d and steadied, such as no petticoated
genius--not De Stael herself--has equalled. Such letters, so full of wild
fancies, poetical descriptions, and burning declarations, were never
written by man to woman, or woman to man, before or since. They could not
be written by woman to man--they were written by a _child_ to Goethe. And
this is the key to the wonders of the correspondence. Don't let people
talk nonsense about the improprieties of her behaviour--and shake their
foolish heads, and lift their puritanic eyes up to heaven: her conduct, we
grant them, would have been very improper in _them_; but in Bettina
Brentano it was beautiful, graceful, and as free from impropriety as the
morning and evening walks of Paul and Virginia. Perhaps we may condescend
on some of the particulars dwelt on in the accusation--but perhaps we may
not--for the people who see errors and grossnesses in the language or
behaviour of Bettina, blush "celestial rosy red" at the Apollo and the
Venus. Let them get trousers and petticoats for the god and goddess, and
leave poor Bettina alone.

There lived in Frankfort, in the summer of 1807, a little girl of fourteen
or fifteen years of age, very small in stature, and so light and dancing
in her movements that she might have passed for an attendant of Queen
Titania; but in her deep black eyes there was a sort of light that the
fairies have not yet arrived at--and her voice was musical--and her lips
were rosy; and every where she was known as the cleverest little girl that
ever was seen, either in fairyland or Frankfort, or any where else. She
was of a sweet, affectionate, trusting nature, and entered with a romantic
tenderness into an alliance with a wild, half-insane enthusiast, several
years older than herself--the sister Guenderode, a canoness of a convent
on the Rhine. The lay-sister talked and reasoned herself into the
persuasion that she would be happier out of the world than in it; so,
instead of marrying the surgeon or other respectable inhabitant of the
free city, and having a large family to provide for, which would have put
more sensible thoughts into her head, she stabbed herself one fine day on
the bank of the river--and Bettina had no longer a friend.

But there dwelt in the same town a majestic woman--strong-minded,
tender-hearted--and with talent enough to compensate for the stupidity of
all the other old women (male and female) in Frankfort; and her name was
Madame Goethe, and she was