d received, she made the tour of
Switzerland with M. de Montmorency, and the consequence to him was
exile from France. Another friend, the beautiful and celebrated Madame
de Recamier, paid for a few hours' intercourse by exile to Lyons.

Imagination conjured up new terrors. The fear of imprisonment seized
her, and she resolved to escape. The choice of a route perplexed her.
She passed her life, she says, in studying the map of Europe, to find
how she could escape beyond the wide-spread poison-tree of Napoleon's
power. She at length departed. England was the point of destination.

Passing through Germany, she was received at St. Petersburg with great
distinction by the emperor, and, thence passing on her way, spent
eight months at Stockholm with her old friend Bernadotte, crown prince
of Sweden; with whom at Paris, in the early days of Bonaparte's
career, she had been discovered concerting measures to stop his
progress towards absolute power--a discovery which furnished an
apology for the treatment she received.

The "Ten Years of Exile," which, after an intermission of several
years, had been resumed, closes at Stockholm. In England, she met with
a most cordial reception. Fashionable society courted her as a _lion_;
the more intelligent and highly educated sought her for her genius.

Her work on Germany was published in London, and raised her
reputation as a critic to the highest point. She was among the
founders of the philosophical school of critics; who, not wasting
their attention on the conventional forms of composition, look to the
intrinsic qualities which constitute literary excellence. But she was
not sufficiently dispassionate always to form a correct judgment. Her
enthusiasm and susceptibility made her too indulgent. As she would
often be thrown into ecstasies by a wretched hand-organ in the street,
so she would be in raptures with verses, the melody of which pleased
her ear. She would repeat them with great pomp and emphasis, and say,
"That is what I call poetry! it is delicious! and all the more that it
does not convey a single idea to me."

"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