1800; but it had
been completely still-born, and in England also it was reserved for
the great Frenchwoman to give the first considerable impulse to the
study of German literature. For the history, the merits, and the
defects of her work on Germany, I cannot do better than to refer to
the admirable pages which Lady Blennerhassett has devoted to the
subject. With the doubtful exception of 'Le Genie du Christianisme,'
it was by far the most important French work which appeared during the
reign of Napoleon. It is a characteristic fact that the whole of the
first edition was confiscated by order of his Government. Happily the
manuscript was saved, and about three years later it was printed in
England.

After some discreditable scenes, on which a recently published
correspondence has thrown a painful though somewhat doubtful light,
the connection of Madame de Stael with Benjamin Constant was broken.
The two continued occasionally to correspond, and as late as 1815 we
find her lending him a large sum of money; but their relations were
never again what they had been, and on the side of Constant there
appears to have been a large amount of positive malevolence. 'O
Benjamin,' she wrote to him in one of her later letters, 'you have
destroyed my life! For ten years not a day has passed that my heart
has not suffered for you--and yet I loved you so much!' A strong
affection, such as she had not found in her marriage with the Baron de
Stael, was an imperious necessity of her existence, and after her
breach with Constant she soon found an object in a young officer from
Geneva named Rocca, who had returned to his native town badly wounded
after brilliant service in Spain. When they first met, in 1810, Madame
de Stael was forty-four and Rocca about twenty-three; but a genuine
and honourable affection seems to have grown up on both sides, and in
the following year they were married. Madame de Stael, however, either
clinging to her name or dreading the ridicule of such a strangely
assorted marriage, insisted upon its concealment, and Rocca generally
passed in society as her lover. A child was born in 1812, but it was
only after the death of Madame de Stael that the legitimacy of the
connection was established. It proved much more productive of
happiness than might have been expected, and greatly brightened her
closing years. Nearly at the same time an important change passed over
her religious views, and the vague deism of her youth de