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But her existence was soon threatened by M. le Bailli du village, who came to pay his compliments on the happy occasion, and was going to seat himself on the easy cushion, never suspecting it to contain so precious a deposit. She then suffered fresh dangers from her nurse; and was fed entirely upon a panada composed of rye bread steeped in wine and water; a mess which we cannot recommend to nurses or parents in general, even though fifty of Mad. de Genlis's hundred volumes may have resulted from its administration in the present instance. At the age of eighteen months she threw herself into a pond, from which she was with difficulty extricated. When five years old she cut her head severely shortly afterwards she fell into the fire, but her face, as she takes care to tell us, was not injured. These accidents show a tenacity of life granted only to those who are destined to mighty ends. At eight years old she was taken to Paris, where she underwent the usual operations of her age; and was clad in the species of armour then peculiar to females, whalebone bodices. She informs us, that her education was much neglected by her mother, and principally conducted by waiting-maids, whose chief instruction consisted in ghost stories.

Among the occupations of our author in her youth, the favourite pursuit seems to have been the comedian's art, and to this she has been constant through life. Another much relished employment was that of instructing others; and this taste also adheres to her to the last; for, at a very advanced period, we shall find her regretting that she had not been the governess of Madame de Staël. Her first appearance in disguise was at a little festival, prepared by her mother, for her father's return after an absence of three months. The part which our heroine enacted was l'Amour. Her dress was

'couleur de rose, recouvert de dentelle de point, parsemé de petites fleurs artificielles de toutes couleurs. Il me venoit jusqu'aux genoux : j'avois de petites bottines couleur de paille et argent; mes longs cheveux abattus, et des ailes bleues.'

This costume was found so becoming that it was multiplied. One was made for week days, another for Sundays; only the wings were suppressed when she went to church; and thus was she dressed daily during nine happy months.

We do not reach the fortieth page of the first of our eight volumes, before a large portion of Mad. de Genlis's propensities have unveiled themselves;-a self-adulation never seen before in any human author; a complacency for which nothing is too great or too little; which has a craving alike for flattery of every kind, although it digests the most fulsome the most easily. Already have we been told a hundred times of her talents, and of the com

pliments

pliments which her aptitude for music, singing, acting, her heroism, her agility, &c. &c. &c. procured her and more than once she glances at the beauty of that face and hair which are so often to be lauded in the sequel. As such are the most striking features of the performance, in as far as she herself is concerned, we must, before we proceed further, extract a few specimens—although we have as little hope of giving an adequate idea of Madame de Genlis's vanity by quotations, as of representing a Swiss avalanche by means of Professor Leslie's frigorific apparatus.

"My brother was far from being so brilliant a child as I was. His face indeed was pretty; but he was awkward, and simple, &c.'

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My performance of Zara had such prodigious success that the ladies of Moulins declared me to be superior to Mademoiselle Clairon in tragedy.'

By this exercise (to wit, fencing) my feet were better turned, and I walked better than the generality of women.'

Il y a quelque chose d'extrême dans mon caractère, et une grande mesure dans mes opinions; ce qui fait que j'ai bien raisonné, que j'ai eu du goût, et que néanmoins j'ai fait beaucoup d'étourderies.'

En moins de six mois je déchiffrai tout à livre ouvert, et les pièces de clavecin les plus difficiles; et j'ai poussé ce talent aussi loin qu'il peut aller.'

J'appris à saigner, talent que j'ai depuis perfectionné tout à fait.' 'J'ai inventé une composition avec laquelle j'imite à s'y tromper toutes sortes de cailloux, &c.'

Il est une louange que je puis me donner, parce que je suis sure que je la mérite; c'est que j'ai toujours eu l'esprit parfaitement juste, et, par conséquent, un grand fond de raison.'

Louis XV. parla beaucoup à Madame de Prusieux, et lui dit plusieurs choses agréables sur moi.'

'Nous retournames à Genlis; nous y jouames la comédie; les meilleurs acteurs étoient M. de Genlis et moi-ma belle-sœur, malgré toutes mes leçons, ne jouoit pas bien.'

Tandis qu'on peignoit mes longs cheveux, ce qui étoit fort long, je lus l'Histoire Ancienne de Rollin.'

