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MADAME DE SEVÉGNÉ AUX ROCHERS.

ONE lovely May morning in 1S62 I found myself, by the side of a very dear and very distinguished friend, within the walls of the stately Ciiiiteau des Rochers, the country house of the brightest and wittiest lady of fashion who ever graced a royal Court or gladdened the hearts of her friends. Before leaving Paris we had paid a visit to the house in the Place Royale, where Madame de Sevigne was born. The house is still standing in that quiet nook of the sixteenth century — built, with all the other houses, of that pretty pink brick which no one uses now. The Place Royale is now the Place des Vosges ; it has changed in nothing else. No modern intrusion breaks into its old-world retirement. We had seen the Hotel de Carnavalet, not far oft", still adorned with fine carvings by Jean Goujon, and still bearing its noble air, the house got ready by Madame de Sevigne, with such pathetic anxiety, for the reception of her daughter, and where she lived for twenty years. The night before we reached Les Rochers we had spent under vhat we fondly hoped might be Madame de Sevigne's own roof. ' La Tour de Sevigne,' where she lived during the session of the Etats in Vitre, is now an inn ; the tower is gone, and there is little left of the old structure but the main walls. And now we were to realise the charming descriptions she has left of her life in the country. Few English people know the extent to which the worship of Madame de Sevigne has been carried in France. It was not enough to collect and preserve and put the highest price on every scrap of her writing, to make facsimiles and 'publish them in the daintiest and most luxurious form of album. The slightest and least significant allusion has been worked out and recorded ; her casual and familiar expressions have become standard idioms ; Madame de Sevigne and her friends are better known to a certain French public than the eminent personages of its own day. A life- time is scarcely enough for the science, and its votaries would be shy of admitting that a foreigner could be worthy to enter this sanctuary of seventeenth century erudition. A Life of Madame de Sevigne, however, was at one time a project which Mrs. Gaskell enter- tained, and no one who was not French by birth could have been so well fitted to deal with the subject. But as she penetrated further into these mysteries, and perceived the extent of the Sevigne lore, she felt keenly how much labour would be needed, and the task was laid aside for a while that she might produce her beautiful story of ll'ivcs and Daughters. This, as we all know, she did not live to finish. To the last- ing grief of her friends, and the irreparable loss of the public, she was cut down in the midst of her work, and her Life of Madame de Sevigncj among other things of value, is lost to the world. We can only guess what that loss is. As I'egards an English version for Madame de Sevigne, it does not seem likely that any one will feel equal to take up the tagk which

her hand was forced to lay down. Her large ac- quaintance among the most cultivated Parisian society, her singular gift of vivid realisation, and her sympathy in expression, fitted her pre-eminently for the difficult undertaking.

It was impossible to be with her on this delightful journey and not feel the magnetic force of the impressions she received from everything she saw, and which in her large-heartedness she was always ready and glad to communicate. No wonder that as we travelled along, as we entered these old haunts of the charming- Marchioness, time seemed to roll back its three hundred years, the present things seemed to ha e passed away and the old things to become new. So it seemed on that lovely May morning when, leaving Vitre early, we slowly drove up the long hill which leads — five miles in length — to Les Rochers. There had been heavy rain the day before, but a rosy sunset had flushed all the old brown towers of the castle at Vitre, now a prison, where formerly the Etats of Brittany assembled to empty their cofters into the king's exchequer whenever he was good enough to ask them. And now the air was bright and fresh after yesterday's rain ; the wet leaves flashed light upon us as we drove by.

The road was as straight as only a French road can be, and looking back as we rose above the plain we could see mile upon mile of young hedgerow oaks in their tender golden green, which, as they closed up their ranks in the distance, looked like a dense forest. Now and then, from right or left, an unsuspected lane plunged down beneath arching branches and was lost in a yard or two. These are the chcmlns creitx so con-