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    310 MADAME SWETCHINEc

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    Tim Biography Of A Hussian Lady Of High ...

    Such "were tlie early associations -which . _Tbotmcl Madame Swetchine so stronglto the French leand though the reverses of favor

    inevitable y to an imperial peop regime , soon overtook her husband , and he retired from his public careertheir way of life continued

    , much the same . Their estates were far away ; Moscow offered no attractions since the death of M . Soynionof , and Madame Swetchine

    liad very delicate health . All the time spared from the education of her young sister she devoted to persevering study , and to the

    society of her large circle of friends . We now first find the traces of the hard intellectual work which

    she underwent for more than fifty years , and which explains the Influence she exercised over all who approached her , inasmuch as it

    shows the extraordinary force of character which lay concealed under the aristocratic mould in which it was cast . As a poorer woman

    she would probably have made her mark in literature ; as a more ambitious woman she would have converted her social sway into a

    means of political power : Madanie Swetchine did neither , her simple humble nature contented itself with learning and lovingand only

    , after the close of her long life comes the echo of her friendships with many of the most remarkable minds of her generation .

    Heading was never to her a simple recreation , no book leffc her hands without being annotated , commentated upon , sometimes

    nearly copied from beginning to end . The date of the first extracts which she made is in 1801 , when she was only nineteen and had

    been married two years . They are not made in albums , nor on fine paperbut on common quirescovered with fine close characters ;

    and onl , y bound afterwards in , order to preserve them , as may be seen by the partial disappearance of some of the _words where the

    margins have been too closely cut . Thirty-five such volumes remain , others have been lost ; thirteen of the number are in quarto . The

    names attached to tlie first in date are very numerous . Among them are Barthelemy and ( the Precepts of ) Pythagoras , Bernardin

    de St . Pierre , and long melancholy pages from Young's Night Thoughts ! FenelonMadame de _Genlistranslations from Horace ,

    and a mass of matter , from Rousseau , . In the third volume we find Bossuetand a long analysis of the Precepts of Legislation

    of Lycurgus . _, The fourth , dated 1806 , quotes the romances of Madame Cottin , Sermons , and French and Italian poetry . Volume

    five opens with long extracts from Madanie de Stael ; the whole showing a considerable range of light and heavy literature devoured

    by a young married lady between the ages of nineteen and five and twenty .

    . But however earnest was Madame Swetchine ' s increasing love of intellectual exertion , it did not suffice then or ever for her happiness .

    To the care of lier little sister , she now joined the adoption of a child _Ty-hpni circumstancesfaintlindicated in the biographycast upon her

    maternal sympathy . , The name y of the new member of , the household

    Was Nacline _Staeline ; who thenceforward knew no othor home than

    310 Madame Swetchinec

    310 MADAME _SWETCHINEc

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), July 1, 1860, page 310, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01071860/page/22/