man pride, or human arrogance ;--not with the laurels of victory upon her brow, or with troops of captives following her chariot wheels-it is in the attitude of pious thankfulness; with hands uplifted in praise, and eyes downcast in gratitude ;--it is before the eternal throne that she bows her victorious head, and casts her crown of glory upon the ground, and calls her children to kneel along with her, and to praise the Father of Nature that he hath selected her to be the instrument of his mercy to mankind. These are triumphs to which the history of the world has no parallel. In the long line of her splendour, what hour is to be compared with this? Which of us does not feel somewhat of her glory to be reflected upon our own heads? And what British heart is there which does not pray that such may be ever her name and her character among mankind?" P. 449--455. It is a fine thing, we make no doubt, to compose a learned commentary on the prophet Hosea, or a profound dissertation on the intermediate state of the soul;-but we would prefer doing what Mr. Alison has done in the volume before us: and can hardly help envying the talents by which he has clothed so much wisdom in so much beauty-and made us find, in the same work, the highest gratifications of taste, and the noblest lessons of virtue. The Letters of Mademoiselle l'Espinasse. Written between the years 1773 and. 1776, inclusive. Paris. 1809. [From the Reflector.] It is an unquestionable fact, that however smoothly and regu larly life may proceed with those people, who, like the Vicar of Wakefield and his wife, have no revolutions to fear, nor fatigues to undergo; all whose adventures are by the fireside, and whose only migrations are from the blue bed to the brown; there are others, whose actual adventures have surpassed all that has been conceived in romance, and whose passions have taken a more eccentric course, than the most unbounded license of a novelist's fancy has allowed him to conceive. Impressed as the mind of every inquiring person must be with this fact, it still seems difficult to believe, that the passions of a person, not actually insane, should have so far departed from the usual course of things, as is exhibited in the letters of Mademoiselle l'Espinasse, which have lately been given to the public. "What hath been," says Aristotle, "is unquestionably so, or it could never have been at all;" and certainly it requires an implicit assent to the proposition of the great master of rhetoric to believe, that such things have taken place in this sublunary world as are contained in these strange volumes. Here is a lady who, writing to one lover, of whom she affects a boundless and most impassioned fondness, entertains him with what? with extravagant encomiums upon a deceased lover; and a succession of doubts, whether she shall die for the one defunct, or live for the one still surviving. In spite of the fulness of these two attachments, which it might have been imagined would have found their full employment, the lady, to fill up all the crevices in her capacious soul, contrives to make room for an affection for two other gentlemen; which affection, to use her own language, was so strong, that she could express it no `otherwise than by saying, that they were identified with herself; that they were as necessary to her as the air she breathed, and that they filled her whole soul, though they had not the power of disturbing it so that in short the lady had a dead lover, a living lover, and two sub-lovers, if we may so call them. "Veritable ment," as the honest notary in Molière says, "c'est trop pour le coutume." In treating of those aberrations which are the consequence of a disappointment in the tender passion, a wide distinction is certainly to be made in favour of the female sex; and even among them much is to be allowed for difference of temperament. Men have a thousand outlets for discharging the impetuosities of sion, or transfusing its hues to other objects. Many of those, who can calmly discuss the extravagancies which love sometimes generates in the opposite sex, would not find themselves so much at their ease, if it were not for the channels which politics, war, and business afford for turning the affections into different channels, and for weakening their effects by scattering their powers. Thus it is common to see one man disentangle himself from an affair of the heart by making a distant voyage, and balancing the loss of affection by the gain of credit; a second converts into the asperities of political warfare those feelings which are the result of wounded pride and disappointed love; while a third, borrowing courage from despair, boldly combats his country's enemies, and ennobles his life by actions which were meant to accelerate his death. Women are not possessed of these advantages; the only passion which is ever likely to interest them violently, is that of love; and if this passion should meet with any opposition, they' have no means of relief, but that of easing their sensations by revealing and descanting upon them, or expiring silently under their influence. The lady, to whose letters the reader's attention is requested, chose the former method of easing her burdened mind; but in a manner, and to an extent, as cannot fail, notwithstanding the latitude which must be allowed to her sex, to excite extreme wonder and surprise. It will be necessary, that the reader may enter into the full spirit of these letters, to give a short history of the writer's life, previous to the time when these letters commence :— -Mademoiselle l'Espinasse is said to have been the illegitimate offspring of a French bishop and an abbess, by whom, however, she was never acknowledged. After receiving her education at a convent, she was admitted into the house of the Marchioness du Deffand, a lady who was among the most conspicuous leaders of those brilliant circles, which, by uniting the literary and fashionable world, have fixed so much attention on that distinguished era of French history-the age of the Fifteenth Louis. This lady, in the meri. dian of her life becoming blind, found it necessary to have a companion, who might divert her in those hours which were not more agreeably occupied by company, and who might assist her in doing the honours of her table to the distinguished friends by whom she still continued to be surrounded. Fortune threw in her way Mademoiselle l'Espinasse; and for a time nothing could equal the satisfaction which Madame du Deffand found in her young friend. At length, however, the marchioness suspected that the talents and the manners, the misfortunes and the beauty, of the interesting l'Espinasse, were creating a formidable rival for herself among the men, who had hitherto evinced the most devoted respect for her charms: she found that many stolen hours were spent by her guests at the toilette of the fascinating