300 STAEL-HOLSTEIN On the birth of the emperor's son (1811) it was intimated to her that she might soften him by commemorating the occasion ; she re- plied that she wished the child to receive the care of a competent nurse ; and this and other remarks of hers becoming known to Napo- leon, he actually converted her residence at Coppet into a prison. Schlegel was not per- mitted to remain; Mme. Recamier, Montmo- rency, and the duke de Broglie were not tol- erated in Paris for having visited her; and she was forbidden to go beyond two miles from her house. Her position became intol- erable, and as the seaports were closed to her, she could only escape, in the spring of 1812, by pretending to take a little walk from which she never returned. She went across the Swiss and Tyrolese mountains, and finally reached Vienna. As Napoleon's emissaries beset her even here, she made a tedious journey through Galicia and the duchy of Warsaw to Moscow, and thence to St. Petersburg, where the impe- rial family received* her with open arms ; but she vindicated her patriotism at a banquet, when on a toast being proposed for the vic- tory of Russia over France, she exclaimed : " Not over France, only over her oppressor." During her visit at Stockholm her youngest son Albert fell in a duel (1813), shortly before her departure for London, where she attended to the publication of her work on Germany. She returned to Paris on the fall of Napoleon in 1814, but left it on his return from Elba. In 1816 she made an unsuccessful attempt to restore her health by another journey to Italy. Schlegel was with her to the last, and Chateau- briand first met Mme. Recamier at the death- bed of Mme. de Stael. Her remains were re- moved to the family vault at Coppet. Of her three children by her first husband (from whom she was separated for several years, though she rejoined him in his last illness, and who died on May 9, 1802), Auguste (author of Let- tres sur VAngleterre, 1826, and other writings) survived her till Nov. 11, 1827, and Albertine, wife of the duke Achille de Broglie, till Septem- ber, 1838. She had one child by her second husband, Albert Jean de Rocca, a French offi- cer and military writer, who died in January, 1818, in his 31st year. It seems that on meet- ing him at Geneva, whither he had retired after being severely wounded in the peninsular war, she became interested in him, and in 1811 she married him secretly, in order, as she said in her will, which first disclosed the fact, to re- tain the name identified with her fame. Mme. de Stool's versatility was remarkable. She ex- celled in every branch of prose composition, as a linguist, in a measure as a vocalist and dramatist, and in private theatricals ; and she was especially celebrated for bold and sug- gestive generalizations, a masculine grasp of thought, an irrepressible flow of ideas and language, and for a love of humanity and con- stitutional liberty after the model of England. Her best known works are : Delphine, a novel STAFFA in which she idealizes herself (4 vols., Gene- va, 1802) ; Corinne, ou V Italic (3 -vols., Paris, 1807); and De VAllemagne (3 vols., London, 1813), which first fully revealed to the French the achievements of modern German litera- ture. These works have passed through many editions and translations, as well as most of her other writings, which include Lettres sur les ecrits et le caractere de J. J. Rousseau (1788) ; Reflexions sur la paix (1794) ; De V in- fluence des passions sur le fionheur des indi- mdus et des nations (1796) ; De la litterature consideree dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales (1800) ; Considerations sur les princi- paux evenements de la revolution francaise (3 vols., 1818; new ed., 2 vols., 1861); and Dix annees d>exil (1821 ; new ed., 1861). Her com- plete works were edited by her son Auguste (17 vols., 1820-'21), with a notice by Mme. Necker de Saussure ; and her daughter threw additional light upon her mother's life in her notes accompanying an edition of her broth- er's (Euvres diverses (5 vols., 1828-' 9). Mme. de Stael's correspondence with the grand duch- ess 'Louisa of Saxe-Weimar from 1800 to 1817 appeared in London in 1862, and other letters of hers were published by Saint-Rene Taillan- dier (1863). See Sainte-Beuve's Portraits de femmes (1844), Baudrillart's Moge de Mine, de Stael (1850), and " Life and Times of Mme. de Stael," by Norris (London, 1853). STAFJIPFLI, or StSmpfli, Jakob, a Swiss states- man, born at Schupfen, canton of Bern, in 1820. He is the son of a farmer, and acted as a servant in France in order to acquire the lan- guage. Subsequently he studied law in Bern, and became an advocate and an ultra-radical journalist. In 1846 he and Ochsenbein were the chief promoters of the revision of the constitution, and in the same year he presided over the financial department in the council of state. In 1847, as representative of the can- ton of Bern in the diet, he was prominent in pushing on the war with the seven Catholic cantons which had formed the Sonderbund, and in insisting upon the expulsion of the Jesuits. In 1848 he failed of election to the national council,- on account of his objections to the new constitution. In 1849, 1851, 1859, and 1862 he was president of the republic, and in the intervals he was vice president and minister of war ; and he resumed the latter office in 1863. In 1865 he retired, and in 1872 he was one of the arbitrators at Geneva under the treaty of Washington. STAFFA, a small uninhabited island of Scot- land, one of the inner Hebrides, Argyleshire, about 8 m. W. of Mull. It is irregularly ellip- tical, about 1-J- in. in circumference. Its sur- face is an uneven plateau, elevated from 50 to 144 ft. above the sea. It is covered with a rich soil and luxuriant grass, and is pastured by black cattle. The upper rock is composed of a shapeless basaltic mass, with occasional small columns, resting upon a columnar basalt, hard, grayish black, compact, and of perfectly
