"Germany" was a gift of the greatest price to France. Her standards in literature had been fixed a century before, and to alter or advance them was deemed a work of impiety. A natural result was a want of vigor and of originality. She had imposed her fetters, too, on foreign nations. The cold, artificial spirit of the age of Louis XIV. long pressed, like an incubus, upon the literary spirit of Germany. But about the middle of the last century, the spell was broken. A literary revolution took place in that country, and, from being destitute of all national literature, Germany became possessed of one the most characteristic. To furnish a literary and mental portraiture of this emancipated nation, was a work requiring a rare combination of talents, and one which was executed by Madame de Stael with singular ability. She hailed with delight the overthrow of Napoleon, which opened to her the way to Paris. But she never joined in the senseless cry which was raised, that he had neither talents nor courage. "It would be too humiliating for France, and for all Europe," she said, "that, for fifteen years, it had been beaten and outwitted by a coward and a blockhead." Her joy was, however, tempered by grief and indignation, that the soil of France, "cette belle France," should be desecrated by the feet of foreign invaders. To avoid witnessing the humiliating spectacle of Paris in the possession of barbarians, she retired to Coppet, where, in 1816, she renewed her acquaintance with Lord Byron, whose genius fascinated her, and who had been chief favorite while she was in England. She now gave him much advice as to his conduct, which he met by quoting the motto to "Delphine,"--"Man must learn to brave opinion,--woman to submit to it." But she no longer defended the truth of this epigraph. Always religious, the principles of Christianity now mingled more intimately in her sentiments.