verance, 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 grâce de Dieu,”—and as if unconsciously and involuntarily. All Saint Lambert's poetry together is not worth the little song she composed for him on his departure for the army:

L'Amant que j'adore,
Prêt à me quitter,
D'un instant encore
Voudrait profiter:
Félicité vaine!

Qu'on ne peut saisir,

Trop près de la peine

Pour être 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.

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 man, found one who ever was connected with that sooner or later, that he was all made up of genius and imagination, and as destitute of heart as of

*See Lady Morgan's France, and the Biographie Universelle. ↑ Stanza 77, and more particularly stanza 79.

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 man. kind!

*

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 farther, but it would lead to a field of discussion and illustration, which I would rather decline.*

Is it not singular that in a country which was the cradle, if not the birthplace 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 Frenchwomen, whose memory and whose characters are blended with the literature, and connected with the great names of their country,-they are often admirable, and

* In one of Madame de Genlis's prettiest Tales-" Les préventions d'une femme," there is the following observation, as full of truth as of feminine propriety. I trust that the principle 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 révoquer en doute, que dans le dédain qui en retrace le souvenir, et qui s'érige publiquement en juge inflexible."

sometimes interesting; but with all their fascina. tions, 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.

CONCLUSION.

HEROINES OF MODERN POETRY.

Heureuse la Beauté que le poete adore!

Heureux le nom qu'il a chanté !-DE LAMARTINE.

Ir 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 airectly 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 odors and flowers, along the dazzling pages of Lalla Rookh, down to Phoebe Dawson, in the Parish Register:* from that loveliest gem of polished life, the young Aurora of Lord Byron, down to Wordsworth's poor Margaret weeping in her deserted cottage t all the various aspects between these wide extremes

*Crabbe's Poems.

† See the Excursion.

of character and situation, under which we have been exhibited, have been, with few exceptions, just and favorable to our sex.

In the literature of the classical ages, we were debased into mere servants of pleasure, alternately the objects of loose incense or coarse invective. In the poetry of the Gothic ages, we all rank as queens. In the succeeding period, when the Platonic philosophy was oddly mixed up with the institutions of chivalry, we were exalted into divinities;" angels called, and angel-like adored.” Then followed the age of French gallantry, tinged with classical elegance, and tainted with classical license, when we were caressed, complimented, wooed and satirized by coxcomb poets,

Who ever mix'd their song with light licentious toys.

There was much expenditure of wit and of talent, but in an ill cause; for the feeling was, au fond, bad and false;—" et il n'est guère plaisant d'être empoisonné, même par l'esprit de rose.'

We

In the present time a better spirit prevails. are not indeed sublimated into goddesses; but neither is it the fashion to degrade us into the playthings of fopling poets. We seem to have found, at length, our proper level in poetry, as in society; and take the place assigned to us as

women

As creatures not too bright or good,
For human nature's daily food;

For transient sorrows, simple wiles,

Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles!*

We are represented as ruling by our feminine attractions, moral or exterior, the passions and imaginations of men; as claiming, by our weakness, our delicacy, our devotion,—their protection, their tenderness, and their gratitude: and since the minds of women have been more generally and highly cultivated; since a Madame de Staël, a ·Joanna Baillie, a Maria Edgeworth, and a hundred other names, now shining aloft like stars, have shed a reflected glory on the whole sex they belong to, we possess through them, a claim to admiration and respect for our mental capabilities. We assume the right of passing judgment on the poetical homage addressed to us, and our smiles alone can consecrate what our smiles first inspired.†

If we look over the mass of poetry produced during the last twenty-five years, whether Italian, French, German, or English, we shall find that the predominant feeling is honorable to women, and if not gallantry, is something better. It is too true, that the incense has not been always perfectly pure. Many light lays,-ah, wo is me there

*Wordsworth.

† Even so the smile of woman stamps our fates, And consecrates the love it first creates !

Barry Cornwall.

See in particular Schiller's ode, "Honor to Women," one of the most elegant tributes ever paid to us by a poet's enthusiasm. It may be found translated in Lord F. Gower's beautiful little volume of Miscellanies.