a sufficient time to prepare for a journey; I wrote, therefore, to the Minister of the Police that I should require eight days to procure money and my carriage. The following is the letter which he sent me in answer:

GENERAL POLICE, Minister's Office, }

Paris, 3d October, 1810.

"I received, Madam, the letter that you did me the honor to write me. Your son will have apprised you, that I had no objection to your postponing your departure for seven or eight days. I beg you will make that time sufficient for the arrangements you still have to make, because I cannot grant

you more.

“The cause of the order which I have signified to you, is not to be looked for in the silence you have preserved with respect to the Emperor in your last work; that would be a mistake; no place could be found in it worthy of him; but your banishment is a natural consequence of the course you have constantly pursued for some years past. It appeared to me, that the air of this country did not agree with you, and we are not yet reduced to seek for models among the people you admire.

"Your last work is not French; it is I who have put a stop to the publication of it. I am sorry for the loss the bookseller must sustain, but it is not possible for me to suffer it to appear.

"You know, Madam, that you were only permitted to quit. Coppet, because you had expressed a desire to go to America. If my predecessor suffered you to remain in the department of Loire-et-Cher, you were not to look upon that indulgence as a revocation of the orders which had been given with respect to you. At present, you oblige me to cause them to be strictly executed, and you have only yourself to accuse for it.

"I desire M. Corbigny to suspend the execution of the order I had given him, until the expiration of the time I now grant you.

1 Prefect of Loire-et-Cher.

"I regret, Madam, that you have obliged me to commence my correspondence with you by a measure of severity; it would have been more agreeable to me to have had only to offer you the testimonies of the high consideration with which I have the honor to be, Madam, your very humble and verv obedient servant,

(Signed)

"MAD. DE STAEL.

"THE DUKE DE ROVIGO."

"P. S. I have reasons, Madam, for mentioning to you the ports of Lorient, la Rochelle, Bourdeaux, and Rochefort, as being the only ports at which you can embark; I beg you will let me know which of them you choose.”

I shall add some reflections upon this letter, although it appears to me curious enough in itself. "It appeared to me,” said General Savary, "that the air of this country did not agree with you;" what a gracious manner of announcing to a woman, then, alas! the mother of three children, the daughter of a man who had served France vith so much fidelity, that she was banished forever from the place of her birth, without being suffered, in any manner, to protest against a punishment, esteemed the next in severity to death! There is a French vaudeville, in which a bailiff, boasting of his politeness towards those persons whom he takes to prison, says,

"Aussi je suis aimé de tout ceux que j'arrête.'

I know not whether such was the intention of General Savary. He adds, that the French are not reduced to seek for models among the people I admire. These people are the English first, and in many respects the Germans. At all events, I think I cannot be accused of not loving France. I have shown but too much sensibility in being exiled from a country where I have so many objects of affection, and where those who are dear to me delight me so much! But, notwithstanding this

1 The object of this Postscript was to forbid me the Ports of the Channel. "So I am loved by all I arrest."

attachment, perhaps too lively, for so brilliant a country, and its spiritual inhabitants, it did not follow that I was to be forbidden to admire England. She has been seen like a knight armed for the defence of social order, preserving Europe during ten years of anarchy, and ten years more of despotism. Her happy constitution was, at the beginning of the Revolution, the object of the hopes and the efforts of the French; my mind still remains where theirs was then.

On my return to the estate of my father, the Préfet of Geneva forbade me to go to a greater distance than four leagues from it. I suffered myself one day to go as far as ten leagues, merely for an airing: the gensdarmes immediately pursued me, the postmasters' were forbidden to supply me with horses, and it would have appeared as if the safety of the State depended on such a weak being as myself. However, I still submitted to this imprisonment in all its severity, when a last blow rendered it quite insupportable to me. Some of my friends were banished, because they had had the generosity to come and see me; this was too much: to carry with us the contagion of misfortune, not to dare to associate with those we love, to be afraid to write to them, or pronounce their names, to be the object by turns, either of affectionate attentions which make us tremble for those who show them, or of those refinements of baseness which terror inspires, is a situation from which every one, who still values life, would withdraw!