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Quelqu'un louant devant Madame de Cambis ma gaieté, elle reprit, Oui, une gaieté de jolies dents; voulant dire que je ne riois que pour faire voir mes dents, ce qui étoit fort injuste, car je n'ai jamais eu la moindre affectation.'

'Quand on leva la toile je fus applaudie à trois reprises, et on me redemanda deux fois mon Arriette.'

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Pour la première fois je suivis à cheval la chasse du cerf. Je n'avois chassé à Genlis que le sanglier; la chasse du cerf me parut charmante, parcequ'on admiroit beaucoup la manière dont je montois à cheval.'

'Madame de P. vouloit me montrer dans le château du Vaudreuil, où l'on aimoit les talens et les fêtes.'

Tous mes premiers mouvemens et mes sentimens ont toujours été généreux et bons."

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'Je m'y donnai (i. e. in a comedy she had written) un rôle très brillant, dans lequel je chantois, je dansois, je jouois du clavecin, de la harpe, de la guitarre, de la musette, du tympanon, et de la vielle.'

Comme M. de Clermont avoit beaucoup vanté ma harpe, et que cet instrument n'étoit point connu en Italie, la reine (of Naples) eut la plus grande envie de m'entendre. . . . elle fut si enthousiasmée que dans un de ses transports elle me baisa la main.'

After a conversation with the Duke of Orleans, she says,

Enfin je m'arrêtai pour recevoir des complimens sur mon éloquence.' Le tems que j'ai passé au Palais-Royal fut le plus brillant, et le plus malheureux de ma vie. J'étois dans tout l'éclat de mes talens, et à cet âge où l'on joint à la fraicheur et aux graces de la jeunesse, tout l'agrément que peut donner l'usage du monde. J'étois admirée, louée, flattée, recherchée,' &c.

While governess in the Orleans family she and a friend went both disguised as cooks, to'la plus belle guinguette des Porcherons.' Her friend, she says, did not look well in her dress: 'tandis que moi, au contraire, je ne perdis rien de ce que mon visage pouvoit avoir d'élégant et de distingué; et j'étois même plus remarquable qu'avec un bel habit.'

Two persons at this time became enamoured of her, and declared their passion. One of them was La Harpe, the author, who inscribed upon her bust, as she relates:

Elle a tout le charme des petites choses, et tout le sublime des grandes.' She studied many of the manual arts along with her pupils: 'J'ai fait avec eux une énorme quantité de portefeuilles de maroquin, aussi bien fait que ceux d'Angleterre; le métier de vannier où j'ai excellé; des lacets, des rubans, de la gaze, du cartonnage, des plans en relief, des fleurs artificielles, des grillages de bibliothèque en laiton, du papier marbré, la dorure sur bois, tous les ouvrages imaginables en cheveux, jusqu'aux perruques.'

Mademoiselle d'Orleans had the measles at Mons.

'Je connoissois,' she says, 'parfaitement le traitement de cette maladie, et je fus plus utile que le médecin.'

She charmed, by her harp, the grandmother of M. de Genlis, aged 87, who immediately told her that she preferred her to all her other granddaughters; yet one of these 'étoit jolie comme un ange, et charmante par ses manières, sa douceur et son caractère.'

Nulle émigrée n'auroit été plus paisible et plus heureuse que moi dans les pays étrangers. Avec le goût général qu'on y avoit pour mes ouvrages, ma réputation littéraire, et les talens agréables que j'y portois, j'aurois trouvé,' &c.

Of one of her own novels she says:

'On ne parloit dans la société que de Mad. de la Vallière; on ne me rencontroit point dans le monde sans prononcer ce nom, avec les épithètes

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de charmant, ravissant; et à tel point que j'en étois véritablement ennuyée, et que je n'écoutois qu'avec ennui.'

She adds that a lady had been expressing her admiration of it in the current language of rapture, when, after a certain time, she herself, 'par distraction' as she assures us, joined in the general exclamation' charmant, ravissant,' to the surprize of all beholders, &c. So industrious a caterer is her vanity that it finds aliment in the praises bestowed upon another person, and she quotes the following charming couplet on the talent of her pupil Casimir on the harp, and addressed to her:

Au jeune Orphée, à son luth enchanteur,
Quand le public rend un si juste hommage,
Vous ressemblez au créateur

Qui s'applaudit de son ouvrage.'

