up while ploughing the fields in the neighbourhood of Wilsthorp Wood, which lay immediately beyond their position.

Cromwell was now master of the field. The Royalist centre and right wing had been completely defeated; while the Parliamentarian centre and left wing stood victorious amid the corpses strewed around them on the moor. Soon appeared Rupert with his cavalry, on their return from chasing the Scots under Fairfax, along the road to Tadcaster. The cavaliers' horses were blown, but they rushed headlong upon the Ironsides, who were not slow to grapple with their foes. The struggle was short, sharp, and decisive. Receiving their first onset like a wall, the Roundheads bore back upon the cavaliers with terrible fury. Cromwell received a wound in the neck, which caused momentary alarm among the Ironsides, but General Leslie dashing in at the head of the Scottish horse, the Royalist forces were overpowered, and Rupert fled discomfited from the field.

It was ten o'clock at night before the battle was ended. Five thousand bodies lay dead upon the field. One half of those killed upon the Royalist side were gentlemen and officers, many of them men of rank and title. Among these were Lord Carew, Sir William Lambton, and Davenant the poet. Fifteen hundred prisoners were taken by the victors, with immense quantities of arms, ammunition, and baggage.

Next morning the dead were gathered together and buried in Wilsthorp wood, where their graves may still be seen. Some were buried in the churchyard of Marston, where, however, no stone marks their resting place. The fields are now quiet and peaceful,-only the lark singing in mid-air, and the ploughman's whistle, are heard. Often, while turning over the soil, a musket-ball, or broken piece of armour, or bullet-mould, is picked up, at which the rustic looks wonderingly, as a memorial of "the great battle," though knowing as little about it as did old Caspar of the battle of Blenheim, in Southey's poem :

But what they killed each other for,

I could not well make out;
But everybody said, quoth he,
That 'twas a famous victory!

MADAME DE STAEL.

ANNE LOUISE GERMAINE NECKER, the celebrated daughter of a celebrated father, was born at Paris, April 22, 1766. In her earliest years she manifested uncommon vivacity of perception and depth of feeling; and at the age of eleven, her sprightli ness, her self-posession, and the eager and intelligent interest which she took in all the subjects of conversation, rendered her the pet and the wonder of the brilliant circle which frequented her father's house. Necker himself, though he delighted in promoting the development of his daughter's talents, was a watchful critic of her faults: "I owe," said she, "to my father's penetration, the frankness of my disposition, and the simplicity of my mind. He exposed every sort of affectation; and, in his company, I formed the habit of thinking that my heart lay open to view." She repaid his care and tenderness by a passionate and devoted affection, such as scarcely seems to belong to the relationship which existed between them. Throughout his life, the desire to minister to his pleasure was her first object, and his death threw a permanent shade of melancholy over her spirit.

Madlle. Necker paid the usual price of mental precocity, in its debilitating effects upon her bodily

constitution. At the age of fourteen, serious apprehensions were entertained for her life; and she was sent to St. Ouen, in the neighbourhood of Paris, for the benefit of country air, with orders to abstain from every species of severe study. This course of life was more favourable to the development of that poetical, ardent, and enthusiastic temper, which was the source of so much enjoyment, and so much distinction, than to the habits of self-control, without which, such a temper is almost too dangerous to be called a blessing. Her character at this period of life is thus described by her relation and biographer, Mad. Necker de Saussure:-"We may figure to ourselves Mad. de Stael, in her early youth, entering with confidence upon a life, which to her promised nothing but happiness. Too benevolent to expect hatred from others, too fond of talent in others to anticipate the envy of her own, she loved to exalt genius, enthusiasm, and inspiration, and was herself an example of their power."

Endowed with such qualities, the effect which Madlle. Necker produced upon her introduction to society was as brilliant as her friends could desire, though the effervescence of imagination and youthful spirits sometimes led her to commit breaches of etiquette, which might have been fatal to the success of a less accomplished débutante. At the age of twenty, in 1786, she married the Baron de Stael Holstein, ambassador of Sweden at the court of France. He was much the elder, and the matter seems to have been arranged by her parents, with her acquiescence indeed, but without her heart being at all interested in the connection. And we trace the effect of her ruling passion, love of her father, in the Baron de Stael's engagement not to take her to reside in Sweden without her free consent. During a large portion of their married life they were separated from each other by the baron's absences from France; but when age and sickness weighed him down, she hastened to comfort him, and his last hours (in 1802) were soothed by her presence and watchful care. By this marriage Mad. de Stael had four children, of whom only a son and a daughter survived her: the latter became the wife of the Duc de Broglie; the former inherited his father's title, and has won for himself a creditable place in the literature of the age.

