only fault her friends would confess in her was the generous fault of too great toleration and indulgence. To dwell unkindly on this is as ungracious a task as to try to fix a stain on a star. Arrayed in her divine charms; armed with irresistible goodness and archness; enriched with equal wisdom and uprightness, every movement a mixture of grace and dignity; protected by an aureole of purity which always surrounded her; walking among common mortals, "like a goddess on a cloud," she made it the business of her life to soften the asperities, listen to the plans, sympathize with the disappointments, stimulate the powers, encourage the efforts, praise the achievements, and enjoy the triumphs, of her friends. No wonder they loved her, and thronged around her alike in prosperity and in adversity. To appreciate her character is a joy; to portray her example, a duty. She was a kind of saint of the world. The only fault Sainte-Beuve can find with the spirit of the society she formed, and governed so long with her irresistible sceptre, is that there was too much of complaisance and charity in it. Stern truth suffered, and character was enervated, while courtesy and taste flourished: "The personality or selflove of all who came into the charmed circle was too much caressed." One can scarcely help lamenting that so gracious a fault is so rarely to be met in the selfish and satirical world; that the opposite fault of a harsh carelessness is so much more frequent as to make this seem almost a virtue. Cast in an angel's mould, and animated with an angel's spirit, her consciousness vacant of self, vacant also of an absorbing aim, ever ready to install the aim of any worthy person who came before her, she was such a woman as Dante would have adored. It seems impossible not to recognize how much fitter a type of womanhood she is for her sex to admire than those specimens who spend their days in publicly ventilating their vanity, feverishly courting notoriety and power; or those who, without cultivation, without expansion, without devotion, without aspiration, lead a life of monotonous drudgery, with not a single interest beyond their own homes. All who have written on this most admired and beloved woman have had much to say of the secret and the lesson of her sway. One ascribes her dominion to a skilful flattery, another to a marvellous tact, another to an indescribable magic. But really the secret was simple and obvious. It was the refined suavity and womanliness of her nature, the ineffable charm of a temper of invincible sweetness and kindliness, a ruling "desire to give pleasure, avert pain, avoid offence, render her society agreeable to all its members, and enable every one to present himself in the most favorable light." Let the fair creatures made to adorn and reign over society add to their beauty, as Sarah Austin observes, the proper virtues of true-born and Christian women,-gentleness, love, anxiety to please, fearfulness to offend, meekness, pity, an overflowing good-will manifested in kind words and deeds, and they may see in the example before us how high and lasting its empire is. This is the true secret revealed, the genuine lesson taught, by the rare career we have been reviewing. After this glorious example of the moral mission of woman, -glorious despite its acknowledged imperfections, it is not necessary to deny the common assertion, that men have a monopoly of the sentiment of friendship. Neither is it necessary to expatiate on the great happiness this sentiment is capable of yielding in the comparatively narrow and quiet lives of women, or to insist on the larger space which ought to be assigned to the cultivation of it in those lives. The moral of the whole subject may be put into one short sentence, namely this: The chief recipe for giving richness and peace to the soul is, less of vague passion, less of ambitious activity, and more of dedicated sentiment in the private personal relations. How little matter unto us the great! What the heart touches, that controls our fate. How each pale spectre of the host would turn ART. IV. - MAURICE DE GUÉRIN. The Journal of Maurice de Guérin. With an Essay by MATTHEW ARNOLD, and a Memoir by SAINTE-BEUVE. Translated by EDWARD THORNTON FISHER. New York: Leypoldt & Holt. 1867. THIS Journal, which is at last brought out in an American edition, extends only from July, 1832, to October, 1835, and covers that period of Guérin's life which was embraced between his twenty-second and twenty-fifth year. Thus the work is brief. But brevity was no imperfection in Guérin: his writings rather resemble those paintings which his countrymen most admire, works in miniature and surprising in accuracy. And this Journal, though it contains a record of no more than three years, yet presents Guérin at a time when his powers were freshest, most self-developed, and free from the influences of Parisian society, the most heated, over-worked, and exaggerated of all societies; when, consequently, his faculties could labor without restraint, and thus appear with all their natural interest. The Journal begins with Guérin