uch.
Perhaps we may look in upon the Cirey Household, ourselves, at some
future time; and"--This Editor hopes not!

"Madame admits that for the first ten years it was, on the whole,
sublime; a perfect Eden on Earth, though stormy now and then. [_Lettres
Inedites de Madame la Marquise du Chastelet; auxquelles on a joint une
Dissertation_ (&c. of hers): Paris, 1806.] After ten years, it began to
grow decidedly dimmer; and in the course of few years more, it
became undeniably evident that M. de Voltaire 'did not love me as
formerly:'--in fact, if Madame could have seen it, M. de Voltaire
was growing old, losing his teeth, and the like; and did not care for
anything as formerly! Which was a dreadful discovery, and gave rise to
results by and by.

"In this retreat at Cirey, varied with flying visits to Paris, and kept
awake by multifarious Correspondences, the quantity of Literature done
by the two was great and miscellaneous. By Madame, chiefly in the region
of the pure sciences, in Newtonian Dissertations, competitions for
Prizes, and the like: really sound and ingenious Pieces, entirely
forgotten long since. By Voltaire, in serious Tragedies, Histories, in
light Sketches and deep Dissertations:--mockery getting ever wilder
with him; the satirical vein, in prose and verse, amazingly copious, and
growing more and more heterodox, as we can perceive. His troubles from
the ecclesiastical or Lion kind in the Literary forest, still more from
the rabid Doggery in it, are manifold, incessant. And it is pleasantly
notable,--during these first ten years,--with what desperate intensity,
vigilance and fierceness, Madame watches over all his interests and
liabilities and casualties great and small; leaping with her whole force
into M. de Voltaire's scale of the balance, careless of antecedences and
consequences alike; flying, with the spirit of an angry brood-hen,
at the face of mastiffs, in defence of any feather that is M. de
Voltaire's. To which Voltaire replies, as he well may, with eloquent
gratitude; with Verses to the divine Emilie, with Gifts to her, verses
and gifts the prettiest in the world;--and industriously celebrates the
divine Emilie to herself and all third parties.

"An ardent, aerial, gracefully predominant, and in the end somewhat
termagant female figure, this divine Emilie. Her temper, radiant rather
than bland, was none of the patientest on occasion; nor was M. de
Voltaire the least of a Job, if you came athwar