At the beginning of the revolution, Mad. de Stael watched the new prospects opening on her country with joyful anticipation: but she was shocked and disgusted by the ferocious excesses which ensued. Her love of liberty was too sincere to let her justify the policy, or join the party of the court, but, with an admirable courage, she used the powerful influence of her talents and her connections to save as many as possible of the victims of that frenzied time. She arranged a plan for the escape of the royal family from the Tuileries; and after the death of Louis XVI., she had the boldness (for so it must be called) to publish her "Défense de la Reine."

Having passed safely through the Reign of Terror, Mad. de Stael hailed the establishment of the Directory in 1795, as the commencement of a settled government. Through life she devoted a large portion of her attention to politics, which she designated as comprehending within their sphere, morality, religion and literature. Her brilliant conversation drew around her the ablest and most accomplished men of the French capital; and in Paris, where the public opinion of France is compressed into a narrow space, wit or beauty has always had an influence unknown to the more sedate nations of the north. To this period of her life belong the treatises--more interesting as specimens of her genius, than important for the truth of her theories - De l'Influence

des Passions sur le Bonheur des Individus et des Nations, published in 1796, of which only the first part, relating to individuals, was completed; and De la Littérature considérée dans ses Rapports avec les Institutions Sociales, published in 1800:subjects, it has been truly said, which demand the observation and study of a whole life. It is not on these, therefore, that her fame is based. But the latter has the great merit, according to the testimony of Sir James Mackintosh, of being the first attempt to treat the philosophy of literary history upon a bold and comprehensive scale.

But she could not aspire to "direct the storm," without running some danger of being caught in it; and it is probable, as indeed she herself admits, that if she had foreseen the troubles which political influence was to bring upon her, she would have been well pleased to resign all pretension to it. At the end of 1799, Bonaparte rose to power on the ruin of the Directory. That remarkable man inspired Mad. de Stael from the first with an indescribable fear and dislike, which she has expressed throughout her very interesting work, entitled, Dix Années d'Exile; and as she saw at once the danger to which the cause of rational liberty was exposed by his ambition, and feared not to express her sentiments, her house became the focus of discontent. Benjamin Constant, then one of her intimate associates, having prepared and communicated to her a speech to expose the dawning tyranny of the First Consul, warned her that, if spoken, it would necessarily be followed by the desertion of the brilliant society which she loved, and by which she was surrounded. She replied, "We must do as we think right." It was accordingly pronounced on the following day, on the evening of which her favourite circle was to assemble at her own house. Before six o'clock she received ten notes of excuse. The speech was followed by an intimation from Fouché, that Mad. de Stael's retirement from Paris for a short time would be expedient. In the spring of 1800, Bonaparte's absence upon the campaign of Marengo, and the publication of her work on literature, brought Mad. de Stael again into fashion. From that time until 1802, she remained undisturbed, and divided her time chiefly between Paris, and her father's residence at Coppet, on the Lake of Geneva. In the latter year (in which she published Delphine), her intimacy with Bernadotte caused the First Consul to regard her with suspicion, though the dread of being banished from the delights of Parisian society had taught her prudence. "They pretend," he said, "that she neither talks politics, nor mentions me; but I know not how it happens, that people seem to like me less after visiting her." Prudence, or the warning of her friends, detained Mad. de Stael at Coppet during the winter of 1802-3: but when war broke out, and she thought that Bonaparte's attention was fully occupied by the proposed descent upon England, she could not resist the thirst of conversation which always drew her to Paris. She did not venture to enter the city; but she had not been long in its neighbourhood, when she was terribly disconcerted by a peremptory order not to appear within forty leagues of the metropolis. The rest of France had no attraction for her, and she determined to visit Germany. Weimar was her first place of abode, where she became acquainted with Goethe, Wieland, and Schiller, and, under their auspices, commenced her study of the German language and literature. In 1804, she proceeded to Berlin; but she was suddenly recalled to Switzerland by the illness and death of M. Necker.

