Mad. de Stael’s last great work, which was published after her death, is entitled ‘Considérations sur les principaux Événements de la Révolution Française,’ a book, says Mackintosh, “possessing the highest interest as the last dying bequest of the most brilliant writer that has appeared in our days, the greatest writer, of a woman, that any age or country has produced.” That it was left unfinished is the less to be regretted, because it is not a regular history of the revolution, but rather a collection of penetrating observations and curious details, recorded in the true spirit of historic impartiality, and therefore a most valuable treasure to the future historian. The scope of the book, in accordance with her warm admiration through life of the English constitution, is to show that France requires a free government and a limited monarchy. The catalogue of her works is closed by the Œuvres Inédites published in 1820, of which the principal is ‘Ten Years of Exile.’ They are collected in an edition of eighteen volumes 8vo., published at Paris, in 1819–20, to which the ‘Notice sur le Caractère et les Ecrits de Mad. de Stael,’ by Mad. Necker de Saussure, is prefixed. The leading feature of Mad. de Stael’s private character was her inexhaustible kindness of temper; it cost her no trouble to forgive injuries. There seems not to have been a creature on earth whom she hated, except Napoleon. “Her friendships were ardent and remarkably constant; and yet she had a habit of analysing the characters, even of those to whom she was most attached, with the most unsparing sagacity, and of drawing out the detail and theory of their faults and peculiarities, with the most searching and unrelenting rigour; and this she did to their faces, and in spite of their most earnest remonstrances. ‘It is impossible for me to do otherwise,’ she would say; ‘if I were on my way to the scaffold, I should be dissecting the characters of the friends who were to suffer with me upon it.’” Though the excitement of mixed society was necessary to her happiness, her conversation in a tête à tête with her intimate friends is said to have been more delightful than her most brilliant efforts in public. She was proud of her powers, and loved to display and talk of them: but her vanity was divested of offensiveness by her candour and ever-present consideration of others. Of her errors we would speak with forbearance; but it is due to truth to say that there were passages in her life which exposed her to serious and well-founded censure. As a daughter and mother she displayed sedulous devotion, and the warmest affection. Though never destitute of devotional feeling, her notions of religion in youth seem to have been very vague and inefficient. But misfortune drove her sensitive and affectionate temper to seek some stay, which she found nothing on earth could furnish; and in later years, her religion, if not deeply learned, was deeply felt. Of this, the latter portion of Mad.