companion; that d'Alembert, her distinguished favourite, was devoted to l'Espinasse; and that even her old lever, the President Henault, was alarmingly assiduous in his attentions. Madame du Deffand became outrageous: an instant breach ensued between her and her companion: a due chastisement was bestowed upon the unfortunate president; and d'Alembert was told, in due form, that he must renounce either mademoiselle or the marchioness. D'Alembert clave unto l'Espinasse, and all future connexion between him and the marchioness instantly ceased. The friends of mademoiselle did not abandon her on this occasion: they procured her a small pension from the crown, and the late companion of Madame du Deffand became a fine lady upon her own ground. Her house became the centre of polite resort; and the circle of the interesting l'Espinasse was attended by all that were distinguished in Paris for rank, talents, and fashion. Released from her fatiguing attentions upon Madame du Deffand, (which are said to have been so severe as to have been the ultimate cause of her death,) independent in her circumstances, and honoured with the friendship of the learned and the great, it might reasonably be expected, that Mademoiselle l'Espinasse's future life would have VOL. V. New Series. 5 flowed on in a course of uninterrupted felicity. But happiness is a very precarious blessing. "Alas!" said an Indian lamenting over his companion, "he was fed with train oil, and the bone of a bird about ten inches long was thrust through the gristle of his nose; what could possibly be wanting to his happiness?" But the Indian, in spite of the luxury of train oil, and though the bone of a bird ten inches long was thrust through the gristle of his nose, contrived to be miserable; and Mademoiselle l'Espinasse found, that although surrounded with all the comforts of life, it was still possible for her to be unhappy. By the fascination of her manners, she had inspired the son of the Spanish ambassador with a profound passion: but whether she herself participated in this feeling to the extent which she professed, was at the time much doubted. Be this as it may, the parents of the young man became alarmed, and insisted upon his immediate departure from Paris, and Mademoiselle l'Espinasse had the mortification to see the enamoured Mora torn from her arms. The departure of Mora, and the lady's affliction, called for the interposition of her friends to alleviate her distress. Among the rest, Guibert, the celebrated author of the Tactics, tendered his kind offices. He endeavoured to please, and finished by attaching her; he came to console, and made a violent impression. Mademoiselle had need of repose: her soul was already filled with a sentiment deep and tender; a sentiment in which her lover partook, and to which he answered with reciprocal ardour; when the attentions of Guibert disturbed the settled feelings of her heart, and set it all afloat again in the wide sea of love, amid the agitation of hope and fear, of pain and pleasure, of transport and despair. A temporary absence of Guibert occasioned her to write to him, and the volumes now under consideration, are the fruits of her labour. In her first letters Guibert is merely her friend: this friendship, however, causes her some little remorse, as trenching upon the affection which she owed to the devoted Mora; friendship soon ripens into love; and her love runs rapidly through the whole thermometer of the passion: she hates, she fears, she desires, she despairs, she loses her senses, every thing in short but her love. In the midst of this correspondence her lover Mora, for whom, notwithstanding the largeness of her affection for Guibert, she still reserved a fund of sensibility and attachment, dies. A frightful state of anguish succeeds: her frame is rent, her reason totters, and she wishes for death. People, however, never die apropos: and mademoiselle, in spite of her affliction, survives. The world and she were now to shake hands Guibert and her grief were all that was to remain for her in existence: no connexions, no interest, no friendships, were to separate them: to love Guibert, or to give up her existence, were the only : alternatives she desired. A correspondence between Guibert and l'Espinasse ensues, which it is evident lasts some years: yet, though she is in love with him to distraction, no proposal of marriage takes place; on the contrary, she recommends several partners for life to him, and when he is actually wedded, continues the same amatory intercourse with him in the same violent, fervid, inflamed strain as before, till the very day of her death, without any apparent compunction or idea of criminality. There is something so inexplicable in this behaviour, that I am almost tempted to think with M. du Deffand, that her intercourse with Guibert was only pour faire l'esprit; that the tactician served her as an object to show her epistolary powers. Marriage would have put an end to this fine correspondence; and like the old duke, who being asked why he did not marry a widow, with whom he had been in the habit of spending his evenings for many years, replied that he should then want a friend with whom to pass his evenings: so Mademoiselle l'Espinasse might have thought that a settled union with Guibert would have put a stop to these wild effusions, which appear so entirely to have engrossed her thoughts. She perhaps was ambitious of proving, by her own example, a maxim to which she often adverts in her letters, that many things happen in real life more wonderful than those which are represented in fictitious life. If neither of these reasons will suffice to explain the matter, no other resource seems to be left but in that short-hand logic for explaining all incongruities, which is at present practised with so much success. Those who have witnessed the readiness with which eccentricities of behaviour in England are explained by a shrug of the shoulders, a significant application of the finger to the cerebellum, and a volume-speaking nod of the head, will easily understand what I mean. In fact, it is not improbable that the deadly drug which Mademoiselle l'Espinasse had imbibed some time before her passion for Guibert, for the purpose of putting an end to her existence, but without accomplishing her purpose, had left a torpifying effect behind it, and had disordered her imagination. In her first letters she indeed hazards a little gayety, and even ventures upon a conceit or two : but after the death of Mora her correspondence, becomes of the most sombre kind; and he who sits down to read it, will do well to arm himself with Dante's abandonment of Hope, and expect nothing but Sospiri, pianti, et alti guai, Parole di dolore, accenti d'ira, It was in truth no skin-deep emotion that could satisfy the soul of Mademoiselle l'Espinasse. Those rules of conduct which make |