'She is small, with black eyes and hair, a very pleasant face, an uncommonly sweet smile, and, when she speaks, has much spirit and expression in her countenance. Her conversation is agreeable, particularly in the choice and variety of her phraseology, and has more the air of eloquence than I have ever heard before from a lady. But, then, it has something of the appearance of formality and display, which injures conversation. Her manner is gracious and elegant; and, though I should not think of comparing her to Corinne, yet I think she has uncommon powers.'

Sir Humphry Davy stated that, when he was at Coppet, Madame de Staël showed him part of a work on England similar in plan to her 'De l'Allemagne,' but to be only two-thirds as long. Mr. Murray said that she had offered it to him and had the conscience to ask four thousand guineas for it. Lord Byron states in his Journal that she also spoke of it to him.

Amongst the men of mark who contributed to Mr. Ticknor's store of anecdotes was West.

'June 23.-We spent half the forenoon in Mr. West's gallery, where he has arranged all the pictures that he still owns. . . . He told us a singular anecdote of Nelson, while we were looking at the picture of his death. Just before he went to sea for the last time, West sat next to him at a large entertainment given to him here, and in the course of the dinner Nelson expressed to Sir William Hamilton his regret, that in his youth he had not acquired some taste for art and some power of discrimination. "But," said he, turning to West, "there is one picture whose power I do feel. I never pass a paintshop where your 'Death of Wolfe' is in the window, without being stopped by it." West, of course, made his acknowledgments, and Nelson went on to ask why he had painted no more like it. "Because, my lord, there are no more subjects." "D-n_ it," said the sailor, "I didn't think of that," and asked him to take a glass of champagne. "But, my lord, I fear your intrepidity will yet furnish me such another scene; and, if it should, I shall certainly avail myself of it." "Will you?" said Nelson, pouring out bumpers, and touching his glass violently against West's,-" will you, Mr. West? then I hope that I shall die in the next battle." He sailed a few days after, and the result was on the canvas before us.'

Mr. Ticknor left England in June and reached Göttingen, viâ Rotterdam, the Hague, Leyden, and Amsterdam, on the 15th August, 1815. Göttingen was then the leading university of Germany: it was the goal of his wishes when he left home, and on arriving there he felt, we are told, like the pilgrim who had reached the shrine of his faith. His genuine love of knowledge and zeal for improvement are proved by the unshrinking assiduity with which he devoted himself to study, after what would have been to most men of his age the enervating influence of society. He rose

regularly

regularly at five and went to bed at ten; parcelling out more than twelve of his working hours between Greek, German, theology, natural history, and general literature. As to acquaintance and visiting, he says, 'If a man who means to have any reputation as a scholar sees his best friend once a week, it is thought quite often enough.' He rarely met his friend and countryman, Everett, except at the fencing lessons which they took for exercise, and on Sunday evenings, which they commonly spent at Blumenbach's, Heeren's, or Eichhorn's. At the end of the first six weeks they took a five days' holiday to visit Hanover, where they made the acquaintance of Count Münster, Minister of State or Premier, and Madame Kestner, the original of Goethe's Charlotte. Of Count Münster (the father of the German Ambassador now accredited at St. James's) he speaks in complimentary terms, adding, "I shall not soon forget the praise which Blumenbach gave him, that he is a minister who never made a promise which he did not fulfil.' The most amusing of his personal reminiscences of the Göttingen professors relate to Blumenbach, whose fund of animal spirits was inexhaustible and found vent in jokes or mystifications at the expense of the young American.

Every day he has something new and strange to tell; and as he takes a particular delight in teasing me, he commonly relates something out of the way respecting our North Amerian Indians, which by a dexterous turn he contrives to make those present think is equally true of the citizens of the United States, and ends by citing some of the strange opinions of Buffon or Raynal to support himself, and put me out of countenance.'

Porson used to say that, familiar as he was with Greek, he never read a Greek play with the same facility as a newspaper. If there was a better contemporary Grecian in the world than Porson, it was Wolf, and he made tacitly a similar admission.

'When I was in Göttingen, in 1816, I saw Wolf, the most distinguished Greek scholar of the time. He could also lecture extemporaneously in Latin. He was curious about this country, and questioned me about our scholars and the amount of our scholarship. I told him what I could, amongst other things, of a fashionable, dashing preacher of New York having told me that he took great pleasure in reading the choruses of Eschylus, and that he read them without a dictionary! I was walking with Wolf at the time, and, on hearing this, he stopped, squared round, and said, "He told you that, did he?" Yes," I answered. Very well: the next time you hear him say it, you tell him he lies, and that I say so."

66

do

In October 1816 Mr. Ticknor was at Weimar, and had a long conversation with Goethe, mostly about Wolf and Byron, whose

recent

recent separation from Lady Byron he (Goethe) mentioned as so poetical in the circumstances, 'that, if Lord Byron had invented it, he could hardly have had a more fortunate subject for his genius.' Professor Riemer, who had lived nine years in Goethe's house, declared him to be a greater man than the world will ever know, because he needed excitement and collision to rouse him to exertion, and could be no longer induced to put forth the powers which he displayed when Herder, Wieland, and Schiller were alive.

'I asked what had been his relations with those extraordinary men. He replied that, from holding similar views in philosophy, Goethe and Schiller were nearest to each other, and Herder and Wieland; but that, after the deaths of Schiller and Herder, Goethe became intimate with Wieland. Schiller, he said, had profited much by his connection with Goethe, and borrowed much from his genius-among other pieces, in his William Tell, which Goethe had earlier thought to have made the subject of an epic poem; but now they are all dead, and since 1813 Goethe has been alone in the world.'

