Germain, met with a curious adventure. He drove at his usual rate,
like a whirlwind. If he thinks himself a great man, his servants
think him still greater. They passed through Nanterre, when they
met a man on horseback, and in an insolent tone bid him clear the
way. The poor man used his utmost endeavors to avoid the danger
that threatened him, but his horse proved unmanageable. To make
short of it, the coach-and-six turned them both topsy-turvy; but at
the same time the coach, too, was completely overturned. In an
instant the horse and the man, instead of amusing themselves with
having their limbs broken, rose almost miraculously; the man
remounted, and galloped away, and is galloping still, for aught I
know; while the servants, the archbishop's coachman, and the
archbishop himself at the head of them, cried out, "Stop that
villain, stop him! thrash him soundly!" The rage of the archbishop
was so great, that afterward, in relating the adventure, he said,
if he could have caught the rascal, he would have broke all his
bones, and cut off both his ears.

If such things were done by the aristocracy--and the spiritual
aristocracy at that!--in the green tree, what might not be expected in
the dry? The writer makes no comment--draws no moral. "Adieu, my dear,
delightful child. I cannot express my eagerness to see you," are her
next words. She rattles along, three short sentences more, and finishes
her letter.

We should still not have done with these letters, were we to go on a
hundred pages, or two hundred, farther. Readers have already seen truly
what Madame de Sevigne is. They have only not seen fully all that she
is. And that they would not see short of reading her letters entire.
Horace Walpole aspired to do in English for his own time something like
what Madame de Sevigne had done in French for hers. In a measure he
succeeded. The difference is, that he was imitative and affected, where
she was original and genuine.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu must, of course, also be named, as, by her
sex, her social position, her talent, and the devotion of her talent, an
English analogue to Madame de Sevigne. But these comparisons, and all
comparison, leave the French woman without a true parallel, alone in her
rank, the most famous letter-writer in the world.

X.

CORNEILLE.

1606-1684.

The two great names in French tragedy are Cor