had given
way to Voltaire and Rousseau; and when youth and beauty failed, then they
were thrown on their own moral strength.

M. Cousin is especially enamored of the women of the seventeenth century,
and relieves himself from his labors in philosophy by making researches
into the original documents which throw light upon their lives. Last
year he gave us some results of these researches in a volume on the youth
of the Duchess de Longueville; and he has just followed it up with a
second volume, in which he further illustrates her career by tracing it
in connection with that of her friend, Madame de Sable. The materials to
which he has had recourse for this purpose are chiefly two celebrated
collections of manuscript: that of Conrart, the first secretary to the
French Academy, one of those universally curious people who seem made for
the annoyance of contemporaries and the benefit of posterity; and that of
Valant, who was at once the physician, the secretary, and general steward
of Madame de Sable, and who, with or without her permission, possessed
himself of the letters addressed to her by her numerous correspondents
during the latter part of her life, and of various papers having some
personal or literary interest attached to them. From these stores M.
Cousin has selected many documents previously unedited; and though he
often leaves us something to desire in the arrangement of his materials,
this volume of his on Madame de Sable is very acceptable to us, for she
interests us quite enough to carry us through more than three hundred
pages of rather scattered narrative, and through an appendix of
correspondence in small type. M. Cousin justly appreciates her character
as "un heureux melange de raison, d'esprit, d'agrement, et de bonte;" and
perhaps there are few better specimens of the woman who is extreme in
nothing but sympathetic in all things; who affects us by no special
quality, but by her entire being; whose nature has no _tons criards_, but
is like those textures which, from their harmonious blending of all
colors, give repose to the eye, and do not weary us though we see them
every day. Madame de Sable is also a striking example of the one order
of influence which woman has exercised over literature in France; and on
this ground, as well as intrinsically, she is worth studying. If the
reader agrees with us he will perhaps be inclined, as we are, to dwell a
little on the chief points in her life and characte