Madame Swetchine's life was chiefly spent in Paris, where the French language, already long before, in St. Petersburg, grown easy and tripping on her tongue, became to her a second, perhaps more familiar, vernacular. She was a high-born, high-bred, refined, and elegant woman of the world--woman in the world we should rather say, for, in the truest sense, _of_ it she never was--who held brilliant, choicely-frequented _salons_, but who, without ostentation and without affectation, would go from her oratory, which indeed seems to have been a private "chapel," in the full ecclesiastic sense of that word, to her drawing-room; who had even, as Sainte-Beuve indulgently, but with something of his inseparable irony, intimates, the effect of vibrating from the one to the other in the course of the same evening. Madame Swetchine was married young very unequally to a man twenty-five years her senior; but she set the edifying example of half a century's wifely devotion to that husband whom, at the wish of her father, well beloved, she had dutifully accepted in place of a noble young suitor, the choice of her own affections. Two volumes--both of "Thoughts," though one of them bears the title "Airelles"--shut up within themselves the fragrance that was Madame Swetchine. We cull a few specimens: Often one is prophet for others only because one is historian for one's self. The chains which bind us the closest are those which weigh on us the least. The best of lessons for many persons would be to listen at key-holes; it is a pity for their sake that this is not honorable. Go always beyond designated duties, and remain within permitted pleasures. Upon the whole, there is in life only what we put there. I love knowledge; I love intellect; I love faith--simple faith--yet more, I love God's shadow better than man's light. He who has ceased to enjoy his friend's superiority has ceased to love him. Since there must be chimeras, why is not perfection the chimera of all men? "Woman is in some sort divine," said the ancient German. "Woman," says the follower of Mahomet, "is an amiable creature who only needs a cage." "Woman," says the European, "is a being nearly our equal in intelligence, and perhaps our superior in fidelity." Everywhere something detracted from our dignity! No two persons ever read the same book or saw the same picture. Strength alone knows conflict. Weakness is below even defeat, and is born vanquished. We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse. Madame Swetchine was a woman of wealth and of leisure so-called; but it may be doubted whether any poor woman in Paris worked harder. She carried with her when she went hence what, through all her conscientious activity, outward and inward, she had in her own being become; and she found besides that ample further reward, unknown, which she had thus grown capable of receiving.