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SKETCHES

OF

EMINENT STATESMEN AND WRITERS,

WITH OTHER ESSAYS.

[Reprinted from the "Quarterly Review," with Additions and Corrections.]

BY A. HAYWARD, Q.C.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

LONDON:

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.

1880.

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MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ.

(From the Quarterly Review, January, 1873.)

"MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ, like La Fontaine, like Montaigne, is one of those subjects which are perpetually in the order of the day in France. She is not only a classic, she is an acquaintance, and, better still, a neighbour and a friend." She will never be this, or anything like it, in England. Her name is equally familiar, almost as much a household word; and there are always amongst us a select few who find an inexhaustible source of refined enjoyment in her letters. The Horace Walpole set affected to know them by heart: George Selwyn meditated an edition of them, and preceded Lady Morgan in that pilgrimage to the Rochers which she describes so enthusiastically in her "Book of the Boudoir." Even in our time it would have been dangerous to present oneself often at Holland House or the Berrys', without being tolerably well up in them. Mackintosh rivalled Walpole in exalting her. But the taste is not on the increase: the worshippers decline apace we hear of no recent English visitors to the Breton shrine: the famous flourish about the Grande Mademoiselle marriage, with the account of the death of Vattel, form the sum of what is 1 Madame de Sévigné: her Correspondence and Contemporaries. By the Comtesse de Puliga. 2 vols. London, 1873.

2 Sainte-Beuve, "Causeries de Lundi."

VOL. II.

B

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