Harassed beyond endurance, she resolved to make an attempt to escape from these never-ending vexations. But whither to go? She could not obtain permission to reside elsewhere; and if Napoleon demanded her, no continental power, except Russia, could give her an asylum. To obtain a conveyance to England was impossible, except from some port to the north of Hamburg; and to reach that distant region, it was necessary to traverse the whole of Europe, in constant danger of being intercepted and detained. After eight months of irresolution, she found courage and opportunity to make the attempt; and quitting Coppet secretly, she reached Berne in safety, obtained a passport for Vienna, and hastily traversing Switzerland and the Tyrol, arrived at the Austrian capital, June 6, 1812. But this was neither a safe nor pleasant resting-place. The Emperor was in attendance on his son-in-law at Dresden; and the Austrian police thought fit to pay their court to Napoleon, by following up the example of annoyance which he had set. Mad. de Stael, therefore, hastened on her route to Russia, through Moravia and Gallicia, honoured all the way by the especial attention of the police, on whose happy combination of “French machiavelism and German clumsiness,” she has taken ample revenge in her ‘Ten Years of Exile.’ She crossed the Russian frontier, July 14, and in the joy of having escaped at last from the wide-spread power of Napoleon, she sees and describes every thing in Russia with an exuberance of admiration, which the position of the country at that moment, and the kindness which the writer experienced, may well excuse. The French armies had already crossed the Vistula, and the direct route to St. Petersburg being interrupted, she was obliged to make a circuit by Moscow. After a hasty survey of the wonders of that city, she continued her route to St. Petersburg, where she was received with distinction by the Emperor and his consort. But England was still the object of her desires, and towards the end of September, she quitted the metropolis of Russia for Stockholm. There, during a winter-residence of eight months, she composed the journal of her travels, to which we have so often referred; and in the following summer she arrived in London.
She was received in the highest circles of our metropolis with an enthusiastic admiration, which no doubt was rendered in part to the avowed enemy of Napoleon, as well as to the woman of genius. Sir James Mackintosh, in his journal, gives a lively description of the manner in which she was fêted. “On my return I found the whole fashionable and literary world occupied with Mad. de Stael—the most celebrated woman of this, or perhaps of any age.... She treats me as the person whom she most delights to honour. I am generally ordered with her to dinner, as one orders beans and bacon: I have in consequence dined with her at the houses of almost all the cabinet ministers. She is one of the few persons who surpass expectation; she has every sort of talent, and would be universally popular, if in society she were to confine herself to her inferior talents—pleasantry, anecdote, and literature, which are so much more suited to conversation than her eloquence and genius.” A very characteristic observation was made by the late Lord Dudley—“Mad. de Stael was not a good neighbour; there could be no slumbering near her, she would instantly detect you.”
The publication of her long-expected work on Germany maintained the interest which Mad. de Stael had excited, during the period of her residence in England. It is comprised in four parts,—on the aspect and manners of Germany,—on literature and the arts, as there existing,—on philosophy and morals,—and on religion and enthusiasm. For an analysis of it we may best refer to the elaborate criticism of Mackintosh, in the Edinburgh Review, No. XLIII, who gives it the high praise of “explaining the most abstruse metaphysical theories of Germany precisely, yet perspicuously and agreeably; and combining the eloquence which inspires exalted sentiments of virtue, with the enviable talent of gently indicating the defects of men and manners by the skilfully softened touches of a polite and merciful pleasantry:” and of being “unequalled for variety of knowledge, flexibility of power, elevation of view, and comprehension of mind, among the works of women, and in the union of the graces of society and literature with the genius of philosophy, not surpassed by many among men.”
After the restoration of the Bourbons, Mad. de Stael returned to France. She stood high in Louis XVIII.’s favour, who was well qualified to enjoy and appreciate her powers of conversation; and he gave a substantial token of his regard by the repayment of two millions of francs, which the treasury was indebted to her father’s estate. At the return of Napoleon, she fled precipitately to Coppet. She was too generous to countenance the gross abuse lavished on the fallen idol; and some sharp repartees, at the expense of the time-servers of the day, seem to have inspired Napoleon with a hope that he might work on her vanity to enlist her in his service. He sent a message, that he had need of her to inspire the French with constitutional notions: she replied, “He has done for twelve years without either me or a constitution, and now he loves one about as little as the other.”
