house near her's in the valley of Montmorenci, and lived on perfectly good terms with her husband. I must add one trait, which, however absurd, and scarcely credible, it may sound in our sober, English ears, is yet true. M. and Madame d'Houdetot gave a fête at Eaubonne, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of their marriage. Sophie was then nearly seventy, but played her part, as the heroine of the day, with all the grace and vivacity of seventeen. On this occasion, the lover and the husband chose, for the first time in their lives, to be jealous of each other, and exhibited, to the amusement and astonishment of the guests, a scene, which was for some time the talk of all Paris. Saint-Lambert died in 1805. After his death, Madame d'Houdetot was seized with a sentimental tendresse for M. Somariva,* and continued to send him bouquets and billets-doux to the end of her life. She died about 1815. To her singular power of charming, Madame d'Houdetot added talents of no common order, * M. Somariva is well known to all who have visited Paris, for his fine collection of pictures, and particularly as the possessor of Canova's famous Magdalen. which, though never cultivated with any perseverance, now and then displayed, or rather disclosed themselves unexpectedly, adding surprise to pleasure. She was a musician, a poetess, a wit; -but every thing, "par la gràce de Dieu,"-and as if unconsciously and involuntarily. All SaintLambert's poetry together is not worth the little song she composed for him on his departure for the army: L'Amant que j'adore, D'un instant encore Voudrait profiter : Felicité vaine ! Qu'on ne peut saisir, Trop près de la peine Pour étre un plaisir !* It is to Madame d'Houdetot that Lord Byron alludes in a striking passage of the third canto of Childe Harold, beginning Here the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau,† &c. * See Lady Morgan's France, and the Biographie Universelle. ↑ Stanza 77, and more particularly stanza 79. z 2 And apropos to Rousseau, I shall merely observe, that there is, and can be but one opinion with regard to his conduct in the affair of Madame d'Houdetot: it was abominable. She thought, as every one who ever was connected with that man, found sooner or later, that he was all made up of genius and imagination, and as destitute of heart as of moral principle. I can never think of his character, but as of something at once admirable, portentous and shocking; the most great, most gifted, most wretched;-worst, meanest, maddest of mankind! Madame du Châtelet and Madame d'Houdetot must for the present be deemed sufficient specimens of French poetical heroines;-it were easy to pursue the subject further, but it would lead to a field of discussion and illustration, which I would rather decline.* * In one of Madame de Genlis' prettiest Tales-" Les preventions d'une femme," there is the following observation, as full of truth as of feminine propriety. I trust that the princi Is it not singular that in a country which was the cradle, if not the birth-place of modern poetry and romance, the language, the literature, and the women, should be so essentially and incurably prosaic? The muse of French poetry never swept a lyre; she grinds a barrel-organ in her serious moods, and she scrapes a fiddle in her lively ones; and as for the distinguished French women, whose memory and whose characters are blended with the literature, and connected with the great names of their country, they are often admirable, and sometimes interesting; but with all their fascinations, their charms, their esprit, their graces, their amabilité, and their sensibilité, it was not in the power of the gods or their lovers to make them poetical. ple it inculcates has been kept in view through the whole of this little work. "Il y a plus de pudeur et de dignité dans la douce indulgence qui semble ignorer les anecdotes scandaleuses ou du moins, les revoquer en doute, que dans le dédain qui en retrace le souvenir, et qui s'érige publiquement en juge inflexible.” 342 CONCLUSION. HEROINES OF MODERN POETRY. Heureuse la Beauté que le poëte adore! Heureux le nom qu'il a chanté ! DE LAMARTINE. IT will be allowed, I think, that women have reason to be satisfied with the rank they hold in modern poetry; and that the homage which has been addressed to them, either directly and individually, or paid indirectly and generally, in the beautiful characters and portraits drawn of them, ought to satisfy equally female sentiment and female vanity. From the half ethereal forms which float amid moonbeams and gems, and odours and flowers, along the dazzling pages of Lalla Rookh, |