A letter from Göttingen, November 16, 1816, contains an animated defence of German literature, which we recommend to all who have formed a low estimate of it in comparison with that of France :

' After all, however, you will come round upon me with the old question, "And what are your Germans, after all?" They are a people who, in forty years, have created to themselves a literature such as no other nation ever created in two centuries; and they are a people who, at this moment, have more mental activity than any other existing.'

The Germans have recently displayed another sort of activity which has materially varied the popular estimate of their national character. Referring to their turn for metaphysics, it used to be said that the empire of the sea belonged to England, of the land to France, of the air to Germany. But Germany has already appropriated the allotted domain of France, and makes no secret of her intention to share that of England if she can.

At Göttingen, November 1816, he received a letter announcing his nomination to the professorship of Belles-Lettres at Harvard College, which led to a long correspondence touching terms and duties. His final acceptance was delayed a year, and was dispatched from Rome in November, 1817. One condition for which he stipulated was that he should be allowed to complete his contemplated tour, with an important extension to Spain :

Vol. 142.-No. 283.

N

'If

If I am to be a professor in this literature, I must go to Spain; and this I cannot think of doing, without your full and free consent. This winter I must remain here, of course; the next summer I must be in France, and the next winter in Italy. I willingly give up Greece, but still I find no room for Spain. If I go there as soon as the spring will make it proper, in 1818, and establish myself at the University of Salamanca, and stay there six months, which is the shortest time in which I could possibly get a suitable knowledge of Spanish literature, my whole time will be absorbed, and England and Scotland will be sacrificed. This last I ought not to do; and yet, the thought of staying six months longer from home is absolutely intolerable to me. If it comes to my mind when I sit down to dinner, my appetite is gone; or when I am going to bed, I get no sleep. Yet, if I take this place, I must do it, and I do not question I could carry it properly through; for, after the last six months here, I do not fear anything in this way; or at least ought not to; but are you willing? Without your consent, I will not for an instant think of it.'

The external appearance of people known to us only by their exploits or their books, rarely, if ever, corresponds with our preconceived notions. Mr. Ticknor says he was never more disappointed in his life when, instead of finding in Frederick von Schlegel (whom he saw at Frankfort) one grown spare and dry with deep and wearisome study, he found a short, thick, little gentleman with the ruddy, vulgar health of a full-fed father of the Church.

'On sitting with him an hour, however, I became reconciled to this strange discrepancy, or rather entirely forgot it, for so fine a flow of rich talk I have rarely heard in Germany. Luden of Jena and Schlegel are the only men who have reminded me of the genuine, hearty flow of English conversation.'

On April 6, 1817, he left Strasburg, and, crossing the frontier, came for the first time into genuine French territory, which suggests the remark that nothing can be more mistaken than Madame de Staël's theory that the national character of the two people is sharply defined and accurately distinguished at the Rhine.

From Frankfort to Strasburg I found it gradually changing, the population growing more gay and open, more accustomed to live in the open air, more given to dress, and in general more light. At Strasburg, German traits still prevail, and I did not lose the language entirely until two posts before I came to Luneville. There I found all completely French,-people, houses, wooden shoes, impositions, &c. &c.'

Madame de Staël's theory does more credit to her patriotism than to her powers of observation. It was obviously prompted

by

by the same spirit of nationality which inspired the cries of To the Rhine!' To Berlin!' at the breaking out of the Franco-German war of 1870.

One of his first Parisian dinners was at Madame de Staël's. She herself was too ill to appear, and her daughter, the Duchess de Broglie, did the honours. The company consisted of Sir Humphry and Lady Davy, Baron (Alexander) Humboldt, the Duke de Laval, Augustus Schlegel, Auguste de Staël, and the Duke and Duchess de Broglie. It was the first time,' he says, 'that I had felt anything of the spirit and charm of French society, which has been so much talked of since the time of Louis XIV.' It was the first time that he had seen anything at all of that society, and large allowances are to be made for the cosmopolitan character of the party, which was half composed of foreigners. At a subsequent dinner at the same house he says that no one was so brilliant as the Russian Minister, Pozzo di Borgo, by birth a Corsican :

'The little Duchess de Broglie was evidently delighted to an extraordinary degree with his wit, and two or three times, with her enthusiasm and naïveté, could not avoid going to her mother's room, to tell her some of the fine things he said. I do not know how a foreigner has acquired the French genius so completely, .. but certainly I have seen nobody yet, who has the genuine French wit, with its peculiar grace and fluency, so completely in his power as M. Pozzo di Borgo; and on my saying this to M. Schlegel, he told me there was nobody equal to him but Benjamin Constant.

...

At the most brilliant period of the eighteenth century foreigners were equally conspicuous amongst the social celebrities of Paris. The success of the Prince de Ligne, Grimm, Hume, Selwyn, and Horace Walpole, is well known; and it may be plausibly argued that the reputation of French conversation, rich with the stores of every clime, is in no slight measure owing to the same causes which have made Paris, in point of prodigal expenditure and all the appliances and means of luxury, the capital of the world.

Mr. Ticknor says that what was particularly admired in Pozzo di Borgo was his facility and grace in making epigrammatic remarks, which in French society is valued above all other talent.' Madame de Staël was largely gifted with it, and her ruling passion, strong in death, was its display. She was so ill when Mr. Ticknor was a frequent visitor at her house, that her physicians forbade her seeing above three or four persons a day, and these such of her familiar friends as would amuse without exciting her. On May 10, 1815, however, her son brought him a message that, if he would come and dine with them the next N 2 day