Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/132

118 Amongst her other compositions, there is a romance called Les Caprices de la Fortune, which she calls an historical novel, being founded on a fact. It is written with great feeling, and in an easy unaffected stile. She wrote many allegorical pieces also. Mrs. Thicknesse's Memoirs of French Ladies.

cannot say more in praise of this lady's writings than that they are in the hands of every body. With the graces of stile, they join good sense and solid reasoning. Her sentiments on education, particularly, are worthy of the general admiration they meet with.

She was born at Paris about the year 1711. She lived many years in England, where she chiefly employed her time in writing upon different subjects. Those of her works which are held in the greatest estimation, are entitled, Magazin des Enfans; Magazin des Adolescens; Magazin des Jeunes Dames; and Nouveau Magazin Anglois.

"In educating youth," says Madame de Beaumont, "it is absolutely necessary, in forming their young minds to virtue, never to separate religion and reason; one must be dependent on the other: for the support of which, it is of the utmost importance to study the Holy Scriptures, which are alone capable of inspiring us with a just idea of the Eternal Being, the recompenser of virtue, and the avenger of crimes."

This celebrated writer has very judiciously blended entertainment with instruction, by putting it in the form of Dialogues between a governess and her pupils, whose different characters, dispositions, and tempers are well sustained, There are many very entertaining stories  duced