of France during the struggle of
the Revolution and during the periods that immediately preceded and
followed it, scarcely any have been so comprehensive, and not many
have been so valuable, as 'The History of the Life and Times of Madame
de Stael,' by Lady Blennerhassett. The author--a Bavarian lady who was
an intimate friend and favourite pupil of Dr. Doellinger--has brought
to her task a knowledge, which is scarcely rivalled in its
completeness, of the French, German, English, and Italian literatures
relating to the period; and she has produced a work of which it is in
one sense the merit, but in another the defect, that it sweeps over a
far wider field than might be expected from its title. It is seldom, I
think, a judicious thing to confuse the provinces of history and
biography by turning the life of an individual into an elaborate
history of his time; and in the few cases in which this method has
been successfully pursued, the biographer has selected as his subject
some man like Cromwell, or Frederick the Great, or Napoleon, who was
indisputably the chief mover of his age. When figures of less
prominence are chosen, both the history and the biography are apt to
suffer. The true perspective, or relative magnitude, of events is
impaired, and the book is almost sure to lose something of its
artistic charm and of its popularity. Mr. Masson, as it seems to me,
committed a mistake of this kind in his 'Life of Milton,' when he
grouped around the great Puritan poet--who, however illustrious, was
certainly not the central figure of his time--a full and valuable
history of the Commonwealth, and of large sections of the reigns of
Charles I. and Charles II.

In like manner, a great part of the work of Lady Blennerhassett is not
biography, but history, and history of a very high order. Madame de
Stael was so closely connected in her own person, and still more
through her father, with the early events of the French Revolution,
that we accept with gratitude the admirable sketch of that period
which Lady Blennerhassett has given us; but we should scarcely expect
to find in a work primarily devoted to Madame de Stael full and
masterly accounts of the Ministry of Turgot, of the rise and teaching
of the Economists, of the rival influence of the writings of
Montesquieu and Rousseau on the French political character, of the
effect of English influence and American example in preparing the
Revolution, and of the part played by German