or conducted through a series of extraordinary and complicated perils. The memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini, or Lord Herbert of Cherbury, are good examples of this romantic sort of biography; and many more might be added, from the chronicles of ancient paladins, or the confessions of modern malefactors.

The second class is chiefly for the compilers

has already poured himself out in a long series of publications, on which all the moods and aspects of his mind have been engraven (as in the cases of Voltaire or Sir Walter Scott), there may be less occasion for such a biographical supplement. But when an author (as in the case of Gray) has been more chary in his communications with the public, and it is yet possible to recover the precious, though immature, fruits of his genius or his studies,— thoughts, and speculations, which no intelligent posterity would willingly let di,-it is due both to his fame and to the best interests of mankind, that they should be preserved, and reverently presented to after times, in such a posthumous portraiture as it is the business of biography to supply.

The best and most satisfactory memorials of this sort are those which are substantially made up of private letters, journals, or written fragments of any kind, by the party himself; as these, however scanty or imperfect, are at all events genuine Relics of the individual, and generally bearing, even more authentically than his publications, the stamp of his intellectual and personal character. We cannot refer to better examples than the lives of Gray and of Cowper, as these have been finally completed. Next to these, if not upon the same level, we should place such admirable records of particular conversations, and memorable sayings gathered from the lips of the wise, as we find in the inimitable pages of Boswell,-a work which, by the general consent of this generation, has not only made us a thousand times better acquainted with Johnson than all his publications put together but has raised the standard of his intellectual