those inseparable from her profession,-striking one of so strong and capable a spirit, was the most fortunate chance that could have befallen her. Mrs. Siddons' metropolitan failure in 1775, contrasted with her triumphant success in 1782, has greatly puzzled her biographers, who attribute it to the jealousy of Garrick—of rival and favourite actresses, Mrs. Younge, Mrs. Yates, and others,―to her name not having been displayed with sufficient prominence in the playbills;-to any and every cause, in fact, except the true one, that the Mrs. Siddons hurried to the metropolitan boards by the mistaken zeal of her noble patrons was no more comparable to the Mrs. Siddons who re-appeared there after her powers had become thoroughly developed by seven years of exigent, incessant exertion in the highest walk of her profession, than is the promising pupil of the painter's studio to the consummate master, the practised cunning of whose hand can seize and shape into forms of immortal truth and beauty the fleeting phantoms of his brain.

Birmingham, Manchester, York, Bristol, Bath, witnessed and applauded the gradual and constant advance of the great actress towards perfection in her art; and when the doors of Drury Lane Theatre again opened to her, they were flung wide, not by the favour of patrons, but by the force of her own thoroughly matured and disciplined powers, which the acclamations that on the night of the 10th of October, 1782, greeted her Isabella in Southern's tragedy, but confirmed and sealed. Thenceforth her scenic career was a succession of triumphs. Jane Shore, Belvidera, Calista, Zara, swiftly followed each other; and on the 2nd of February, 1785, Lady Macbeth lived for the first time upon the stage with the true and terrible life in which she had been created, and the mighty actress-to quote an overpowering passage of the

learned Dr. Parr's, applied to the sudden and complete silencing by that magnificent personation of her busy detractors, who had persisted that she was only equal to the representation of Rowe's, Otway's, Voltaire's showy, semblant shadows - Mrs. Siddons, "from her towering and distant heights rushed down upon her prey, and disdaining the ostentatious prodigalities of cruelty, destroyed it at a blow."

Mrs. Siddons lived to the ripe age of seventy-six,-a lengthened span of life, the last forty years whereof were passed in amplest competence, illumined by the love and esteem of her children and relatives, and graced by the consideration of that highest class of society of whose favour and countenance she had ever been ambitious.

184

MADAME DE STAEL-HOLSTEIN.

OF the names which Republican France proudly inscribed

upon her flaunting banner, those chiefly remain that were traced thereon by the sword; and of her literary celebrities-more especially those comet-lights that for a time so dazzled the world—but few indeed survive to pale their decaying fires beside the undimmed, steadfast stars they were to irrevocably eclipse. In saying this, I allude only to the intellectual offspring and expositors or apostles of the genius and principles of the Revolution-of the orators and writers whom Lamartine has sought to reanimate with life by the fervour of his glowing periods and notably of the extraordinary woman whose earlier history I am about to briefly outline. The once widely-bruited fame of Madame de Staël-Holstein has already faded to a memory in the general mind, surviving chiefly in the simulated echoes of an admiration no longer felt for works that are no longer read, a swift oblivion, certainly not ascribable to any deficiency of mental power-few men have been in that respect so largely gifted as Madame de Staël-but that, from being unfortunately exposed, by early position and society, to the influence of the sparkling theories which burst upon the world towards the close of the eighteenth century, claiming to be new inspirations, although, in truth, but old dreams, that in almost every age have, with more or less success, bewildered, maddened, and amused mankind,-she was induced to bend her lofty genius to the impossible task of imparting vital force and reality to those cloud-visions-to

link her own future with that of a galvanized corpse, therein self-doomed to perish, sooner or later, with the decaying form she had embraced beyond the power of dissociation. It required a genius no less divine than that of Milton, to survive in inherent, vigorous, yet withal not unimpaired life, the crumbling into dust of the polemical dry bones whereof he had framed its mortal tabernacle. This privilege was not given to a no doubt mighty, but immeasurably less potent intelligence; and already "Delphine" exists only-if such life-in-death can be called existence-in its polluting progeny of George Sand novels; "Corinne," in the verbose, finelyphrasing patriotism, unvouched as yet by commensurate deeds, of Giovine Italia; and her great work on human progress and perfectibility, amongst the curiosities of a bygone, disastrous literature.

The mother of Madame de Staël was. the daughter of M. Curchod, a Protestant clergyman of Berne, Switzerland, and is described as a very handsome, carefully-instructed, unimpeachably estimable piece of animated formality, whose only imaginable fault was, according to her husband's testimony, that she was so entirely faultless. Susanne Curchod might, it is presumed, have wedded with Mr. Gibbon, who, whilst rusticating in Switzerland, chanced to meet and fall in love with her. The judicious damsel prudently preferred the liberal-minded and wealthy banker of Geneva, M. Necker, to the author of the superbly-toned "Decline and Fall," and, like his ethical brother, Hume, the servile and ever-ready apologist of despotism, provided only it be not wielded by a Church. On the 22nd of April, 1766, Madame Necker, then resident with her husband in Paris, gave birth to a daughter, the future Baroness de Staël-Holstein, who was baptismally named Anne Louisa Germaine,

Madame Necker, a sternly-severe religionist of the Calvinist sect, insisted that its rigid discipline should be applied to all matters of life and household governance, the most trivial equally with the more apparently important; and in accordance with this theory, Anne Louisa Germaine, the Neckers' only child, was trained to close, unremitting study till past her tenth year, when failing health compelled a change of system, and another kind of stimulant, as opposed to sound mental development as that which it superseded, was had recourse to. But of this presently.

Mademoiselle Huber gives a graphic account of her first introduction to the adult-child, who was yet distant about three years from her teens: "She addressed me with a warmth and facility which was already eloquence, and strongly impressed me. We did not think of playing together, after the manner of children; she immediately inquiring about my lessons, how many foreign languages I knew, and whether I went frequently to the theatre. She exclaimed with astonishment, when I said I had only been three or four times, and promised that we should often go together; adding, that it would be advisable, on our return, to write out the subjects and plots of the pieces represented, and anything in the language that particularly struck us—a practice she herself constantly followed. We entered the salon, where close by Madame Necker was a little wooden stool, upon which Anne Louisa seated herself in a very upright position. Hardly had she taken her accustomed place, when three or four of the oldest of the company accosted her with the tenderest interest. One of them, who wore a little round wig, took and retained her hands between his, conversing with her as if she was five-andtwenty instead of ten years old. This was the Abbé Raynal;