and have organs for the purpose. The struggle of the plant is for life, because its sole endowment is vitality. The struggle of the animal is also for life; but to this is added the struggle for happiness, because of the endowment of sentiency. As special organs for this purpose are evolved, the endeavor to secure happiness grows. Thus it is that the second law of evolution is developed by exercise in the endeavor to secure happiness. The animal endowed with the power of feeling pains and pleasures, constantly exercises not only its muscular organs, but still more its sentient organs. The animal flees from danger, and defends itself from attack. In the alembic of life, more vitality is evolved than is needed for the stern purposes of bare existence; so animals engage in sports, and the time is shared between toil and play. The cubs of the bear dance on the greensward; the swallow floats on the air with lilting wings of joy; the trout plays in the brook as if sunlight were elysium.

The life of the animal is one of great vitality, from the very lowest forms, seen only with the microscope, to the busy crowd of the city mart. This vitality is the chief source of the evolution of sentiency, which reacts upon the physical organs until sentient life and exercise seem to be one. All pleasures, all pains, all emotions, are expressed in activities. So far as human investigation can discover, they are only activities. Such is the teaching of the latest scientific psychology.

The evolution of life is accomplished in four stages. In the first mode of life, which is vitality, progress is made by the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence. In the second mode of life, which is sentiency, progress is made by the development of organs in the struggle for happiness. In the third mode of life, which is percipiency, progress is made by the discovery of truth in the struggle for knowledge. In the fourth mode of life, which is volitiency, progress is made by the establishment of justice in the struggle for peace.

J. W. POWELL.

MADAME DE STAËL.

AMONG the many important works which have lately been published on the Continent, reconstructing the history 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 Staël," by Lady Blennerhassett. The author-a Bavarian lady who was an intimate friend and favorite pupil of Dr. Döllinger-has brought to her task a knowledge, which is scarcely rivaled 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 Staël 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 Staël 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 Germans and Swedes in French politics. At the same time, the pictures of the social and intellectual life prevailing in the different countries with which Madame de Staël was connected, and the full accounts given of a crowd of persons with whom she came into casual contact, though in themselves both interesting and valuable, often tend to divert the reader from the main subject of the book. In truth, Lady Blennerhassett has not been able to resist the temptation of a very full mind to pour out all its knowledge, and, while possessing many rare and brilliant literary gifts, she appears to me to want that restraining sense of literary perspective which gives biography its true proportion and symmetry. This defect has, I fear, diminished the popularity of a most valuable book. In the original German, and in an excellent French translation which was revised by the author and which I especially commend to my readers, the work consists of three very substantial volumes. There is also an English, and somewhat abridged, translation. A hasty reader will readily conclude that, in this short and crowded life, such a space is far more than should be allotted to a long-vanished figure which, though interesting and brilliant, was not of the first magnitude. But if he has the courage to persevere, he will soon discover that few modern books have lighted up in so many directions the political, social, moral, and intellectual history of a momentous period, and have exhibited at once so many kinds of talent and so wide a range of sympathies and knowledge. The complete competence, the firm, sober, and-if I may use the expression-masculine judgment with which Lady Blennerhassett has grasped the great political problems of the period of the Revolution, is not less conspicuous than

the truly feminine delicacy of observation and touch with which she has delineated social life in many different countries, and painted the finer shades of many widely-dissimilar characters.

Anne Louise Germaine Necker was born in Paris on April 22, 1766. Her father was at that time known only as a Swiss banker of high character and reputation, who had amassed a vast fortune and had come to Paris for his private affairs; but about two years after the birth of his daughter he was appointed to represent the interests of Geneva at Paris, and when she was ten years old he rose, for the first time, to a leading place in the ministry of France. Her mother had been the Mademoiselle Curchod whose charms and accomplishments had captivated Gibbon when he was a young man at Lausanne. Every reader of his autobiography will remember the famous passage in which he describes his engagement, the opposition of his father, and the resignation with which he "sighed as a lover, but obeyed as a son." M. d'Haussonville has published from the archives at Coppet some melancholy letters which show clearly that Gibbon exhibited more heartlessness and inflicted more suffering than might be gathered from his own stately narrative. But no lasting scar remained. After a few years of poverty and hardship, during which she was obliged to earn a livelihood as a schoolmistress, Mademoiselle Curchod found in Necker a husband who realized her fondest wishes; and when, soon after, she became the center of a brilliant salon at Paris, her former lover, then in the zenith of his fame, was often among her guests. Madame Necker did not always abstain from slightly-veiled allusions to the past, but it is pleasant to see that a warm and solid friendship seems to have grown up between Gibbon and both his host and hostess. A pretty anecdote is related of how, on one occasion, after he had left the house, they agreed in expressing the deep regret with which they looked forward to his approaching departure for England; when their little daughter, who was then just ten years old, gravely offered to prevent the catastrophe by marrying the illustrious, but by no means prepossessing, historian.

It was a saying of Talleyrand that he who had not lived before 1789 had never known the full charm of life. Germaine Necker grew up in the last bright flush of a society which had,

perhaps, as many fascinations as any that the world has known. Her mother, however, though she occupied a prominent position in this brilliant world, was never altogether of it. She shared fully, indeed, its intellectual tastes, and had herself won some small place in literature. She threw herself ardently into its philanthropic movements, and especially into that for the reform of the hospitals. She formed a warm and true friendship with Buffon and Thomas. She corresponded with Voltaire, and attracted to her house most of the best writers of the age. But to the last she remained eminently and characteristically Swiss, and she never acquired the light touch, or the easy, pliant grace, of the true Parisian. She was a little cold, a little prim, a little pedantic, a little self-conscious. Neither her reserved manners, nor her strong domestic tastes, nor the vein of Puritanism that ran through her opinions, harmonized with the lax and skeptical society around her, and it was no sacrifice to her to exchange the splendors and the gayeties of Paris for her peaceful retreat on the Lake of Geneva.

In this, as in most respects, her daughter was very different. In her the Swiss element had altogether disappeared, and, as is often the case with the eminent child of eminent parents, her character shot out in directions wholly unlike both that of her father and that of her mother. She was not beautiful, though her dark and eminently lustrous eyes, beaming with intelligence, and her rich brown tint, gave some charm to her large and rather coarse features; while her massive shoulders, arms, and breast, her full lips, and the firm grasp of her vigorous hand, indicated a strong, frank, ruling, and passionate nature, overflowing with life and with many forms of energy. Her education was somewhat fitfully conducted, but she threw herself eagerly into literary enthusiasms. At fifteen we find her annotating Montesquieu. Raynal and Richardson were among her idols, but, like most of the more ardent spirits of her generation, her ideas and character were molded chiefly by the genius of Rousseau. Her first work of importance was an exposition of his doctrines, and his influence left deep traces on both "Corinne " and "Delphine." Her strong, sane judgment, however, her genuine humanity, and the moderating influence of her father, saved her from being swept