The Press. — London, England, 1853-08-13 00:00:00

352 Xittraturt. Life sod Times of Aimee. do Staid. By Maria Norris. London : D. Bogue. Tins work is the performance of a very young lady, and, as she informs us in her preface, of a " very ignorant and inexperienced one," who has, nevertheless, " thought out" the opinions she expresses, but who deprecates the idea that she may not live to alter thew. " Should " I here .fter," she says, " be convinced of their " ineurreetness—and Heaven forbid I should " live to count that an impossibility—i trust " they may be huuestly changed, and that iu "avowiug the alteration I may bl.eh, not fur "the rennin, but the mistake."—(Preface./ We have nu doubt she will. She is clever and observant, but many of her opinions arc crude 51Iu inuoubietent, adopted, we suspect, without reflection, and we must add, enounced without diffidence. The " times " of Mine. de Steel have been so repeatedly illustrated, that little remains to be brought to light. They were disastrous times —we love not to dwell on them—they were times of crime and sorrow, of shame and of tribulation, such as was never been before, and such, we devoutly hope, as we shall not see again. French principles had sapped the virtue and' undermined the religion of the world, and French armies were the scourge of nations. Since the disruption of the Boman empire, the like had net been seen. Attil., anu his barbarians were less terrible to the civilised world than Bonaparte and his disci "dined legions. Of the "life" of Mine. de Stael little remains to be told. Her character has been drown by herself, and by several of hoe ountemporaries she was personally known to many still living, and we are not aware that the preseut volume adds anything to our stuck of information ; nevertheless we have always had so much ad miration for the genius of this remarkable wo man, and, in spite of numerous detects, so much of esteem fur her character, that we are quite willing to follow our authoress in retracing the principal eveuts of her life. The reader need scarcely be reminded that she was the daughter of the cele brated Necker, the backer and finance mi nister to Louis XVI. at the commence ment of the French Revolution. whose advice was so fatal to France, and to the un happy Prince whom he perhaps sincerely :,t -tempted to serve. Mine. Necker, the mother of our heroine, was, like her husband, a native of Switserland, the daughter of a clergyman, named Curchod, at whose death she had been left in a state almost of destitution. She was not without talents and accomplishments, but she was even less fitted to preside in the salon of a minister than was her husband to direct the bureau. She couhl not forget the parsi monious habits of her youthful days, and the narrowness of her education exposed her to the ridicule of the brilliant and luxurious society who socked to her hotel. Mine. de Steel, the ouly child of her parents, was horn in MO, and received her education, which was the worst possible, in her mother's drawing-roven.where her precocious talents soon began to attract more attention than one of her parents, at least, at all approved. The plaything and idol of her father, she became the object of her mothers jealousy, if not of her positive dislike ; and it was mainly this feeling of jealousy, we suspect, that induced Mme. Necker to promote her marriage with M. de Stud, a weak and extravagant man, far too old for the bride, and possessing no advantages but the favour of the Queen, and the position of Swedish Minister. It has been whispered that the prospect of the &word at Court reconciled the young plebeian to a marriage so unpromising. Be her consola tions what they might, the result was most unhappy. Her husband had never engaged her allectionm, and had no title to her esteem. Her passions were too vehement, and her principles too weak, to resist the contagion of bad example ; and we fear that the admirers of her geu tus would do wisely in abstaining from much inquiry into her private life During her father's short lived popularity she remained by his side to share his triumph. THE PRESS. After his flight from the storm he had helped • to raise, she still continued to reside in Paris, a witness of those daily scenes of horror which disgraced that disastrous period. M. de Stael was still the accredited agent of the King of Sweden ; but we fo it it was not to conjugal duty that we are to attribute her prolonged stay in the blood-stained capital. The Committee of Public Safety seized its victims from every class of the community ; it did not spare those friends of Mme. de Stael who had promoted the revo lution with so much zeal at its commencement. At length, however, those friends whose society was dearer to her than her own safety succeeded in quitting the country, some of them by her aid and by the exercise of her courage and self-command. On electing subsequently her own escape, which she did nut accomplish without considerable danger, it was to England, and not to Geneva (the residence of her father), that she repaired ; and Miss Norris professes her inability to discover the motive of this preference. Those who are familiar with the history of those times will find little difficulty in explaining it. The presence at Juniper-hill of M. de Narbonne and the Prince d. Talley rand may solve the puzzle which the fair biographer finds so embarrassing. In the year 1793 Mme. de Stael visited Co pet (her father's country seat near Geneva); and in 1795, the Swedish Government having acknowledged the French republic, she re turned to Paris to rejoin her husband, who had presented his credentials to the Directory as minister. It has been surmised that at this period she formed the ambitious project of captivating the hero of the day, the young General Bonaparte, and that the coldness with which he met her advances was the reason of the aversion with which she never ceased to regard him. We do not believe it, however : we think she loved freedom too sincerely to love its greatest enemy ; and the persecution which the successful usurper in tlicted upon her, and the calumnies with which he pursued her at St. Helena, prove rather the importance he attached to her support, and the meanness of his revenge when he tailed in receiving it. The death of M. de Sta.