MADEMOISELLE DE LESPINASSE. 255 that this extraordinary woman wrote all this, not in the days of impatient youth, when the heart is strong for suffering, and takes a strange delight in the vehemence even of its painful emotions, but after years of misery, and with death before her eyes-advancing by gradual but visible steps, it is impossible not to feel an indescribable emotion of pity, resentment, and admiration. One little word more. "Oh! que vous pesez sur mon cœur, lorsque vous voulez me prouver qu'il doit être content du vôtre ! Je ne me plaindrois jamais, mais vous me forcez souvent à crier, tant le mal que vous me faites est aigu et profond! Mon ami, j'ai été aimée, je le suis encore, et je meurs de regret en pensant que ce n'est pas de vous. J'ai beau me dire que je ne méritai jamais le bonheur que je regrette; mon cœur cette fois fait taire mon amour-propre: il me dit que, si je dus jamais être aimée, c'étoit de celui qui auroit assez de charme à mes yeux, pour me distraire de M. de M. ..., et pour me retenir à la vie, après l'avoir perdu. Je n'ai fait que languir depuis votre départ ; je n'ai pas été une heure sans souffrance: le mal de mon ame passe à mon corps; j'ai tous les jours la fièvre, et mon médecin, qui n'est pas le plus habile de tous les hommes, me répète sans cesse que je suis consumée de chagrin, que mon pouls, que ma respiration annoncent une douleur active; et il s'en va toujours en me disant : nous n'avons point de remède pour l'ame. Il n'y en a plus pour moi : ce n'est pas guérir que je voudrois, mais me calmer, mais retrouver quelques momens de repos pour me conduire à celui que la nature m'accordera bientôt.” — vol. iii. pp. 146, 147. "Je n'ai plus assez de force pour mon ame elle me tue. Vous ne pouvez plus rien sur moi, que me faire souffrir. Ne tachez donc plus à me consoler, et cessez de vouloir me faire le victime de votre morale, après m'avoir fait celle de votre légèreté. - Vous ne m'avez pas vue, parce que la journée n'a que douze heures, et que vous aviez de quoi les remplir par des intérêts et des plaisirs qui vous sont, et qui doivent vous être plus chers que mon malheur. Je ne réclame rien, je n'exige rien, et je me dis sans cesse que la source de mon bonheur et de mon plaisir est perdue pour jamais." - vol. iii. p. 59. We cannot leave our readers with these painful impressions; and shall add just one word or two of what is gayest in these desolating volumes. "M. Grimm est de retour ; je l'ai accablé de questions. Il peint la Czarine, non pas comme une souveraine, mais comme une femme aimable, pleine d'esprit, de saillies, et de tout ce qui peut séduire et charmer. Mais dans tout ce qu'il me disoit, je reconnoissois plutôt cet art charmant d'une courtisane grecque, que la dignité et l'éclat de l'Impératrice d'un grand empire."-vol. ii. p. 105. "Avant dîner je vais voir rue de Cléry des automates; qui sont prodigieux, à ce qu'on dit. Quand j'allois dans le monde, je n'aurois pas eu cette curiosité: deux ou trois soupers en donnent satiété ; mais 256 MADEMOISELLE DE LESPINASSE. ceux de la rue de Cléry valent mieux: ils agissent et ne parlent point. Venez-y, en allant au Marais, et je vous dirai là si j'ai la loge de M. le duc d'Aumont. Madame de Ch... ne vous croit point coupable de négligence: elle m'a demandé aujourd'hui si votre retraite duroit encore. Ce que les femmes veulent seulement, c'est d'être préférées. Presque personne n'a besoin d'être aimé, et cela est bien heureux : car c'est ce qui se fait le plus mal à Paris. Ils osent dire qu'ils aiment ; et ils sont calmes et dissipés ! c'est assurément bien connoître le sentiment et la passion. Pauvres gens! il faut les louer comme les Liliputiens ils sont bien jolis, bien gentils, bien aimables. Adieu, mon ami." — vol. ii. pp. 197, 198. : We have left ourselves no room to make any reflections; except, only, that the French fashion of living, and almost of dying, in public, is nowhere so strikingly exemplified, as in the letters of this victim of passion and of fancy. While her heart is torn with the most agonizing passions, and her thoughts turned hourly on suicide, she dines out, and makes visits every day; and, when she is visibly within a few weeks of her end, and is wasted with coughs and spasms, she still has her salon filled twice a day with company, and drags herself out to supper with all the countesses of her acquaintance. There is a great deal of French character, indeed, in both the works of which we now take our leave;-a great deal to admire, and to wonder at—but very little, we think, to envy. WILHELM MEISTER'S APPRENTICESHIP. 257 (AUGUST, 1825.) Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship: a Novel. man of GOETHE. 3 vols. 12mo. pp. 1030. 