Shortly after, she visited Italy for the first time. The grand and solemn remains of antiquity har

The

monized with the melancholy of her mind; and in this journey was developed a love of art, and in a less degree, a taste for scenery, of which up to this time she seems to have been strangely deficient. fruit of her travels appeared in Corinne, written after her return to Coppet in 1805, and published at Paris early in 1807, which raised her to the first class of living writers. Sir James Mackintosh, who read it in India, in a translation, says, "I swallow Corinne slowly that I may taste every drop. I prolong my enjoyment, and really dread the termination." Dictated by the same leading idea as Delphine, but far superior in depth and truth of sentiment, as well as eloquence, and genuine poetic ardor, it was also free from the moral objections to the former novel. Each heroine, according to the lively author first quoted, is a transcript from the author herself. "Corinne is the ideal of Mad. de Stael; Delphine is her very self in youth."

Before the publication of Corinne, Mad. de Stael had ventured into the neighbourhood of Paris. The book contained nothing hostile to Napoleon; but the new wreath of fame which the author had woven for herself revived his spleen, and she soon received a peremptory order to quit France. This was a bitter mortification. We have mentioned her ruling love of conversation and to her, Paris was the world; beyond its limits life was vegetation. "Give me the Rue de Bac," she said to those who extolled the Lake of Geneva; "I would prefer living in Paris on a fourth story, with a hundred louis a year." The chief studies of her exile were German literature and metaphysics. In 1808 she returned to Coppet, to arrange the materials for her great work on Germany. Having devoted nearly two years to this task, she went to France in the summer of 1810, the degree of exile being so far relaxed, that she was permitted, as before, to reside forty leagues from the capital. Her principal object was to superintend the printing of her work, which was to be published at Paris. After passing safely, though with many alterations, through the censorship, the last proof was corrected, September 23. Scarcely was this done, and 10,000 copies struck off, when the whole impression was seized and destroyed. Mad. de Stael fortunately was enabled, by timely warning, to secrete the manuscript. This blow was accompanied by an order to quit France without delay. America, which she had expressed a desire to visit, and Coppet, were the only places offered to her choice: an attempt to reach England, which was her secret wish, would have been followed by immediate arrest. chose to return to her paternal home. There the Emperor's persecution, and her hatred of him, reached their height; and though not to be ranked with the graver offences of tyranny, his treatment of her was of a most irritating character, and unbecoming any but a low-minded despot. It was intimated that she had better confine her excursions to a circle of two leagues; her motions were watched, even within her own house; to be regarded as her friend was equivalent to a sentence of disgrace or dismissal to any person dependent on the government; her sons were forbidden to enter their native country; M. Schlegel, their domestic tutor, was ordered to quit Coppet; and worst of all, her two dearest friends, M. de Montmorency and Mad. Recamier, were banished France for having presumed to visit her. These, and more trifling delinquencies are set forth with most stinging sarcasm, in her Ten Years of Exile.

She

Harassed beyond endurance, she resolved to make an attempt to escape from these never-ending vexations. But whither to go? She could not obtain permission to reside elsewhere; and if Napoleon

demanded her, no continental power, except Russia, could give her an asylum. To obtain a conveyance to England was impossible, except from some port to the north of Hamburg; and to reach that distant region, it was necessary to traverse the whole of Europe, in constant danger of being intercepted and detained. After eight months of irresolution, she found courage and opportunity to make the attempt; and quitting Coppet secretly, she reached Berne in safety, obtained a passport for Vienna, and hastily traversing Switzerland and the Tyrol, arrived at the Austrian capital, June 6, 1812. But this was neither a safe nor pleasant resting-place. The emperor was in attendance on his son-in-law at Dresden; and the Austrian police thought fit to pay their court to Napoleon, by following up the example of annoyance which he had set. Mad. de Stael, therefore, hastened on her route to Russia, through Moravia and Gallicia, honoured all the way by the especial attention of the police, on whose happy combination of "French machiavelism and German clumsiness," she has taken ample revenge in her Ten Years of Exile. She crossed the Russian frontier July 14, and in the joy of having escaped at last from the wide-spread power of Napoleon, she sees and describes everything in Russia with an exuberance of admiration, which the position of the country at that moment, and the kindness which the writer experienced, may well excuse. The French armies had already crossed the Vistula, and the direct route to St. Petersburg being interrupted, she was obliged to make a circuit by Moscow. After a hasty survey of the wonders of that city, she continued her route to St. Petersburg, where she was received with distinction by the emperor and his consort. But England was still the object of her desires, and towards the end of September, she quitted the metropolis of Russia for Stockholm. There, during a winter residence of eight months, she composed the journal of her travels, and in the following summer she arrived in London.