Apropos of an inundation which happened at Genlis, she mentions the wonders which she beheld in her life; another inundation at Hamburgh; a fire at St. Aubin; from which indeed she was separated by the Loire; she saw the lightning fall near the ponds at Genlis; at Villers-Cotterets a famous globe of fire; at St. Leu, for the second time, an extraordinary shower of hail; at the Arsenal a tornado which carried off a lad of fifteen to the distance of five hundred yards, without killing him; at Origny a véritable eclipse of the sun, and two comets (we should be happy to learn what the eclipse is which is not véritable). Beside all this, she was at sea in a storm. 'C'est un cours pratique d'histoire naturelle' (we never thought that these things belonged to natural history). Il ne m'a manqué qu'un tremblement de terre, et une éruption du Vésuve.' These are the wonders of her life which she thinks worth recounting.

One evening, in the dark, she stumbled over a trunk, and cut her leg, broke two teeth, and scratched her face in three places: and here follow the words of our great authoress, in her seventieth year at least, upon this occasion.

'Je croyois bien que je serois défigurée; mais je ne l'ai point été : cet accident a tout à fait changé ma physicsomie; j'avois le nez légèrement retroussé, et, comme tous les nez de genre, il avoit une petite bosse, et le bout du nez avoit ces petites faucettes que les peintres appellent des méplats. Je puis dire à présent que ce nez étoit fort délicat, fort joli : il a été très célébré en vers et en prose, et je l'avois parfaitement conservé dans toute sa délicatesse. Il n'est depuis cet accident ni grossi ni le moins du monde de travers; mais la petite bosse est enfoncée, et les méplats ont disparu. Je fus pendant quinze jours si défigurée que je ne regardois point une seule fois dans un miroir, car je savois à quel point mon visage étoit effrayant, par l'impression que je remarquois sur la physiognomie de toutes les personnes qui me voyoient.'

This quotation, we think, is nearly sufficient. But one or two

more,

more, and we have done. She counselled Buonaparte, on his return from Elba, to be great enough to protect the Bourbons.

Je ne me flatte point que cette seule lettre ait décidé sa conduite; mais j'ose croire qu'elle contribua à l'affermir dans cette idée.'

We have reserved the most precious specimen for the last. 'Mon voyage en Angleterre fut excessivement brillant; nulle femme ne pouvoit entrer dans la chambre des communes. Cette chambre, PAR UN ARRET PARTICULIER, M'ACCORDA LA PERMISSION D'ASSISTER A UNE SEANCE.'

This we take for insanity. The trick was, most probably, Mr Sheridan's.

All the passages that we have been giving are to be found before three-fourths of the work are accomplished; and we can assure the reader that we have spared him nine-tenths of the examples which we might have produced. It is quite impossible, by extracts, to give the spirit of vanity which pervades the whole performance. Every thought, every word, every turn of expression is replete with it; neither is there a single subject on which it is not exorbitant. She recounts every compliment that ever was paid to her in prose or in verse; and gives whole pages of miserable hymns merely because they were composed in her honour. We cannot stop to give specimens of these; but with the exception of a very few indeed, not a line is quoted that is not below contempt. No beings upon earth are less endowed with poetic fire than the drawing-room versifiers of France; and had this celebrated lady a particle of the modesty of which she boasts, or of the critical delicacy which she claims, she would have blushed at the incense, and condemned the authors to per petual obscurity. A few changes rung upon the combinations of mythology, lines cut into any number of syllables, with a jingle at the end of each, and a blunted point or threadbare epigram to close the couplet, constitute a poet in the unimaginative circles of the French capital.

The biographer of Burke, describing Madame Genlis's visit to Butlerscourt in 1792, gives u an anecdote which we beg leave to quote.

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Her great ambition was to do, or be thought to do, everything: to possess an universal genius both in mind and in mechanical powers, beyond the attainments of her own or even the other sex. A ring which she wore of very curious, indeed exquisite workmanship, having attracted the notice of Sir Joshua Reynolds, he inquired by what good fortune it had come into her possession, and received for answer that " it was executed by herself." Sir Joshua stared, but made no reply: " I have done with her," said he, the first time he was alone with Mr. Burke afterwards; "to have the assurance to tell me such a tale! Why, my

dear

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