aughter of his hostess, the present
Duchess de Broglie, and, in noticing how much she appeared to be
attached to her husband, remarked that "Nothing was more pleasing than
to see the developement of the domestic affections in a very young
woman." Of Madame de Stael, in that Memoir, he spoke thus:--"Madame de
Stael was a good woman at heart and the cleverest at bottom, but spoilt
by a wish to be--she knew not what. In her own house she was amiable; in
any other person's, you wished her gone, and in her own again."]

[Footnote 124: Upon the same occasion, indeed, he wrote some verses in a
spirit not quite so generous, of which a few of the opening lines is all
I shall give:--

"And thou wert sad--yet I was not with thee!
And thou wert sick--and yet I was not near.
Methought that Joy and Health alone could be
Where I was _not_, and pain and sorrow here.
And is it thus?--it is as I foretold,
And shall be more so:--" &c. &c.
]

* * * * *

"EXTRACT FROM AN UNPUBLISHED POEM.

"Could I remount the river of my years
To the first fountain of our smiles and tears,
I would not trace again the stream of hours
Between their outworn banks of wither'd flowers,
But bid it flow as now--until it glides
Into the number of the nameless tides. * * *
What is this Death?--a quiet of the heart?
The whole of that of which we are a part?
For Life is but a vision--what I see
Of all which lives alone is life to me,
And being so--the absent are the dead,
Who haunt us from tranquillity, and spread
A dreary shroud around us, and invest
With sad remembrances our hours of rest.
"The absent are the dead--for they are cold,
And ne'er can be what once we did behold;
And they are changed, and cheerless,--or if yet
The unforgotten do not all forget,
Since thus divided--equal must it be
If the deep barrier be of earth, or sea;
It may be both--but one day end it must
In the dark union of insensate dust.
"The under-earth inhabitants--are they
But mingled millions decomposed to clay?
The ashes of a thousand ages spread
Wherever man has trodden or shall tread?
Or do they in their silent cities dwell
Each in his incommunicative cell?
Or have they their own language? and a sense
Of breathless being?--darken'd and intense
As midnight in her solitude?--Oh Earth!