Economic and Social Life in America

THIS is a scholarly book, well clotted with footnotes and quotations. In fact the quotations take up as much or more space than the author's own contributions. As might be expected from a monograph in the series known as the "Harvard Studies in Romance Languages," it is imbued with the spirit of research. The facts which have been ferreted out of the various archives are often of no great relevancy aside from this special subject. However Mme. de Stael was an interesting and significant enough figure to warrant this rather restricted study.

Many years of Mme. de Stael's life were spent in various European countries where her sparkling salons were centers of revolt against the oppression of French formalism in the arts. She was not too romantic, however, to forget her financial interests, and a large part of her correspondence with Americans deals with her investments in land in northern New York. She also looked upon America as the living example of her theories on the equality of man and life more or less in the natural state. Her correspondence with Thomas Jefferson and Gouverneur Morris shows that she was many times on the point of leaving Europe to settle in the United States, but always her intuition told her that she would never enjoy life away from her blue stocking salons notwithstanding her Rousseauistic tendencies.

The book is very interesting in spots, and in its entirety it should be appreciated by those students who are concentrating on this special period.