Madame Swetchine came to Rome prejudiced against the celebrated French lady, but she could not resist her fascinations, and they very shortly became intimate. Madame Swetchine writes thus to her from Naples : 66 "Naples, 1825. . . . As the sky grew clearer, the air softer, I regretted more and more having prevented your coming. It was indeed complete forgetfulness of myself. . . . It is thus, however, that I always wish to act with regard to you; it seems to me as if a voluntary sacrifice sometimes purchases for us some little exemption from the pains we most dread; and when you find me generous tell yourself that it is a kind of superstitious calculation which is the secret of my courage. "Our acquaintance, our quick impressions, my joy, my sorrow, all appear to me like a dream, I only know I wish always to have dreamed. I felt myself bound before I could think of defence; I yielded to that indefinite penetrating charm by which you subjugate even those about whom you do not concern yourself. I miss you as if we had passed a long time together, as if we had many remembrances in common. How can we feel so impoverished through losing what yesterday we did not even possess? It would be inexplicable were there not something of eternity in certain feelings. It is as though souls, when united, are freed from the conditions of our poor human existence, and, grown more free and more happy, already obey the laws of a better world. . . I would give already all I possess and all I desire, only to know you happy. Be happy without me, I say gladly; but in your sorrows, I demand my share. Believe me, there is no claim better founded and none which I am more determined to have allowed." In the spring of 1825 Madame Recamier left Rome, visiting on her way Venice and Trieste where she paused to see Caroline Murat. Their meeting was a source of deep pleasure to both. Madame Murat writes thus to Madame Recamier after her departure: "Trieste, 11th May, 1825. "You are very far from me, my dear Juliette, and I ask myself whether I only dream that I have had the happiness of embracing you. It passed so It passed so quickly, and nothing is left me but the uneasiness of knowing that you are travelling and ill. I fear that my friendship did not sufficiently calculate your strength, and that, anxious not to lose any of the few minutes which you could spare me, I may have helped to increase your indisposition. You have also had to suffer from extreme heat and rain; the weather has changed since you left. Winter is returned, and you will feel the severity of the frost as you approach the Simplon. "Send me news of yourself, my dear kind Juliette. Let your letter reassure me as to your health. Louise told me how much your pretty niece had suffered the last day from that evening which to her appeared so long, and to me so short. I trust she felt no further effects from it; give her my regards, and express my regrets to her. Do not forget to remember me to M. Ballanche. Farewell, my dear Juliette, believe in the constancy of my friendship. I can never forget the touching proof you have given me of yours. "CAROLINE." Madame Recamier returned to Paris in the month of May, but owing to the coronation of Charles X., found neither M. de Chateaubriand nor the Duc Matthieu de Montmorency able to receive her. Her niece returned from Italy betrothed to M. Charles Lenormant, a young man of great ability, whose proposals had been heartily sanctioned by Madame Recamier, and in whom she found a faithful and attached friend and relative, whose grateful affection never failed. But henceforth the record of Madame Recamier's life is a succession of losses. Time, which had so marvellously spared her personal beauty, and had neither dimmed the brilliancy of her triumphs nor weakened the power of her charm, did not spare her friends. The first who was called away was Matthieu de Montmorency. He had seemed in his usual health, and had just been named governor of the young Duc de Bordeaux, an appointment which was hailed by his many friends as a worthy tribute to his honorable and upright life. On Good Friday, the 24th of March, he knelt before the altar in the church of St. Thomas d'Aquin, his head was bowed in prayer, and it was not till it sank lower and lower that those near him were alarmed, and touching him, found he was no more. Thus did this pious and true-hearted man depart—a well-fitting close to his earnest Christian life- -a death which has in it a tinge of the old chivalric charm, which lent its stately and tender grace to his character. His wife, whose stern, cold manner hid the passionate devotion which she had felt for him, was inconsolable; she dedicated her life henceforth to works of charity, and, under the strange power which we have before noticed, her sorrow, her regret, her tender recollections were poured forth to Juliette Recamier, who had been, as she well knew, the star of her husband's life, the object which, next to God and his country, had filled his soul. Madame de Chateaubriand was also on cordial terms with Madame Recamier, and often claimed help and sympathy in her charitable plans from her. In 1828 Madame Recamier lost her father; he died at a good old age, having passed his last years near his beloved child. In the autumn of the same year M. de Chateaubriand went as ambassador to Rome, and remained there for eighteen months. His letters were Madame Recamier's chief interest during the time of his absence; he wrote to her constantly and with unvarying affection and regard. He says: "All my life seems centered in those little notes which each courier brings. I have been to Tenerani; the bas-relief is charming, but you are more so a thousand times. In the midst of your sorrow you yet thought of me; I shall try to recommence my historical researches to kill time which now kills me. I write before the post is in. Alas! from you I must expect nothing. Do try to obtain recal." my "12 o'clock. "My expectation has not deceived me, for there is not a line from you. Do you remember when this thought came to you on post days? The day after to-morrow you will have another letter from me. Since I have been at Rome I have written to you by every post, i.e. three times a week, and each time to say that to be here without you is like death. Either you must come, or I must go to you; but rather let me return, for I am home-sick." In May, 1829, he returned and resumed his daily visits to the Abbaye au Bois. A few excursions into the country alone diversified Madame Recamier's life, till, in the spring of 1830, she closed the eyes of her husband. He had lived near her for years, and at his last moments begged to be moved to her rooms and to die there. It had been an ill-assorted marriage, both in character and age, but their union had never known a jar or dissension, and their kindness of heart was a bond which covered all other dissimilarities. The revolution of July only affected Madame Recamier through her friends. The short arrest of Chateaubriand, and his subsequent visits to Venice and