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poverty of an exclusive love,' her heart wore her life away, and yet, as has been seen, she was the centre of many other hearts, a queen among her friends, and the sole love of her husband through life, as she herself' only felt her existence through him.'

In 1787, at the opening of the Assembly of the Notables, M. de Calonne impugned the accuracy of the Compte Rendu au Roi. M. Necker published a memoir to justify himself, and the King, who had sent to assure him that he himself held the Compte Rendu to be accurate, was irritated at the step M. Necker had taken, therefore sent him a lettre de cachet exiling him to a distance of forty leagues from Paris within twenty-four hours. This order excited universal indignation. All Paris,' says Madame de Staël, 'came to visit M. Necker in the twenty-four hours before his departure.' Her indignation at the treatment her father had received was unbounded, and the cancelling of the lettre de cachet two months later did not pacify her.

The financial condition of France having gone from bad to worse, in August 1788, to the great joy of the entire nation, the King appointed M. Necker Director-General of the Finances, with a voice in the Royal Council. He was hailed as the only man who could save the country from bankruptcy.

The stormy times of M. Necker's second administration filled the heart of his loving wife with anxiety and trouble. Once more placed at the head of affairs, he had not the power to control the rising passions that in the following year culminated in the taking of the Bastille. At last, yielding to the violence of the enemies of the minister, Louis the Sixteenth, on the 12th of July 1789, sent M. Necker his dismissal and ordered him into exile. The letter was received while he was at dinner with his guests. After it was over he took Madame Necker aside to inform her of the King's order, and without even staying to change their costume, they started at once for the Belgian frontier.

After three days the Neckers were joined by M. de Staël and his wife. At Basle an urgent summons was received from the King to return to Paris. An insurrection had broken out, the National Assembly had voted that the fallen minister bore with him its esteem and regret, the Bastille had been taken, and the population of Paris was in a frenzy.

The return of M. Necker was hailed with the utmost popular enthusiasm. He was conducted in triumph to the Hôtel de Ville, and after some congratulatory speeches the cortège continued the route to Versailles, where M. Necker was to resume the cares of office, and where little more than two months later he beheld the hordes from Paris enter the palace, massacre the King's guards, and force the Royal family to return with them to Paris.

The Assembly had made itself supreme; M. Necker vainly endeavoured to oppose the popular caprices; therefore, yielding to the

urgent solicitations of his wife, impotent in the Assembly, and abandoned by the King he had served so well, he announced his intention of retiring from the Ministry.

This announcement was received in silence, and on the 4th of September 1790 M. and Madame Necker left Paris. Coppet was reached in the first days of October, and to one, at least, of the fugitives the beautiful Swiss domain was a haven of rest, the tired heart and troubled mind found peace at last.

Madame de Staël's first child was born on the 31st of August 1790, and as soon as she was able she hastened to her parents at Coppet. She, however, did not remain there long, as her energetic temperament and keen sympathies drew her to Paris, where she made use of her position as Ambassadress to help her friends and save many lives. She kept up a constant correspondence with her father:

He often told me [she says] that my letters and conversation were all that now kept up his connection with the world. His active and penetrating mind excited me to think, for the sake of the pleasure of talking with him. If I observed, it was to communicate my impressions to him. If I listened, it was to repeat to him.

In 1792 the Government of Sweden suspended its embassy. Madame de Staël had to leave Paris, and arrived at Coppet, where her parents were anxiously expecting her.

In his retirement M. Necker occupied himself in writing, and Madame Necker endeavoured to revive the memories and friendships of her youth. Moultou had died two years before, and now her greatest pleasure was to invite his widow and daughters, and his sister-in-law, a loved friend of former years, to pay her long visits. Gibbon, too, was at Lausanne, and Madame Necker lost no time in sending him a pressing and friendly invitation.

The advent of Madame de Staël brought a new spirit into the solitude of the Château de Coppet. Her exertions were ceaseless in aid of the proscribed French. She sent guides to bring her friends to Switzerland, while her husband gave them Swedish names to be inserted in their passports.

But Madame Necker, worn out with her life of anxiety, was nearing the end of her chequered life. A few years before she had written the most minute directions about her burial and other arrangements, together with a touching letter to the husband she must leave behind.

Before beginning this letter, my dear husband, I must reassure my own self against the horror and terror with which my thoughts inspire me. Let me then observe, in order to keep the liberty of reflection, that the slight difference in our respective ages cannot compensate for the weakness of my temperament and the diminution of vital force, caused by an extreme affliction and by all the interior torments of a sensitive soul. Besides, when I turn my eyes towards that beneficent Being who has given me for you so constant and so passionate a sentiment, it

seems to me that He will listen to the prayer that each morning I present to Him; it seems to me that He will have pity on my weakness, and that He will see that this heart over which you reign with such an empire could no longer endure its despair. Pardon me, oh my husband! it is perhaps the only occasion on earth in which I may have preferred myself to you; but, I own it, I beg of God, that God whom I adore and whom I have served without reserve from my earliest infancy, I beg and conjure Him to let me die before you and in your arms. God alone judges of the degree of unhappiness His creatures can support; you know the sentiment that accompanies this prayer, and I think that it will not be rejected.

In her experience of hospitals, Madame Necker had been struck by the danger of hurried burials. She had great fears of being buried alive, and she multiplied her injunctions that the funeral ceremony should be postponed till the fact of her death was beyond doubt. Moreover, she wished her body to be embalmed and placed in a special monument with the face uncovered, and that her husband's body should repose by her side. A letter, on the outside of which was written, 'To be opened during my agony, or immediately after my death,' gives minute details for the interior arrangements of the sepulchre; her husband alone was to have the key, the opening to be made so that after his death his body should be placed by hers, and his ashes and hers be mingled together: 'This heart, which was yours, and which still beats for you, deserves that you should respect its two weaknesses: the fear of being buried without being dead, and that of being separated from you.'

