ael, occurring in one of his letters; it gives
the last glimpse that we get of the close of her career, and is
interesting also as showing his estimate of a great but faulty woman. He
says:--

"What a life! Passionate, for she was brought up not to control her
passions; almost always unhappy; marrying an old man whom she did
not care for, after being twice refused by young men whom she did
love, and to whom she offered herself, if not formally yet in a
manner not to be misunderstood; forming, after her marriage,
intimate relations with Benjamin Constant, to her father's great
grief; and when he deserted her, marrying, after her husband's
death, a half-dead Italian named Rocca; and finally wearing out her
life by opium-eating."

This marriage with Albert Jean-Michel de Rocca took place at Geneva, and
was for a time concealed from the world, causing some scandal. But her
children and intimate friends knew of it, although much opposed to it.
Rocca was a young Italian officer, just returned from the war in Spain,
with a dangerous wound. He was of a poetic temperament and exceedingly
romantic, and fell violently in love with Madame de Stael, although she
was forty-five years old and he but twenty-three. During the years of
her first marriage she used to say that she would force her own daughter
to marry for love if that were necessary, and it is supposed that at
last she herself made a marriage of real affection. Despite the
disparity of their years, they seemed to be really happy in this
marriage, and her friends were at last reconciled to it. But her
new-found happiness was of short duration,--she being but fifty years
old at the time of her death.

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WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

Mr. Swinburne quotes the following passage from a description given by
one of the daily papers of a certain murderer who at the time was
attracting great attention in London:--

"He has great taste for poetry, can recite long passages from
popular poets,--Byron's denunciations of the pleasures of the world
having for him great attraction as a _description of his own
experiences_. Wordsworth is his favorite poet. He confesses himself
a villain."

At this day the two latter facts will not necessarily be supposed to
have any logical connection; but there was a time when the violence of
the opponents of Wordsworth's claim to be a poet might h