& in 1802 was speedily followed by her own banishment from France. She had incurred the disgrace of Bonaparte, now First Consul ; and, all her efforts to soften her sentence having proved ineffectual, sher repaired to Germany to pass the period of her exile ; and it was here 'that •he became acquainted with the celebrate , I M. Schlegel, whom she persuaded to undertake the education of her sons. In 1804 she lost her father, to whom %re be lieve her attachment to have been strong and sincere, though it rarely led her to seek his so ciety when any other could be procured, or to endure the dulness of a residence in Switz er bind. After this event she returned to Fran ce, though not to the capital. She would hr the done wisely had she remained in Switzerland, at least she would not have exposed herself ' to the indignity of a second banishment fr om France. She returned to Germany, and pas .sed the winter of 1807 at Vienna, where, however, the civility of the nobility and the bon homie of the people failed to reconcile her to a society where French was incorrectly spc and the art of conversation imperfectly w ider stood. It was now that she completed hi r ce lebrated work on Germany, and, her sere cence of banishment only precluding her fr om a residence within forty leagues of the capitE tl, she established herself at an old castle in the bourhood of Blois, for the purpose of sir perin tending its publication. She justly ex, )ected to advance her literary reputation, and, aaviug carefully expunged all those passages which could give umbrage to the suseeptibilit: • of the usurper, she was not prepared for the s torm of persecution that awaited her. All her efforts, however, were unsuccessful: she incur red the censure of the literary police, the wl tole im pression of her work was seized, and she re ceived a peremptory order to quit the French territory within the space of three dai . It was s..)on after this period • that she became acquainted with M. Rocca. a n officer in the French army. and a youth of great promise, but now rendered fretful an. d peevish by ill-health. Their marriage soon followed: SATITRDAY, - whether to satisfy his scruples or her own we kno , s , not, but it was kept secret ; she was averse, she said, to sacrifice a name of Euro• pean celebrity ; she might be still more averse to encounter the ridicule of so imprudent an alliance. Though living inoffensively on her bored itary property at Coppet, she was still expoc,ed to the persecutions of her powerful and 'implacable enemy. In the year Dill M. Sell) egel was banished from Coppet, ostensibly for having written a pamphlet in which the sup eriority of the Phadra of Euripides was rna intained over that of Racine, but in reality to punish him for his obstinate attachment to M) ne. de Stael. M. Mathieu de Montmorenci an d the beautiful Mme. Recamier were banished from France for having passed a cc .uple of nights at Coppet ; and her residence in her native country was farther embittered y the petty persecutions of the local autho ri ties, who hoped by this means to pay their o curt at the Tuileries. " Mine. de Stahl," said t he Prefect of Geneva, " has made herself an " agreeable existence at home, for friends and " even foreigners visit her at Coppet; the " Emperor will not suffer things to go on so."— p. 817. She now felt so seriously alarmed at the fate that might possibly await her that she resolved on flight. She has left a spirited sketch, in an unfinished work entitled " Dix annees d'exile," of the dangers and difficulties she encountered in reaching Russia, to which she first directed her steps, and where a flattering reception awaited her from the Emperor and his Court. From Russia she proceeded to England, and there she remained till the downfal of her tyrant permitted her to return to Paris. This time her reception in England was very different from that which she had met on her former visit. She had then made herself obnoxious by her adoption of revolutionary principles ; the tendency of the works she had published was neither moral nor religious ; and, in spite of Miss Norris's efforts to veil the truth, a very general opinion prevailed that her con duct had been far from irreproachable. Her recent persecution by the common enemy secured her general popularity, the amended tone of her works had ensured their complete success, and full justice was done to her con versational powers. She returned to the Continent at the peace of 1814, and was everywhere received with a flattering welcome. She did not live long to enjoy her triumph. After a short resi (knee at Coppet she returned in 1817 to Paris, where she was seized with that illness which soon proved fatal. She ex pired in the East year of her age, universally regretted by her friends and by the public, to whose amusen tent she hau so largely contri buted. She was buried by her own desire in the mausoleum which contained the re mains of her lather; and her will provided that the sanctuary should never be profaned by the admission of any meaner dust. She bequeathed it to the care of the commune of Cop pet, having provided funds for its repair and maintenance. Her second husband, M. Rocca, and the issue of their marriage, did not long survive her. Her eldest son died without issue. Her second son, who had more vivacity than his elder brother, was killed in a duel during his mother's lifetime. This event, we collect, did not cause his relations any lasting regret. His conduct had frequently given them unea siness, and his mother had called him "le Lovelace de Cabaret." Her daughter was alone destined to give her descendants she was nobly and happily married to the clever and accomplished Due de Broglie. Brief and imperfect as this sketch may be, it has far transgressed the utmost limits to which we had intended to confine it, and we have left ourselves small space for the con sidemtion of those works to which this re markable woman owes her celebrity. Miss Norris does not attempt any critical examination of her works : she gives no cata logue of them, nor does she ever mention any except some of the most important. It is to this last class only that we shall confine the few remarks for which we can find space. As a writer, Mme. de 'Stael has never been ap-