* * *

She was received in the highest circles of our metropolis with an enthusiastic admiration, which no doubt was rendered in part to the avowed enemy of Napoleon, as well as to the woman of genius. Sir James Mackintosh, in his journal, gives a lively description of the manner in which she was fêted. "On my return I found the whole fashionable and literary world occupied with Mad. de Stael-the most celebrated woman of this, or perhaps of any age. She treats me as the person whom she most delights to honour. I am generally ordered with her to dinner, as one orders beans and bacon: I have in consequence dined with her at the houses of almost all the cabinet ministers. She is one of the few persons who surpass expectation; she has every sort of talent, and would be universally popular if in society she were to confine herself to her inferior talents-pleasantry, anecdote, and literature, which are so much more suited to conversation than her eloquence and genius." A very characteristic observation was made by the late Lord Dudley"Mad. de Stael was not a good neighbour; there could be no slumbering near her, she would instantly detect you."

The publication of her long-expected work on Germany, maintained the interest which Mad. de Stael had excited, during the period of her residence in England. It is comprised in four parts,-on the aspect and manners of Germany,-on literature and the arts, as there existing,- -on philosophy and morals, and on religion and enthusiasm. For an analysis of it we may best refer to the elaborate criticisms of Mackintosh, in the Edinburgh Review, No. XLIII.

After the restoration of the Bourbons, Mad. de Stael returned to France. She stood high in Louis XVIII.'s favour, who was well qualified to enjoy and appreciate her powers of conversation; and he gave a substantial token of his regard by the repayment of two millions of francs, which the treasury was indebted to her father's estate. At the return of Napoleon, she fled precipitately to Coppet. She was too generous to countenance the gross abuse lavished on the fallen idol; and some sharp repartees, at the expense of the timeservers of the day, seem to have inspired Napoleon with a hope that he might work on her vanity to enlist her in his service. He sent a message, that he had need of her to inspire the French with constitutional notions: she replied,-"He has done for twelve years without either me or a constitution, and now he loves one about as little as the other."

Concerning the last three years of her life, our information is very scanty. She had contracted a second marriage, with M. Rocca, a young officer, who, after serving with distinction in the French army in Spain, had retired, grievously wounded, to Geneva his native place. For an account and apology for this much-censured and injudicious connection, the date of which we have not found specified, but which should seem to have been previous to her flight to Coppet, since Rocca accompanied her on the occasion, we must refer to Mad. Necker de Saussure, that though she must have been more than forty, and the gentleman was twenty years younger, she had inspired Rocca with a devoted and romantic passion. "Je l'aimerai tellement," he said to one of his friends, "qu'elle finira par m'épouser," and he kept his word. The union, though generally believed to exist, was not avowed until the opening of her will, which authorized her children to make her marriage known, and acknowledged one son who was the fruit of it. The decline of M. Rocca's health, which never recovered the effect of his wounds, induced her to take a second journey to Italy in 1816. At that time, her own constitution was visibly giving way. She became seriously ill after her return to France, and died, July 14, 1817, the anniversary of two remarkable days of her life :-these were, the commencement of the French revolution, and the day on which, by entering Russia, she finally escaped from Napoleon. M. Rocca survived her only half a year. He died in Provence, January 29, 1818. Mad. de Stael's last great work, which was published after her death, is entitled "Considérations sur les principaux Evénemens de la Révolution Francaise,' -a book, says Mackintosh, " posessing the highest interest as the last dying bequest of the most brilliant writer that has appeared in our days, the greatest writer, of a woman, that any age or country has produced." That it was left unfinished is the less to be regretted because it is not a regular history of the revolution, but rather a collection of penetrating observations and curious details, recorded in the true spirit of historic impartiality, and therefore a most valuable treasure to the future historian. The scope of the book, in accordance with her warm admiration through life of the English constitution, is to show that France requires a free government and a limited monarchy. The catalogue of her works is closed by the Euvres Inédites, published in 1820, of which the principal is Ten Years of Exile. They are collected in an edition of eighteen volumes, 8vo., published at Paris, in 1819-20.

The leading feature of Mad. de Stael's private character was her inexhaustible kindness of temper; it cost her no trouble to forgive injuries. There seems not to have been a creature on earth whom she hated, except Napoleon. "Her friendships were ardent

Daughters of beauty, they, like ye,
Are of gentle womankind,—
And wonder not if little there be
Of angel form and mind:

If I'd held your cheeks by as close a pinch,
Would that flourishing rose be found?