1824. From the Ger- THERE are few things that at first sight appear more capricious and unaccountable, than the diversities of national taste; and yet there are not many, that, to a certain extent at least, admit of a clearer explanation. They form evidently a section in the great chapter of National Character: and, proceeding on the assumption, that human nature is everywhere fundamentally the same, it is not perhaps very difficult to indicate, in a general way, the circumstances which have distinguished it into so many local varieties. These may be divided into two great classes, the one embracing all that relates to the newness or antiquity of the society to which they belong, or, in other words, to the stage which any particular nation has attained in that great progress from rudeness to refinement, in which all are engaged;-the other comprehending what may be termed the accidental causes by which the character and condition of communities may be affected; such as their government, their relative position as to power and civilisation to neighbouring countries, their prevailing occupations, determined in some degree by the capabilities of their soil and climate, and more than all perhaps, as to the question of taste, the still more accidental circumstances of the character of their first models of excellence, or the kind of merit by which their admiration and national vanity had first been excited. It is needless to illustrate these obvious sources of peculiarity at any considerable length. It is not more certain, that all primitive communities proceed to civilisation by nearly the same stages, than that the progress of taste is marked by corresponding gradations, 258 DIVERSITIES OF NATIONAL TASTES AFFECTED BY and may, in most cases, be distinguished into periods, the order and succession of which is nearly as uniform and determined. If tribes of savage men always proceed, under ordinary circumstances, from the occupation of hunting to that of pasturage, from that to agriculture, and from that to commerce and manufactures, the sequence is scarcely less invariable in the history of letters and art. In the former, verse is uniformly antecedent to prose-marvellous legends to correct history-exaggerated sentiments to just representations of nature. Invention, in short, regularly comes before judgment, warmth of feeling before correct reasoning—and splendid declamation and broad humour before delicate simplicity or refined wit. In the arts again, the progress is strictly analogous-from mere monstrosity to ostentatious displays of labour and design, first in massive formality, and next in fantastical minuteness, variety, and flutter of parts;-and then, through the gradations of startling contrasts and overwrought expression, to the repose and simplicity of graceful nature. These considerations alone explain much of that contrariety of taste by which different nations are distinguished. They not only start in the great career of improvement at different times, but they advance in it with different velocities some lingering longer in one stage than another-some obstructed and some helped forward, by circumstances operating on them from within or from without. It is the unavoidable consequence, however, of their being in any one particular position, that they will judge of their own productions and those of their neighbours, according to that standard of taste which belongs to the place they then hold in this great circle; and that a whole people will look on their neighbours with wonder and scorn, for admiring what their own grandfathers looked on with equal admiration, -while they themselves are scorned and vilified in return, for tastes which will infallibly be adopted by the grandchildren of those who despise them. What we have termed the accidental causes of great differences in beings of the same nature, do not of course GOVERNMENTS AND HABITUAL OCCUPATIONS. 259 admit of quite so simple an exposition. But it is not in reality more difficult to prove their existence and explain their operation. Where great and degrading despotisms have been early established, either by the aid of superstition or of mere force, as in most of the states of Asia, or where small tribes of mixed descent have been engaged in perpetual contention for freedom and superiority, as in ancient Greece - where the ambition and faculties of individuals have been chained up by the institution of castes and indelible separations, as in India and Egypt, or where all men practise all occupations and aspire to all honours, as in Germany or Britainwhere the sole occupation of the people has been war, as in infant Rome, or where a vast pacific population has been for ages inured to mechanical drudgery, as in China -it is needless to say, that very opposite notions of what conduces to delight and amusement must necessarily prevail; and that the Taste of the nation must be affected both by the sentiments which it has been taught to cultivate, and the capacities it has been led to unfold. The influence of early models, however, is perhaps the most considerable of any; and may be easily enough understood. When men have been accustomed to any particular kind of excellence, they naturally become good judges of it, and account certain considerable degrees of it indispensable, while they are comparatively blind to the merit of other good qualities to which they had been less habituated, and are neither offended by their absence, nor at all skilful in their estimation. Thus those nations who, like the English and the Dutch, have been long accustomed to great cleanliness and order in their persons and dwellings, naturally look with admiration on the higher displays of those qualities, and are proportionally disgusted by their neglect; while they are apt to undervalue mere pomp and stateliness, when destitute of these recommendations: and thus also the Italians and Sicilians, bred in the midst of dirt and magnificence, are curiously alive to the beauties of architecture and sculpture, and make but little account of the more homely |