On the fall of Napoleon, Madame de Stael returned to Paris,—­the city she loved so well; the city so dear to all Frenchmen and to all foreigners, to all gay people, to all intellectual people, to all fashionable people, to all worldly people, to all pious people,—­to them the centre of modern civilization.  Exile from this city has ever been regarded as a great calamity,—­as great as exile was to Romans, even to Cicero.  See with what eagerness Thiers himself returned to this charmed capital when permitted by the last Napoleon!  In this city, after her ten years’ exile, Madame de Stael reigned in prouder state than at any previous period of her life.  She was now at home, on her own throne as queen of letters, and also queen of society.  All the great men who were then assembled in Paris burned their incense before her,—­Chateaubriand, Lafayette, Talleyrand, Guizot, Constant, Cuvier, Laplace.  Distinguished foreigners swelled the circle of her admirers,—­Bluecher, Humboldt, Schlegel, Canova, Wellington, even the Emperor of Russia.  The Restoration hailed her with transport; Louis XVIII. sought the glory of her talk; the press implored her assistance; the salons caught inspiration from her presence.  Never was woman seated on a prouder throne.  But she did not live long to enjoy her unparalleled social honors.  She was stifled, like Voltaire, by the incense of idolaters; the body could no longer stand the strain of the soul, and she sunk, at the age of fifty-one, in the year 1817, a few months before her husband Rocca, whom, it appears, she ever tenderly loved.

Madame de Stael died prematurely, as precocious people generally do,—­like Raphael, Pascal, Schiller, I may add Macaulay and Mill; but she accomplished much, and might have done more had her life been spared, for no one doubts her genius,—­perhaps the most remarkable female writer who has lived, on the whole.  George Sand is the only Frenchwoman who has approached her in genius and fame.  Madame de Stael was novelist, critic, essayist, and philosopher, grasping the profoundest subjects, and gaining admiration in everything she attempted.  I do not regard her as pre-eminently a happy woman, since her marriages were either unfortunate or unnatural.  In the intoxicating blaze of triumph and admiration she panted for domestic beatitudes, and found the earnest cravings of her soul unsatisfied.  She sought relief from herself in society, which was a necessity to her, as much as friendship or love; but she was restless, and perpetually travelling.  Moreover, she was a persecuted woman during the best ten years of her life.  She had but little repose of mind or character, and was worldly, vain, and ambitious.  But she was a great woman and a good woman, in spite of her faults and errors; and greater in her womanly qualities than she was in her writings, remarkable as these were.  She had a great individuality, like Dr. Johnson and Thomas Carlyle.  And she lives in the hearts of her countrymen, like Madame Recamier; for it was not the beauty and grace of this queen of society which made her beloved, but her good-nature, amiability, power of friendship, freedom from envy, and generous soul.