Had led those glittering legions forth, There moved the phalanx of the brave, Of the dark Arctic, when it rolls On their proud frontlets you might trace, The character of many a race, The chivalry of many an age. The sons of sires whom Cæsar led, Of lion-heart, unused to yield: That soldier, who in early youth Had met the Arab's whirlwind-lance, Still follows here with changeless truth, The yet ascending star of France. Amid his chosen chiefs of war, Napoleon from a height survey'd The mighty masses of the Czar, And thought, as rose the cloudless sun, 'Twas thus-when Austerlitz was won. Now 'tis the evening;-on the plain Have met in death's stern conflict there; Still, o'er the soldier's dying hour, Memory bestows her magic power, And lights the flickering lamp of life To march beneath a distant sky The peasant of the winding Rhine Has wandered from his vine-wrought bowers, The shepherd of the Appenine Has left his flock-his mountain flowers; Yon dresser of the olive-grove Has torn him from his plighted love Upon Italia's hills afar She gazes on the evening star, That youth will ne'er return again; When the last rallying charge of horse In gather'd flights, the wintry year, But soon the sun will light again Entomb'd in wastes of wolf-traced snow. 71 MADAME DE STAEL. BY ROBERT WALSH. THERE is an emphatic moral in the statements of Madame de Saussure, concerning the unhappiness of her celebrated friend. The very splendour of her endowments, her triumphs as an author, her importance and lustre in the eyes of the world, not merely failed to secure for her "our being's end and aim," but contributed to deprive her of all tranquillity and contentment. Her talents, says her biographer, penetrated through every feature; they sparkled in her eyes, marked her slightest phrases, imparted a subduing eloquence to her kindness and her pity, but embittered her existence. "Her heart was more alive than that of any other person; but she suffered more vividly, and the intensity of her sorrow was dreadful. She gave us the idea of a superior intelligence, whom a jealous fate had subjected to the miseries and illusions of this world, and whose high prerogative only rendered her more sensible of the emptiness and wretchedness of human life," She underwent all the fugitive and the fixed miseries of the heart; and such was her own impression of the disadvantage of her lot, that when she observed a manifestation of wit in her daughter, she earnestly warned her against seeking celebrity. The spirit of Madame de Stael was, in fact, morbidly restless; her sensibility lawless and excessive; her ambi tion premature and exorbitant. Her passions and habits had been subjected to no discipline. Whether from obstinacy or delusion, she pursued, on every side, unattainable ends. She allowed her potent imagination to keep her in the clouds. The incessant attempt to pass the "flaming bounds of space and time," and to soar upon "the seraph-wings of ecstacy," could not but end in bitter chagrin, or a fatal catastrophe. She married, first a worthy man, whom she did not please to love, and with whom she held but little intercourse. The liaisons, or ties of friendship, platonic, or more than platonic, by which she was connected with the Narbonnes, the Schlegels, and the Constants, being precarious, transitory, and ambiguous, could not satisfy her aspirations, if they left her conscience at rest. Her face may have had "intellectual beauty," and her exterior, when animated by the play of her faculties, ceased to be repulsive; but the whole woman was not of the description that awakens and perpetuates the sublime passion, of which she coveted to be the object. She excited only admiration—the love which she sought, like Sappho, was not to be won by her mental accomplishments, and she had too much acuteness, and fervour of fancy and affection, to remain blind to the absence of reciprocity. On that head of romantic passion and sympathetic union, she continued deeply excitable, and strongly imaginative, beyond the period of age when those who have been gifted with the kind of attractions which she lacked, lose much of their power and their susceptibility. Madame de Saussure tells that there was "a passion, or at least emotion, in all her attachments,"-that they appeared to differ "rather in intensity than in kind," and were "naturally expansive, ardent, impetuous, and even stormy;" that for a long time "she comprehended only |