ich they may cherish with perfect safety. Madame
de Stael descends to posterity with merits so great and so various, that
few besides herself you claim a part of her title. _Her fame is
spotless_, a true child of genius, but free from its aberrations. The
love of right, the _abhorrence of falsehood_, a rare combination of
generous affections, constituted the womanly heart to which nature, in a
happy mood, lavished all the virtues of one sex and all the powers of
the other."

It is very well known that M. Rocca, the second husband of Madame de
Stael, "a man of high honor and of great intelligence" (Chateaubriand
_really_ says so), was unable to survive her loss, and died shortly
after her, it was admitted, through grief. The Duchess D'Abrantes says,
upon this: "He was of an age when life still offered pleasure, the world
glory; but, being hopeless of ever again finding so perfect a being to
occupy his heart, he formed no other wish, after closing her eyes, than
that of rejoining her. A woman thus loved must have been truly
excellent." And, we will add, this love was entirely founded upon and
maintained by her moral qualities, as she was then fifty years old and
in failing health.

Madame Necker de Saussure observes, "Madame de Stael's goodness was
thorough; her noble, generous heart rose to heroism when the interest of
her friends, or even of her foes, demanded energy." This was proved by
the numbers she saved and concealed during the terrors of the
Revolution. In every part of Europe she was courted and esteemed by the
best society, and, if time and our pages permitted, we could quote
tributes to her merits from a long list of eminent men, whose
superiority places them above the petty aim of depressing female genius
by slandering the woman who has well won its laurels. To advert to a few
of these memorials: Schlegel, who knew her intimately, said she was
"Femme grande et magnanime jusque dans les replis de son ame," which is
curiously echoed by the well-known verse, that might serve as a
translation--

"Pure in the deep recesses of the soul."

At the time of Madame de Stael's death, Lord Byron commented at length
on the event in one of his notes to "Childe Harold." After expatiating
on her merits as an author, he goes on--

"But the individual will gradually disappear as the author is more
distinctly seen: some one, therefore, of all those whom the charms of
involuntary wit, and of easy hospitality, attr