If I'd doled you a crust out inch by inch,
Would your arms have been so round?
Oh, I am a Queen with a despot rule,
That crushes to the dust;
The laws I deal bear no appeal,

Though ruthless and unjust.

I deaden the bosom and darken the brain,
With the might of the demon's skill;
The heart may struggle, but struggle in vain,
As I grapple it harder still.

Oh, come with me, and ye shall see
How well I begin the day,

For I'll hie to the hungriest slave I have,
And snatch his loaf away.

Oh, come with me, and ye shall see
How my skeleton victims fall;
How I order the graves without a stone,
And the coffins without a pall.

Then a song, a song for the beldam Queen-
A Queen that ye fear right well;

For my portal of state is the workhouse gate, And my throne the prison cell.

STANZAS TO THE MEMORY OF BURNS.

Он, Robin, Robin, child of Song !
The nobly poor-the bravely strong,
Warm hearts have met to crown thy lyre,
And mourn the fate that quenched its fire.
Like another rare and great,
many
Thou wert not treasured till too late,
Thy "magic mantle's" glowing sheen
Burst through thy shroud-cloth ere 'twas seen.

Oh, Robin, Robin! bards divine

Fair wreaths for thee have loved to twine,
But none that deck thy memory-stone
Eclipse the laurels of thine own.
The craven hand would seek to fling
A shadow o'er thy richest string;
But never shall such coward slave
Shut out one ray from Robin's grave.

Oh, Robin, Robin! princes now
Will speak of him who "held the plough ;"
And many a pilgrim hails the spot
Made sacred by the "ploughman's cot."
The lips that laugh-the hearts that grieve,
Chant forth thy strains from morn till eve;
For Nature ever fondly turns

To hear her own sweet truth from Burns.
Though naught beside of hallowed worth
Marked Scotia's men and Scotia's earth,
Since Burns has sung, she needs no more
To spread her fame the wide world o'er.

Oh, Robin, Robin! proudly dear Thy spirit still is with us here; And Glory's halo round thy head Shines as we laud the mighty dead.

THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW. THIS magazine, under its new management, is becoming one of the most healthy and readable periodicals in the floating literature of England. Its catholic spirit, its forcible and terse arguments, its judicious handling of public subjects, and its superior tone of conscientious writing, are perfectly refreshing and invigorating.

The number for the present quarter* contains, among a mass of excellent matter, an admirable article on Whewell's Moral Philosophy, and a just and ably-written paper on The Duke of Wellington; the latter giving a sound and concise epitome of the great soldier's characteristics, without diverging into fulsome eulogy and mere laudatory verbiage.

There is also an article on The Profession of Literature, well timed and well tempered, from which we extract the following truthful passage:

"We do not hazard much risk of exceeding the truth in saying, that of a hundred men who fail in literature, ninety-nine of them had no business to meddle with it. Literature is a fascination very much like the stage; and of the multitude who fancy they have a soul above buttons,' who throw up Coke upon Littleton' to strut their hour in print, who despise the honest trade of their fathers, and believe themselves destined to make a figure in the world, the number is incredibly small that are endowed with the attainments indispensable to success. There is no profession so crowded with men so deficient in the qualifications required for their work. In other professions, men rapidly find their level; but in literature, sustained by a vanity which eternally whispers in their ears that they are ill-treated, and fed by a restless ambition which grows by what it does not feed upon, they are a long time before they find out their own incapacity, if they ever find it out. How many such men are there clinging to the skirts of newspapers and periodicals, bitterly complaining of the rejection of articles, the neglect of the public, the caprice and want of judgment of editors, and of everything above the earth and under the earth except their own unfitness for the sphere they have chosen, who might have earned a decent competence in obscurity if they had been brought up to some useful occupation instead of being cast upon that occupation which, of all others, exacts the severest toil, the most varied powers, the greatest self-denial, the most earnest labour and vigilance, uprightness and perseverance.

"What result other than disappointment can be anticipated from the inveterate folly of a man who persists in a pursuit which he has taken up without the least previous training of his faculties, without study or preparation of any kind? The meanest calling requires some qualifications, and literature most of all. Can a man instruct others who is ignorant himself? or guide the taste of the public if his own be uneducated? Looking rationally at means and ends, what can he expect from persevering in so hopeless a course, but to be baffled in the long run? He hunts a phantom, which eludes his grasp at every turn. He is like a child crying for the moon, or a boy chasing a butterfly. Trace the course of a literary adventurer of this numerous class, and wonder no more at the sequel.

*The Westminster Review. No. IV. New Series. J. Chapman: London.