digious genius!-and I tell you more-that escape the seductions of a mere sublime s

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?"

perstition. In theology, as well as in every thing else, however, she was less dogmatie than persuasive; and, while speaking from the inward conviction of her own heart, poured out its whole warmth, as well as its convietions, into those of others; and never seemed to feel any thing for the errors of her comHer insensibility to natural beauty is rather panions but a generous compassion, and an unaccountable, in a mind constituted like hers, affectionate desire for their removal. She and in a native of Switzerland. But, though rather testified in favour of religion, in short, born in the midst of the most magnificent than reasoned systematically in its support, scenery, she seems to have thought, like Dr. and, in the present condition of the world, Johnson, that there was no scene equal to the this was perhaps the best service that could high tide of human existence in the heart of be rendered. Placed in many respects in the a populous city. "Give me the Rue de Bae," most elevated condition to which humanity said she, when her guests were in ecstasies could aspire-possessed unquestionably of the with the Lake of Geneva and its enchanted highest powers of reasoning-emancipated, in shores-"I would prefer living in Paris, in aa singular degree, from prejudices, and enterfourth story, with an hundred Louis a year." ing with the keenest relish into all the feelings These were her habitual sentiments-But that seemed to suffice for the happiness and she is said to have had one glimpse of the occupation of philosophers, patriots, and lovers glories of the universe, when she went first-she has still testified, that without religion to Italy, after her father's death, and was en- there is nothing stable, sublime, or satisfying! gaged with Corinne. And in that work, it is and that it alone completes and consummates certainly true that the indications of a deep all to which reason or affection can aspireand sincere sympathy with nature are far A genius like hers, and so directed, is, as her more conspicuous than in any of her other biographer has well remarked, the only Mis writings. For this enjoyment and late-de-sionary that can work any permanent effect on veloped sensibility, she always said she was indebted to her father's intercession.

The world is pretty generally aware of the brilliancy of her conversation in mixed company; but we were not aware that it was generally of so polemic a character, or that she herself was so very zealous a disputant, --such a determined intellectual gladiator as her cousin here represents her. Her great delight, it is said, was in eager and even vioJent 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."

the upper classes of society in modern times;upon the vain, the learned, the scornful, and argumentative,-they "who stone the Frophets while they affect to offer incense to the Muses."

Both her marriages have been censured;— the first, as a violation of her principles-the second, of dignity and decorum. In that with M. de Staël, she was probably merely passive. It was respectable, and not absolutely unhappy; but unquestionably not such as suited 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 originated in a romantic attachment on the par of M. Rocca; and that he was an ardent suito to her, before the idea of loving him had en tered into her imagination. The broken stat of his health, too-the short period she sur vived their union-and the rapidity with whic he followed her to the grave-all tend not onl to extinguish any tendency to ridicule, but i disarm all severity of censure; and lead u rather to dwell on the story as a part only of th tragical close of a life full of lofty emotions.

Like most other energetic spirits, she de pised and neglected too much the accommod She had at all times a deep sense of religion. tion of her body-cared little about exercis Educated in the strict principles of Calvinism, and gave herself no great trouble about healt she was never seduced into any admiration With the sanguine spirit which belonged of the splendid apparatus and high pretensions her character, she affected to triumph ov of Popery; although she did not altogether I infirmity; and used to say-"I might ha

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 persere is required to restore the plastic frame nature, to its natural appetite and rel the new pleasures and occupations that p yet await it, beyond the precincts of Pa London. We remember a signal tester to this effect, in one of the later pubha we think of Volney, the celebrated ink

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 anity supplied by the superabundant intellect misery he suffered when he first change an and gaiety that overflows in these great re- society of Paris for that of Syria and Ign positories, should feel helpless and wretched and the recurrence of the same miserye when these extrinsic supports are withdrawn: after years of absence, he was again But why the active and energetic members to the importunate bustle and idle ch of those vast assemblages, who draw their Paris, from the tranquil taciturnity of resources from within, and enliven not only like Mussulmans!-his second access themselves, but the inert mass around them, sickness, when he left Paris for the la by the radiation of their genius, should suffer States of America, and the disc in a similar way, it certainly is not so easy to experienced, for the fourth time, when comprehend. In France, however, the people being reconciled to the free and subs of the most wit and vivacity seem to have talk of these stout republicans, he always been the most subject to ennui. The turned to the amiable trifling of his letters of Mad. du Deffand, we remember, are mous metropolis. 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 of the works of such a writer-and t that she was cut off at a period when it larged experience and matured talenti likely to be exerted with the greatest and the state of the world was such as out the fairest prospect of their not being erted in vain. It is a consolation, that she has done so much;-And her will remain not only as a brillant of her own unrivalled genius, but a that sound and comprehensive vie entertained, kind affections cultivated elegant pursuits followed out, through a p which posterity may be apt to reganda of universal delirium and crimeprinciples of genuine freedom, taste, and rality, were not altogether extinct, even the reign of terror and violence-and who lived through the whole of that ag scene, was the first luminously to exp temperately and powerfully to impres great moral and political Lessons, should have taught to mankind.

(October, 1835.)