The restlessness attendant on her weak state caused Madame Necker to wish for a change from the somewhat melancholy sojourn at Coppet, and she was taken to Rolle, where she wrote a letter to be read by her husband after her death:

Rolle, the 12th of November 1792. You weep, my beloved one. You think that she who on all points united her existence to yours lives no more for you. You are mistaken; that God who joined our two hearts, that God, benefactor of all His creatures, who loaded me with His favours, has not annihilated my being. As I write this letter a sentiment that has never deceived me diffuses an unlooked-for calm in my soul; I seem to see that this spirit will still watch over your fate, and that, in the bosom of God -of that God whom I shall never cease to adore, and whom I prefer to all things, even to you-I shall still enjoy your tenderness for me. . . .

Madame Necker's will was made at Lausanne, and dated the 6th of January 1794. It is written in a trembling and almost illegible hand, and was the last thing she ever wrote. The last months of her life were passed in cruel sufferings and sleepless nights. In the middle of the day she would sometimes suddenly fall asleep resting on her husband's arm. Madame de Staël records that she has seen her father remain immovable for hours in the same position, for fear of awakening her by the slightest movement.

The end slowly came in the early morning of the 6th of May 1794. She looked heavenward,' says M. Necker, 'in a most affect

ing manner, listening while I prayed; then, in dying, raised the finger of her left hand, which wore the ring I had given her, to remind me of the pledge engraved upon it, to love her for ever.'

The body of Madame Necker was deposited in the tomb prepared by her orders; ten years afterwards it was opened again to receive that of her husband, and once more for the coffin of their daughter. It is now closed and surmounted by a bas-relief, the work of Canova, overshadowed by trees planted by M. Necker's own hand, and within sight of his study in the Château de Coppet.

M. Necker's interest was now centred in his daughter and her children, but Madame de Staël's brilliant powers needed a wider sphere than the retired domain in the Pays de Vaud. She returned to Paris and again opened her salon.

The Baron de Staël's extravagant habits led to the necessity for a separation between him and his wife; she placed the fortune of her children in the hands of her father. Her marriage, though not an unhappy one, was unsympathetic, and it was to her father that the whole love and admiration of her devoted heart were given.

M. Necker's work, Last Views of Politics and Finance, infuriated Napoleon; he accused Madame de Staël of having a share in the work, and threatened her with exile. She remained quietly at Coppet till, in the autumn of 1803, she ventured to take a country house ten leagues from Paris. Here she was warned that she would probably be apprehended, and finally the order for exile to a distance of forty leagues from Paris reached Madame de Staël. At Vienna she received the very last letter her father ever wrote to her. The intimation of his serious illness shortly followed, and she instantly started homewards. On the way the news of his death was broken to her. Speaking of it, she says:

A sentiment of inexpressible terror was joined to my despair. I saw myself without support on earth, forced to sustain my soul by my own feeble strength against the misfortunes of life. I felt that henceforward my heart could never more be happy as it had been; and no day has passed since April 1804 in which I have not referred all my sufferings to this event.

M. Necker died after an illness of nine days, blessing his absent daughter, and repeating, 'She has loved me dearly.' His last words were, Great God, my Judge and Saviour, receive Thy servant, hastening down to death.'

Daily had he paid a visit to his wife's tomb. Extraordinary must have been the attraction inherent in M. Necker to call forth the adoring sentiment with which he was loved by his wife and daughter. Of Madame Necker it may be truly said that her life exemplified the words of Byron :

Love is of man's life a thing apart,

Tis woman's whole existence.

MARCIA C. MAXWELL.

THE EVOLUTION OF

THE PARLIAMENTARY OATH

EVERY legislator, Peer and Commoner alike, must publicly take the following oath, or make an affirmation in equivalent terms, at the table of the House of which he is a member, before he can participate in the deliberations of Parliament:

I, A. B., do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, her heirs and successors, according to law. So help me God.

The history of the evolution of this concise and simple oath of fealty to the reigning Sovereign, from the long and complex oaths of Allegiance, Supremacy and Abjuration, and declarations against certain doctrinal tenets of the Roman Catholic faith, which for centuries were administered at St. Stephen's, forms one of the most curious and interesting chapters in the annals of Parliament. In it are reflected the storm and stress in religious and political thought which attended the Reformation in the sixteenth, and the Revolution in the seventeenth, centuries. With a view to safeguard the Throne against the machinations of its foes, the nature of the oath was, as we shall see, altered from time to time, according as the enemy, assuming different forms-it is the Pope at one period and the Pretender at another-appeared or vanished from the public stage. In it we can also trace the slow progress of freedom of thought in the nineteenth century, until the final triumph of toleration in questions of belief was attained but a few years ago.

It was in 1563, the fifth year of the reign of Elizabeth, that members of the House of Commons were first obliged to take an oath as a condition precedent to the discharge of their legislative functions. Four years earlier an Act was passed by the first Parliament of Elizabeth, entitled 'An Act restoring to the Crown the ancient jurisdiction over the State, ecclesiastical and spiritual, and abolishing all foreign power repugnant to the same '-popularly known as the Act of Supremacy-which, with the Act of Uniformity, passed by the same Parliament, was designed to begin afresh the work of the Reformation, interrupted by the reign of Mary. The Act of Uniformity restored the use of the English Prayer Book in the churches; and the Act of Supremacy required the taking of the following oath by ecclesiastics

VOL. XLVI-No. 270

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