London to pay his homage to the exiled prince, were the principal events which marked her quiet and uneventful life. In 1837, her health failed visibly; but in spite of fever, and cough, and sleeplessness, she changed nothing of her usual daily routine. Her occupations, her other visits were all arranged so as not to interfere with M. de Chateaubriand; he was truly the sun round which her other duties and affections moved, and the peace and rest which she now found in their intercourse was her dearest reward and pleasure. Her illness continued, and she soon became totally blind, but she gave way to no repining, and even avoided allusions to her state or any marked evidence of her condition. In 1847 Madame de Chateaubriand died, and shortly after she lost the faithful Ballanche. His death-bed was attended by her to whom he had devoted his life, and with calm resignation and sincere piety he passed away. By her visits to him, and the tears she shed for his death, her last chance of recovering her sight was lost. Chateaubriand was anxious to close their lives and their friendship by marriage, but this she refused. She was able, at her age, to devote as much time and care to him as she desired, without exciting remark, and she declined to change her name. She did indeed devote time and care to him, and the last cares were soon needed; he died in 1848, and the blow which released him struck at the last faint hold she had upon life. Henceforth she existed-she did not live; the objects of her life were no longer with her, and she waited the hour when she could rejoin those to whom she had been for long years so tenderly and faithfully attached. She had many devoted friends round her, and when she was seized with cholera, the terrible news startled them as though they had dreamed they could in any case retain her much longer among them. Friends and relatives knelt by her bed, and strove to soothe the agony of her last hours. Her courage, her patience, and her tender piety never failed. "We shall meet again," were the last words she spoke to her sobbing niece. The extreme loveliness of her early years, which had indeed faded, but hardly changed, seemed to return to her in death; and though cholera leaves in general fatal traces upon its victims, it spared her, and even in death that singular beauty, and the look of ineffable peace and sweetness touched the bystanders with the old charm which it seemed was never to fail her. And she keeps it stillindefinite, inexplicable, shadowy-although nothing remains to attest it save the reflection of the influence she exercised. There is a singular power of mysterious fascination in the very name of Juliette Recamier. We cannot explain it those who were nearest to her could not. The power to attract, and the power to retain, can hardly ever have been possessed by any at the same time in so great a degree. The brilliancy of social triumphs, and the faithful devotion of household friends, can hardly ever have been both attained as she attained them. Beautiful and adored, with all the pleasures of incessant conquest, and none of the shadows which generally attend it-with a success which the most worldly might envy, and a peace which the most holy might prize-was there anything wanting to her life? was she not exempt from the trials of mortality? Let us hear her own reply. Speaking one day of happiness, and looking back at her own life, she said with a sigh that her ideal was, and always had been-" a happy marriage." A. A. P. LVII.—INSANITY, PAST AND PRESENT. IN the last number of this Journal we endeavored to lay before our readers some statistical information respecting the number and condition of the insane at various times and in various countries, and in connexion with the subject we ventured to touch upon some of the contingent circumstances which have caused the increase of insanity to be in strict relation to the progress of civilization. The fact, though humiliating, is nevertheless true, that depression ever accompanies elevation-great good is ever attended by great evil. The same bells which ring out joyous peals to celebrate a victory, toll requiems over the slain. The abundant harvest, while scattering plenty around, yet produces distress among those whose prosperity depends on the high price, and consequently the scarcity of corn. The perfection of our manufactures does not prevent the misery of thousands, toiling at unwholesome trades to satisfy the refined tastes and requirements of the age. Therefore let us not boast of any civilization which affects only a part, not the mass, of the population: until progress is so complete that the whole social machine moves in exact harmony, we must not cherish the idea that true civilization is attained. An individual in himself is an aggregate of society, in him we see depicted in miniature the characteristics of human kind; and experience proves, what Revelation teaches, that man has suffered declension, and that the sole object of his present existence is to recover a lost perfection. When it pleased God to frame this world to be the dwelling place of man, He ordained laws for its government and preservation; and at the dawn of that day, when man first drew into his nostrils the breath of life, became a living soul, and walked in the garden of Eden, his happiness only equalled by his innocency, God acknowledged the perfection of the completed creation, and "Behold, it was very good." Though man fell, nevertheless the law remained, and the inequality produced by sin was occasioned, not by the corruption of the law but of the individual; as sin caused and causes spiritual declension, so physical suffering is the sign of moral degradation. There is a meaning and a deep one in the permission of evil to affect man. Thus, insanity, in common with other diseases, is always the consequence of defection. The victim may be innocent, and the error may be in his progenitor, yet the cause can be always traced to a source. Profane writers dimly acknowledged this truth; and Fate, which was even superior to the will of the gods, is synonymous with what Revelation teaches of that Divine justice, which must be satisfied, though Deity Himself descended to do so. Edipus, innocent and unconscious of crime, was yet condemned to suffer. Wherefore? Because the guilt of his mother was heinous in its intensity, and transmitted to her child a heritage of woe. cient writers further taught that retribution extended beyond this life. Edipus endured in Tartarus the torments due to crimes such as his, unintentional though they were, and bequeathed to his offspring the legacy of misery. Two of his children, Polynices and Eteocles, were mutual fratricides; and his daughters Ismene and Antigone were condemned to die a violent death on the specious pretext that they offended heaven, by giving their brothers honorable burial, a duty ever held most sacred among ancient nations. It has been said that the poet is endowed with a terrible sagacity. Here we find the truth indicated but not grasped, and it remained An |