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

THERE cannot be, we think, a more delight- attraction of the Character it brings so p ful book than this: whether we consider the ingly before us-or the infinite variety of

*This was my last considerable contribution to that memory. At all events, if it was an the Edinburgh Review; and, indeed, (with the ex-priety, it was one for which I cannot now sub! ception of a slight notice of Mr. Wilberforce's Me- seek the shelter of concealment: And then t moirs,) the only thing I wrote for it, after my ad- here reprint the greater part of it: and think vancement to the place I now hold. If there was not better conclude the present collection, the e

palliation I hope may be found in the nature of the guished of my Associates in the work out of w

feelings by which I was led to it, and the tenor of what these feelings prompted me to say. I wrote

it has been gathered.

it solely out of affection to the memory of the friend this publication; but consisting almost endly A considerable part of the original is omitted I had lost; and I think I said nothing which was citations from the book reviewed, and inciden

no dictated by a desire to vindicate and to honour

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, and 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 preserved 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 imma ture, 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 indivi dual, 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 genera! 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

do by being caught in undress: but all who
are really worth knowing about, will, on the
whole, be gainers; and we should be well
content to have no biographies but of those
who would profit, as well as their readers, by
being shown in new or in nearer lights.
The value of the insight which may thus

character, and actually made discovery of large provinces in his understanding, of which scarcely an indication was to be found in his writings. In the last and lowest place-in so far, at least, as relates to the proper business of this branch of biography, the enlargement of our knowledge of the genius and character of individuals-we must reckon that most be obtained into the mind and the meaning common form of the memoirs of literary men, of truly great authors, can scarcely be overwhich consists of little more than the biogra-rated by any one who knows how to turn pher's own (generally most partial) description and estimate of his author's merits, or of elucidations and critical summaries of his most remarkable productions. In this division, though in other respects of great value, must be ranked those admirable dissertations which Mr. Stewart has given to the world under the title of the Lives of Reid, Smith, and Robertson, the real interest of which consists almost entirely in the luminous exposition we there meet with of the leading specu-alone that we can learn with certainty by lations of those eminent writers, and in the candid and acute investigation of their originality or truth.

such communications to account; and we do not think we exaggerate when we say, that in many cases more light may be gained from the private letters, notes, or recorded talk of such persons, than from the most finished of their publications; and not only upon the many new topics which are sure to be started in such memorials, but as to the true character, and the merits and defects, of such publications themselves. It is from such sources

what road the author arrived at the conclusions which we see established in his works; against what perplexities he had to struggle, We know it has been said, that after a man and after what failures he was at last enabled has himself given to the public all that he to succeed. It is thus only that we are often thought worthy of its acceptance, it is not fair enabled to detect the prejudice or hostility for a posthumous biographer to endanger his which may he skilfully and mischievously reputation by bringing forward what he had disguised in the published book-to find ont withheld as unworthy, either by exhibiting the doubts ultimately entertained by the authe mere dregs and refuse of his lucubrations, thor himself, of what may appear to most or by exposing to the general gaze those crude readers to be triumphantly established, or conceptions, or rash and careless opinions, to gain glimpses of those grand ulterior specuwhich he may have noted down in the pri-lations, to which what seemed to common vacy of his study, or thrown out in the confi- eyes a complete and finished system, was, in dence of private conversation. And no doubt truth, intended by the author to serve only as there may be (as there have been) cases of a vestibule or introduction. Where such such abuse. Confidence is in no case to be documents are in abundance, and the mind violated; nor are mere trifles, which bear no which has produced them is truly of the highmark of the writer's intellect, to be recorded est order, we do not hesitate to say, that more to his prejudice. But wherever there is power will generally be found in them, in the way and native genius, we cannot but grudge the at least of hints to kindred minds, and as suppression of the least of its revelations; and scattering the seeds of grand and original are persuaded, that with those who can judge conceptions, than in any finished works which of such intellects, they will never lose any the indolence, the modesty, or the avocations thing by the most lavish and indiscriminate of such persons will have generally permitted disclosures. Which of Swift's most elaborate them to give to the world. So far, therefore, productions is at this day half so interesting from thinking the biography of men of genius as that most confidential Journal to Stella? Or barren or unprofitable, because presenting few which of them, with all its utter carelessness events or personal adventures, we cannot but of expression, its manifold contradictions, its regard it, when constructed in substance of infantine fondness, and all its quick-shifting such materials as we have now mentioned, moods, of kindness, selfishness, anger, and as the most instructive and interesting of all ambition, gives us half so strong an impres- writing-embodying truth and wisdom in the sion either of his amiableness or his vigour? vivid distinctness of a personal presentment, How much, in like manner, is Johnson raised-enabling us to look on genius in its first in our estimation, not only as to intellect but personal character, by the industrious eavesdroppings of Boswell, setting down, day by day, in his note-book, the fragments of his most loose and unweighed conversations? Or what, in fact, is there so precious in the works, or the histories, of eminent men, from Cicero to Horace Walpole, as collections of their private and familiar letters? What would we not give for such a journal-such notes of conversations, or such letters, of Shakespeare, Chaucer, or Spenser? The mere drudges or coxcombs of literature may indeed suffer by Buch disclosures-as made-up beauties might

elementary stirrings, and in its weakness as well as its strength,—and teaching us at the same time great moral lessons, both as to the value of labour and industry, and the neces sity of virtues, as well as intellectual endow ments, for the attainment of lasting excellence.

In these general remarks our readers will easily perceive that we mean to shadow forth our conceptions of the character and peculiar merits of the work before us. It is the history not of a man of action, but of a student, a philosopher, and a statesman; and its value consists not in the slight and imperfect account of what was done by, or happened to