any occupation suggested either by duty or affection. We find her devoting herself to the task of nursing her aunt, who is dying of a painful and lingering disease.

In our limited space we cannot attempt to give an account of her frequent changes of abode, or of the notable public events of history, to all of which she alludes, and into many of which she enters fully and discusses them with the sense and spirit of an observant and deeply interested eye-witness. In war times, and particularly when her son was with the army, she suffered great anxiety. In the summer of 1672 was the famous passage of the Rhine, and nothing can be more graphic than many of her notices. There Rochefoucault had one son wounded and another killed. The gentleness and patient silence with which the caustic philosopher bore his bereavement are well contrasted with the violent and eloquent grief of the poor Princess de Longueville, who lost her son in the same engagement.

The chief part of the correspondence of Madame de Sévigné is addressed to her daughter; but when living with her at Grignon, or when the daughter comes to her, still the nimble pen is never at rest. Constant letters then pass between her and Madame de la Fayette, Madame de Coulanges, or any other of her friends who may happen to be at a distance, so that in all these years we are pleasantly kept au courant of the best Parisian news and gossip. With her keen and ardent feelings she has always plenty of anxiety to undergo, often frets unreasonably at supposed ills that may have befallen the idolized daughter; even occasionally, though in a goodhumored way, she ventures to arraign Providence for “crossaccidents,” or for having decreed that they should live at a distance from each other, and says: “one must be mad to continue to love life,” while loving it heartily all the time. But whether things are going well or ill with her, and whether at Paris, Livry, Brittany, or Provence, she has the same admirable animal spirits, the same clear, lively mind and social heart; is the delight and pride of her friends; ever deeply

interested in all that concerns them, and equally ready to weep or rejoice with them with all the energy of her healthy, vigorous, and affectionate nature.

Some of Madame de Sévigné's most charming letters were written in 1689, when she was in her sixty-third year. Seven years afterward, and without experiencing any great increase of the natural infirmities to which she seems here to look forward to with considerable dread, she caught malignant smallpox—that terrible scourge of mankind in those times—and died at her daughter's house, the Château de Grignon, in 1696, at the age of seventy, surrounded by her descendants and tenderly waited on and nursed by Mademoiselle de Marseillac, the daughter of Rochefoucault.

The beloved Madame de Grignon only survived her nine years. She is said to have died of a broken heart soon after the death of her only son, a handsome, brave, young officer, who is spoken of by his grandmother as “caring little for his books, but not on that account the less kissed and caressed," whose destiny, she says, it is to be perfectly loved, and whom, rather to our surprise, we find studying good-breeding at the feet of Ninon de l'Enclos—a very doubtful advantage, which was thus enjoyed by no fewer than three generations of Madame de Sévigné's family-her husband, son, and grandson.

Besides Blanche Ademar, whose childhood was sweetly passed with the loving grandmother, and who, as we before mentioned, became a nun, Madame de Grignon left only one child, that charming Pauline, of whom we hear so much that is interesting and pleasant in the latter years of Madame de Sévigné. She had something of her grandmother's looks and bright wit, but was more like her mother in gravity of disposition. She married Louis de Imèiane, Marquis de Esparron, who was in some way connected with the English family of the Hays, and some of the descendants of this marriage are still living, though we have long lost the dear names of Rabutin, Sévigné, and Grignon.

We rather agree with the Abbé Vauxelle, in having no

great liking for “la plus jolie fille de France,” Madame de Grignon. All honor to her beauty, wit, and surpassing talents; but the philosophic coldness with which she occasionally answers her mother's over-anxious affection jars painfully on our feelings. No doubt the mother's love was somewhat sinful and inordinate; she herself knew it; often felt compunction for the excess; prayed to be forgiven for her idolatry, and finding herself too weak to sacrifice it was at least humble in the indulgence. But the daughter's haughty Cartesianism and numerous and bitter dislikes rather revolt us; and we cannot forget that her mother's pen is never dipped in gall except for her gratification. Madame de Sévigné is thoroughly “ sweet-blooded;" even when she best ridicules Mademoiselle de Plexis, and most reviles Madame de Marans, we feel that she is only ill-natured out of good-nature, and that there is not a spark of malice in her heart. There was too much of love and of natural piety there to leave room for hatred. “For my sake,” she says to her daughter on one occasion, “don't let us take the burden of a hatred upon our shoulders; 'tis a weary load." And so it would have been to her, but the daughter's less healthy nature required the bitter stimulant, and the tender mother was too indulgent always to withhold it.

