many defects of taste, more of insight, and most
of mere learning, remains one of the most eloquent pleadings in
literature, and not one of the least effective; while the _Itineraire_
is the pattern of all the picturesque travels of modern times. All these
works, and most of the rest, are practically novels with a purpose. Even
in the autobiography the historic part is entirely subdued and moulded
to the exigencies of the dramatic and narrative construction. Regarded
merely as an individual writer, Chateaubriand would supply a volume of
'Beauties' hardly inferior to that which could be gathered from any
other prose author in France. Regarded as a precursor, he deserves far
more than any other single man, and almost more than all others put
together, the title of father of the Romantic movement.

[Sidenote: Madame de Stael.]

His chief rival in the literature of the empire was also essentially,
though not wholly or professedly, a novelist. Anne Louise Germaine
Necker, who married a Swedish diplomatist, the Baron de Stael Holstein,
and is, therefore, generally known as Madame de Stael, was the daughter
of the great financier Necker, and of Susanne Curchod, Gibbon's early
love. She was introduced young to salon life in Paris, and early
displayed ungovernable vanity, and much of the _sensibilite_ of the
time, that is to say, an indulgence in sentiment which paid equally
little heed to morality and to good sense. Her marriage was one purely
of convenience: and while her husband, of whom she seems to have had no
reason whatever to complain, obtained some wealth by it, she herself
secured a very agreeable position, inasmuch as the king of Sweden
pledged himself either to maintain M. de Stael in the Swedish embassy at
Paris, or to provide for him in other ways. She approved the early
stages of the Revolution, but was shocked at the deposition and death of
the king and queen. Whereupon she fled the country. Before she was
thirty she had written various books, _Lettres sur J. J. Rousseau_,
_Defense de la Reine_, _De l'Influence des Passions_, and other pieces
of many kinds. When the influence of Napoleon became paramount, Madame
de Stael, who had returned to Paris, found herself in an awkward
position, for she was equally determined to say what she chose, and to
have gallant attentions paid to her, and Napoleon would not comply with
either of her wishes. She, therefore, had to leave France, but not
before she had published her