indecision of the period in which it was written. In the early years of the French Revolution, Constant was appointed gentleman-in-waiting to the Duchess of Brunswick. In this position he heard the Revolution spoken of with that mixture of fear and abhorrence of which we have an example in the dialogue of Goethe's play, _Der Bürgergeneral_; but he had no difficulty in forming an independent and unprejudiced estimate of the significance of the great movement. In Brunswick, as elsewhere, much of his time seems to have been spent in amours, one following on the other in rapid succession. He himself jestingly assumed _Sola inconstantia constans_ as his motto. He married, solely out of ennui, it would appear, divorced his wife after the honeymoon, and presently fell in love with a lady who was at the time sueing for a divorce from her husband. For this lady's sake he returned at a later period to Brunswick. Her maiden name was Charlotte von Hardenberg, and many years afterwards she became his second wife. In the letters of this Brunswick period to Mme. de Charrière, Constant appears as aimless and bored as he is sagacious and witty. He makes merry over his stupid, little-minded associates, and for a time even over his feeling for the lady of his heart, until it suddenly occurs to him that jesting on this latter subject is scarcely seemly, and he decides to forego it. So far there was neither a centre nor an object in his life. Towards the close of 1774, however, a decisive change took place. He met Mme. de Staël, and it became apparent that neither of these two minds could produce the best of which it was capable without the assistance of the other. Constant was then twenty-seven years of age, Mme. de Staël twenty-eight. He had just arrived in Paris, the city to which his ambition had long attracted him, but which he now saw for the first time. He was introduced into the best society, frequented the houses of Mme. Tallien, Mme. Beauharnais, and Mme. de Staël, and made an impression both by his personal beauty and his intellectual gifts. With his fresh complexion and fair hair he resembled a young Northerner, but in mind he was the acute Frenchman, and in culture the cosmopolitan. He made an impression on the most gifted Frenchwoman of the day that was never effaced, even when the circumstances of life estranged and separated them, and it was soon no secret that Mme. de Staël's admiration had become passionate love. She imparted to the rising states man her faith in political liberty, her enthusiasm for the rights of the individual, and for a government which should assure them; and her fiery ardour inspired him with her spirit of enterprise and with her confidence in the power of words and of deeds to influence, to re-mould life in spite of destiny. In return for this, her relation to him seems, by setting her at variance with society, to have supplied her with the greater part of the passions, emotions, and