There are many opinions among Madame de Sévigne's greatest admirers as to what constituted the main secret of her nearly unrivalled attraction. One places it in her perfect womanliness; another in her abandon ; another in the largeness of her faculties, in her having carried to the highest perfection all the ordinary talents proper to her sex," and yet another in the unconscious art with which she communicates her own ease, wit, and natural grace to those with whom she conversesa miraculous gift indeed, and one which, to use her own words, “ought one day to gain her a statue.” A recent writer thinks that her great charm lay in her natural virtue; and certainly nobody so impulsive was ever so often in the right, for in her the clear intellect as constantly and intuitively

directed the heart as the heart the intellect, and from such union and perfect accord must ever come the finest moral harmonies. And Leigh Hunt, last and best, pronounces it to lie in her truth; finely adding: “Truth, wit, and animal spirits compose the secret of her delightfulness; but truth, above all, for it is that which shows all the rest to be true.” But in whichever of these directions lay the cause, there is no doubt as to the effect--that she does charm us—that we heartily love her; better, perhaps, than hor wit, better than her good sense, vivacity, and fine taste-better even than her virtue; and since it is so difficult to decide on what it is that so pleases and draws us to her we must even be content to conclude, like the lover in the old song, that

" 'Tis Cynthia altogether.”

ART. III.-1. A Manual of Scandinavian Mythology, contain

ing a Popular Account of the Two Eddas and of the Reli

gion of Odin. By GRENVILLE PIGOTT. London. 1839. 2. Icelandische Volks—Sagen der Gegenwart. Von K.

MAURER. Leipzig 1860. 3. Specimen Litteraturæ Islandicæ. R. KR. Rask. Copen

hagen. 1819. 4. Northern Antiquities; or, an Historical Account of the

Manners, Customs, Religion, and Laws, Maritime Expeditions and Discoveries, Language and Literature of the Ancient Scandinavians. Translated from the French

of M. MALLET by Bishop PERCY. London. 1847. 5. Histoire de la Poesie Scandinave. Par A. M. C. DUMERIL.

Paris. 6. Poèmes Islandais. Par F. G. BERGMANN. Paris.

TRACING backwards the stream of our literature and endeavoring to discover its sources, we find ourselves sometimes confronted by strange and unexpected scenes. The Saxon or Teutonic branch of it takes us among the geysers and icebergs, and volcanoes of Iceland, where we are overwhelmed with the grandeur of our surroundings. In this direction, indeed, we cannot plainly follow the literary current any further, and we are content that it should have come to us from so sublime a fountain.

Iceland is a country whose chilling name and position create an impression not justified by its geology or geography, its history or its literature. It illustrates one of Mr. Buckle's theories regarding the influence of striking natural scenery upon the production of works of genius. An isolated country, by some it is believed to have been the Ultima Thule of the ancients,* while others claim that it was entirely uninhabited, or at least wholly unknown until within the period of modern history. The peculiarities of its geographical position, climate, physical structure, settlement, and history render it a unique land and of great interest ; while its extraordinary rich literature affords a very profitable study. The physical features of that remarkable island are thus graphically described by a traveller :

“In no quarter of the globe do we find crowded within the same extent of surface such a number of ignivomous mountains, so many boiling springs, or such immense tracts of lava as here arrest the attention of the traveller. The general aspect of the country is the most rugged and dreary imaginable. On every side appear marks of confusion and devastation, or the tremendous sources of those evils in the yawning craters. of huge and menacing volcanoes. Nor is the mind of the spectator relieved from the disagreeable emotions arising from reflection on the subterraneous fires which are raging beneath him, by a temporary survey of the huge mountains of perpetual ice hy which he is surrounded. These very masses, which naturally exclude the most distant ideas of heat, contain in their bosom the fuel of conflagration, and are frequently seen to emit smoke and flames, and pour down upon the plains immense floods of boiling mud and water or red-hot torrents of devouring lava. * * * Numerous ridges of rugged and irregular mountains stretch across the interior, and from these other inferior mountains branch out toward the coast, and in many instances terminate in high and steep promonto

• Vide Strabo, 1. iv.