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    MADAME SWETCHINE , 879

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    — I .— In Our Last Number We Reviewed Th...

    liave contemplated " perpetual exile ; that Madanie Swetchine should h deli the ght in the was idea n of atur European al to a woman travel , of now her first intellectual rendered cast possible but ;

    that y her peace imag , ination still clung- to the hope of returning home on eventuall the brink y , is of shown her departure by the following . " My dear note friend written , ' it to runs M . Tourguenief " here I am

    , again with my everlasting supplications ; but I leave so many unfortunates behind me , that any assistance is sure to be available to

    attention one or other to them among and them support . Do your me courage the kindness , if it is read to g y ive to sink some ,

    by reflecting that , in spite of myself I shall very soon leave you quiet . Ah ! my dear friend , if I had no other link to my native

    country than the poor and the little children whom I leave behind methat link would still be stronger than anything which could

    give , me pleasure in foreign lands . The feeling which I constantly experience on this point is the best guarantee of the tendency

    which will perhaps bring me home again even sooner than I expect It was . " at the commencement of the winter of 1816-17 that

    , Madame Swetchine arrived in Paris , having travelled with little detour from St . Petersburgh . She was at that time thirty-four years

    which of age , she in was the prime particularl of her y fitted intellectual to comprehend force , and and at sympathise the epoch

    with—that of the Restoration . It is not very easy to give the blems English which reader henceforth a fair comprehension occupied this of remarkable the moral and mind social beca pro use

    -, Madame Swetchine ' s stand-point was so very different from anything we can well conceive . She certainly was not illiberal in any

    sense of the word ; she took the deepest interest in the condition of the own peop uncertain le , and personal was accustomed strength to in spend efforts time to hel and p trouble and to and instruct her

    others . We have seen that she could be wise and thoughtful about _^ her little protegeand that she wrote letter after letter to men high

    in office whenever , they could assist her in her plans . She took a profound interest in the serfs who came to her by inheritance , and

    minded did her best and b free y them from , and prejudices she appear . But s to she have had been never singularl in her y wide life

    seen even the shadow of a liberal institution . Born and bred in the Russian court , the early sympathies with freedom , which she

    had imbibed from her father and his friends , had been stained , as it were , with the blood of the French revolution . It was next to

    libert impossible y as any for thing good but peop the le distorted in that bloodshed p generation hantom of to the the imag Place ine de popular Greve des .

    potism Neither of the Napoleon years of , appeared anarchy and to have left fruit , nor in which suprem the e true - lovers of their race could rejoice : the wrecks of the tempest yet

    strewed the devastated fields , the forest trees which had grown for ages were all uprooted and thrown out" to wither , and twenty-five years

    YOIi . Vn 2 B 2

    Madame Swetchine , 879

    MADAME SWETCHINE , 879

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Aug. 1, 1860, page 379, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01081860/page/19/