I was told, as a means of softening my grief, that these continual persecutions were a proof of the importance that was attached to me; I could have answered that I had not deserved "Ni cet excés d'honeur, ni cette indignité ;"2

but I never suffered myself to look to consolations addressed

1 The Maître de Poste is one who has charge of a station of post-horses, Such stations are found, seven or eight miles from each other, on all the highways of Europe. They are regulated by government, and all travellers, by complying with certain forms, can demand horses at any station to convey them to the next. There is no corresponding system in this country.-Ed.

• "Neither this excess of honor, nor this indignity."

to my vanity; for I knew that there was no one then in France, from the highest to the lowest, who might not have been found worthy of being made unhappy. I was tormented in all the concerns of my life, in all the tender points of my character, and power condescended to take the trouble of be coming well acquainted with me, in order the more effectually to enhance my sufferings. Not being able then to disarm that power by the simple sacrifice of my talents, and resolved not to employ them in its service, I seemed to feel, to the bottom. of my heart, the advice my father had given me, and I left my paternal home.

I think it my duty to make this calumniated book known to the public-this book, the source of so many troubles; and, though General Savary told me in his letter that my work was not French, as I certainly do not consider him to be the representative of France, it is to Frenchmen such as I have known them, that I should with confidence address a production, in which I have endeavored, to the best of my abilities, to heighten the glory of the works of the human mind.

Germany may be considered, from its geographical situation, as the heart of Europe, and the great association of the Contirent can never recover its independence but by the independence of this country. Difference of language, natural boundaries, the recollections of a common history, contribute altogether to give birth to those great individual existences of mankind, which we call nations; certain proportions are necessary to their existence, certain qualities distinguish them; and, if Germany were united to France, the consequence would be, that France would also be united to Germany, and the Frenchmen of Hamburg, like the Frenchmen of Rome, would by degrees effect a change in the character of the countrymen of Henry the Fourth: the vanquished would in time modify the victors, and in the end both would be losers.

I have said in my work that the Germans were not a nation, assuredly, they are at this moment heroically disproving that assertion. But, nevertheless, do we not still see some German countries expose themselves by fighting against their country

men, to the contempt even of their allies, the French? Those auxiliaries (whose names we hesitate to pronounce, as if it were not yet too late to conceal them from posterity)-those auxil iaries, I say, are not led either by opinion or even by interest, still less by honor; but a blind fear has precipitated their governments towards the strongest side, without reflecting that they were themselves the cause of that very strength before which they bowed.

The Spaniards, to whom we may apply Southey's beautiful line,

"And those who suffer bravely save mankind;"

the Spaniards have seen themselves reduced to the possession of Cadiz alone; but they were no more ready then to submit to the yoke of strangers, than they are now when they have reached the barrier of the Pyrenees, and are defended by that mar of an ancient character and a modern genius, Lord Wellington. But to accomplish these great things, a perseverance was necessary. which would not be discouraged by events.

The Germans have frequently fallen into the error of suffering themselves to be overcome by reverses. Individuals ought to submit to destiny, but nations never; for they alone can command destiny: with a little more exertion of the will, mis fortune would be conquered.

The submission of one people to another is contrary to na ture. Who would now believe in the possibility of subduing Spain, Russia, England, or France? Why should it not be the same with Germany? I the Germans could be subjugated, their misfortune would rend the heart; but, as Mlle. de Man cini said to Louis XIV, "You are a king, sire, and weep!" so we should always be tempted to say to them, “You are a nation, and you weep!"

The picture of literature and philosophy, seems indeed foreign from the present moment; yet it will be grateful, perhaps, to this poor and noble Germany, to recall the memory of its intellectual riches amid the ravages of war. It is three years since I designated Prussia, and the countries of the North