THE LAST YEARS 399 



Progressive, a work in three volumes, two dealing with the manage- 

 ment and education of infancy and childhood, the third with that 

 of girls. We have to picture the brilliant young star of the Coppet 

 salon as a stately grandmother, seated at her writing-table and 

 rounding her full and smoothly flowing sentences with a careful 

 touch. Her style is leisurely, laboured, at times didactic ; the 

 periods run on with little variety or interruption, the reader's 

 attention may slacken under a monotony of polished exposition, 

 and he may find a multitude of what seem to him somewhat 

 obvious recommendations set out with needless diffuseness. But, 

 as he reads on, he recognises that from her own point of view 

 Madame Necker-de Saussure is sensible and understanding. 

 Novels she holds dangerous they put romantic ideas into young 

 people's heads. Sir Walter Scott is only grudgingly admitted 

 for the sake of his history. Like her contemporary, Miss Edge- 

 worth, Madame Necker-de Saussure is of her age. The two 

 authoresses met hi Pictet de Rochemont's salon when Miss Edge- 

 worth was in Geneva in 1820. This was a place of reunion where 

 various circles, philosophers and professors, literary celebrities 

 and politicians encountered one another. Pictet de Rochemont 

 was himself a distinguished diplomatist, and in this capacity re- 

 presented Switzerland at the Congress of Vienna. He was also 

 a scientific farmer and sheep-breeder. His contributions to 

 literature ranged from papers on potatoes and treatises on merino 

 sheep to translations from Byron, Moore, and Walter Scott, and 

 included one of a work of Miss Edge worth's on education. The 

 Englishwoman in her diary gives her first impression of her 

 fellow -authoress . 



' Met Madame Necker-de Saussure much more agreeable than 

 her books. Her manner and figure reminded me of our beloved Mrs. 

 Moutray : she, too, is deaf and has the same resignation void of mis- 

 trust in her expression when she is not speaking, and the same gracious 

 attention to the person who is speaking to her.' 1 



There is interest in the view Madame Necker-de Saussure puts 

 forward that the study of the grammar of a dead language affords 

 the best elementary discipline for the mind, that it is the nearest 

 road to clearness in thought and accuracy in expression, qualities 



1 Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, edited by A. C. Hare (Arnold, London, 

 1894). 



