He foreshadowed man as the appropriate historian of the general march of human events--woman, as the best delineator of individual character, the most fascinating writer of biography. The most gifted of her sex is a proof of this; for if a few men have exceeded Madame de Stael in the broad view she takes of human affairs, none have equalled her in the delineation of the deepest feelings and most lasting passions of the human heart. As it is the nature of woman's disposition to form an idol, (and it is for that very reason that she proves so attractive to that of man,) so, when she comes to composition, we rejoice to see her form idols of her heroes, provided only that the limits of truth are observed in their delineation, and that her enthusiasm is evinced in depicting the real, not in colouring the imaginary. As graphic and scenic details are so valuable in biography, and give such life and animation to the picture which it exhibits, so we willingly accept from a female biographer, whether of her own or others' life, details which we could not tolerate in the other sex. When the Duchess of Abrantes, writing after the fall of Charles X., recounts in her charming memoirs the enchanting _Schall de Cachemire_, which excited her envy on the shoulders of Josephine--or tells us that at a certain ball in Paris, in 1797, she wore her blue satin dress and pearl ornaments, and at another, her pink silk, and diamonds, we perhaps smile at the simplicity which made her recount such things of herself; but still we gratefully accept them as characteristic of the costume or manners of the time. But we would never tolerate a male biographer of Murat, who should tell us that at a certain ball at Naples he wore his scarlet trowsers and black furred jacket, and on his coronation looked irresistible in his blue and silver uniform and splendid spare jacket;--not even though we know that in Russia he often returned to his lines with his sabre dripping wet with the blood of the Cossacks whom he had challenged and slain in single combat, and although the experience of all ages has confirmed the truth of Philopoemen's observation, that "to soldiers and women, dress is a matter of no small consequence."