Concerning the last three years of her life, our information is very scanty. She had contracted a second marriage, with M. Rocca, a young officer, who, after serving with distinction in the French army in Spain, had retired, grievously wounded, to Geneva, his native place. For an account and apology for this much-censured and injudicious connexion, the date of which we have not found specified, but which should seem to have been previous to her flight to Coppet, since Rocca accompanied her on the occasion, we must refer to Mad. Necker de Saussure. It appears by her statement (and this is a material consideration in estimating the extent of the lady’s weakness), that though she must have been more than forty, and the gentleman was twenty years younger, she had inspired Rocca with a devoted and romantic passion. “Je l’aimerai tellement,” he said to one of his friends, “qu’elle finira par m’épouser,” and he kept his word. A less distinguished woman might have contracted a marriage in which the disparity of years was greater, at a slight expense of wondering and ridicule; but probably Mad. de Stael felt that the eyes of the world were upon her, and that any weakness would be eagerly seized by her enemies; and, perhaps, had a natural dislike to resign a name which she had rendered illustrious. She judged ill: the secrecy was the worst part of the affair. The union, though generally believed to exist, was not avowed until the opening of her will, which authorised her children to make her marriage known, and acknowledged one son, who was the fruit of it. The decline of M. Rocca’s health, which never recovered the effect of his wounds, induced her to take a second journey to Italy in 1816. At that time, her own constitution was visibly giving way. She became seriously ill after her return to France, and died, July 14, 1817, the anniversary of two remarkable days of her life. These were, the commencement of the French revolution, and the day on which, by entering Russia, she finally escaped from Napoleon. M. Rocca survived her only half a year. He died in Provence, January 29, 1818.
Mad. de Stael’s last great work, which was published after her death, is entitled ‘Considérations sur les principaux Événements de la Révolution Française,’ a book, says Mackintosh, “possessing the highest interest as the last dying bequest of the most brilliant writer that has appeared in our days, the greatest writer, of a woman, that any age or country has produced.” That it was left unfinished is the less to be regretted, because it is not a regular history of the revolution, but rather a collection of penetrating observations and curious details, recorded in the true spirit of historic impartiality, and therefore a most valuable treasure to the future historian. The scope of the book, in accordance with her warm admiration through life of the English constitution, is to show that France requires a free government and a limited monarchy. The catalogue of her works is closed by the Œuvres Inédites published in 1820, of which the principal is ‘Ten Years of Exile.’ They are collected in an edition of eighteen volumes 8vo., published at Paris, in 1819–20, to which the ‘Notice sur le Caractère et les Ecrits de Mad. de Stael,’ by Mad. Necker de Saussure, is prefixed.
The leading feature of Mad. de Stael’s private character was her inexhaustible kindness of temper; it cost her no trouble to forgive injuries. There seems not to have been a creature on earth whom she hated, except Napoleon. “Her friendships were ardent and remarkably constant; and yet she had a habit of analysing the characters, even of those to whom she was most attached, with the most unsparing sagacity, and of drawing out the detail and theory of their faults and peculiarities, with the most searching and unrelenting rigour; and this she did to their faces, and in spite of their most earnest remonstrances. ‘It is impossible for me to do otherwise,’ she would say; ‘if I were on my way to the scaffold, I should be dissecting the characters of the friends who were to suffer with me upon it.’” Though the excitement of mixed society was necessary to her happiness, her conversation in a tête à tête with her intimate friends is said to have been more delightful than her most brilliant efforts in public. She was proud of her powers, and loved to display and talk of them: but her vanity was divested of offensiveness by her candour and ever-present consideration of others. Of her errors we would speak with forbearance; but it is due to truth to say that there were passages in her life which exposed her to serious and well-founded censure. As a daughter and mother she displayed sedulous devotion, and the warmest affection. Though never destitute of devotional feeling, her notions of religion in youth seem to have been very vague and inefficient. But misfortune drove her sensitive and affectionate temper to seek some stay, which she found nothing on earth could furnish; and in later years, her religion, if not deeply learned, was deeply felt. Of this, the latter portion of Mad. Necker de Saussure’s work will satisfy the candid reader. And though her testimony to the truth and value of religion was for the most part indirect, we may reasonably believe that it was not ineffective. “Placed in many respects in the highest situation to which humanity could aspire, possessed unquestionably of the highest powers of reasoning, emancipated in a singular degree from prejudices, and entering with the keenest relish into all the feelings that seemed to suffice for the happiness and occupation of philosophers, patriots, and lovers, she has still testified that without religion there is nothing stable, sublime or satisfying; and that it alone completes and consummates all to which reason and affection can aspire. A genius like hers, and so directed, is, as her biographer has well remarked, the only missionary that can work any permanent effect upon the upper classes of society in modern times—upon the vain, the learned, the scornful and argumentative, ‘who stone the Prophets, while they affect to offer incense to the Muses.’” (Ed. Review, No. LXXI.)
PALLADIO.
Palladio is distinguished among the renowned professors of his age as the chief modifier of the revived style of Roman architecture. The celebrity however which attaches to his name, though just in regard to its extent, is not always correctly appreciated: inasmuch as a bigoted admiration for his precepts and designs, on the ground of their intrinsic excellence, has too frequently supplanted that more sober estimate, which results from a consideration of the circumstances under which those precepts and examples were given to the world. Neither have succeeding ages been sufficiently discriminating in respect to the predecessors and contemporaries of Palladio, several of whom either effected or assisted in effecting much, of which the credit has been given by the world at large too exclusively to him.