at home in Languedoc; it transports us, after a few entries, to La Chênaie, on the edge of the forest of Coëtquen, in Brittany, where M. de La Mennais was residing and conducting his school. He remained there till September, 1833, when the school was broken up; and, after leaving La Chênaie, passed some time in Brittany, with friends whom he had met at the residence of M. de La Mennais. In February, 1834, he went to Paris; and from that time he appears in new surroundings, and with a character, externally at least, changed. Guérin lived about five years after he went to Paris, and died, at the age of twenty-nine, in 1839. His Journal stops with 1835, as before said; and all that we know of him thereafter is occasional writings, and the notices of a few friends. But we know enough to assure us, that he did not always preserve that fresh susceptibility to natural impressions which was and is his chief charm. Not that he became debauched or dissipated, or at all deficient in the qualities of a gentleman; but it was precisely by gaining those qualities which allowed him to shine in salons, and to hold his own in repartee and social intercourse with men of wit, that he lost some of his original prestige,— that simple love of nature and thraldom to its charms that had separated him from the mass of conventional men, and given him the quality of "distinction" which Mr. Arnold claims for him. The Journal, then, shows him in his best period: it presents the fullest account, and exhibits the most marked and striking contrast, of those two qualities which have been pointed out as Guérin's characteristics, and as giving him his individuality. The first was his power of painting nature; the second, his habit of introspection, and his most rare and admirable gift of stating clearly and justly the results of his observations. We do not wish to do again the work which M. Sainte-Beuve and Mr. Arnold have so excellently done,- emphasize these statements of Guérin's peculiarities, and establish them by quotations from his writings. Whoever would see the process by which the result is reached, may find it worked out at length in those essays, or, still better, the original material in the book itself. But there are two remarks which we wish to make upon these topics, and which we think necessary to a right comprehension of Guérin's character, and in referring him to his proper position. In the first place, when it is said that Guérin was peculiarly alive to the life of nature, and that he not only felt and enjoyed its changing forms, but possessed the power of reproducing the influences that moved him, and idealizing them while reproducing them, it is not to be supposed that he was unique in this characteristic, or that he was the Coryphæus of a school that had never before existed. It is a cause of lamentation with French critics, that so few poets in their nation have attempted the poetry of fireside and domestic life, or have been happy in a simple and lifelike rendering of nature. Whoever will take the trouble to look at M. Sainte-Beuve's "Causeries," will find, in that which serves as preface to a series of essays upon Cowper, the question stated, and the names and the works of the writers reviewed, who have made attempts in this department of poetry. The list is surprisingly small; and the opinion which Sainte-Beuve pronounces upon the result of their labors, supported as it is by the testimony of others well qualified to judge, will show us what a void there has been in French literature, and will prepare us for whatever transports Frenchmen may manifest, when they meet with writings fitted to supply the national defect. Now it is this condition of French literature, undoubtedly, which accounts for part of the enthusiasm with which Guérin has been received. His writings, imperfect and fragmentary though they are, have shown that it was not a natural defect of the French taste and imagination, that suffered no classics in the sphere of simple and hearty country life; and that, in the homes of educated and noble-souled châtelains, there could dwell as pure and wholesome family affections, as in an English home might afford a theme for the pen of a Wordsworth or a Cowper. It is this which has given French critics so much joy; for Guérin, with his unaffected love of nature, his openness to its moods and aspects, though a prosewriter, is essentially a poet. His poet-nature would be disputed by few; and hence his countrymen can appeal to him, when French taste and French naturalness and simplicity are called in question. It is this reservation which, while allowing Guérin all merited honors, must be borne in mind, when one reads the somewhat exaggerated notice by Mr. Arnold. Maurice de Guérin has certainly "distinction; " he possesses some rare qualities: "there is much to be gained from his book for poetry, much for the elevation of the soul, and much for the contemplation of nature." But, though he has distinction, he is not pre-eminently distinct from others. What qualities he has, he shares with many of our English writers; and, though he is well |