hat she was of
extraordinary precocity, and very early attracted attention. As a mere
child Marmontel talked with her as if she were twenty-five. At fifteen,
she had written reflections on Montesquieu's "Spirit of Laws," and was
solicited by Raynal to furnish an article on the Revocation of the Edict
of Nantes. So brilliant a girl was educated by her wealthy parents
without regard to expense and with the greatest care. She was fortunate
from the start, with unbounded means, surrounded with illustrious
people, and with every opportunity for improvement both as to teachers
and society,--doubtless one important cause of her subsequent success,
for very few people climb the upper rounds of the ladder of literary
fame who are obliged to earn their living; their genius is fettered and
their time is employed on irksome drudgeries.

Madame de Stael, when a girl, came very near losing her health and
breaking her fine constitution by the unwise "cramming" on which her
mother insisted; for, although a superior woman, Madame Necker knew very
little about the true system of education, thinking that study and labor
should be incessant, and that these alone could do everything. She
loaded her daughter with too many restraints, and bound her by a too
rigid discipline. She did all she could to crush genius out of the girl,
and make her a dictionary, or a machine, or a piece of formality and
conventionalism. But the father, wiser, and with greater insight and
truer sympathy, relaxed the cords of discipline, unfettered her
imagination, connived at her flights of extravagance, and allowed her to
develop her faculties in her own way. She had a remarkable fondness for
her father,--she adored him, and clung to him through life with peculiar
tenderness and devotion, which he appreciated and repaid. Before she
was twenty she wrote poetry as a matter of course. Most girls do,--I
mean those who are bright and sentimental; still, she produced but
indifferent work, like Cicero when he was young, and soon dropped rhyme
forever for the greater freedom of prose, into which she poured from the
first all the wealth of her poetic soul. She was a poet, disdaining
measure, but exquisite in rhythm,--for nothing can be more musical than
her style.

As remarked in the lecture on Madame Recamier, it is seldom that people
acquire the art of conversation till middle life, when the mind is
enriched and confidence is gained. The great conversational powers of
Jo