Page:A cyclopaedia of female biography.djvu/665

 Paris; as Napoleon included the friends of Madame de Stael among his own enemies.

It was at Coppet that Prince Augustus of Prussia, brother of the late king, became violently enamoured of the beautiful Frenchwoman; he even attempted to persuade her to obtain a divorce from M. Recamier, that she might become his princess. Her religious principles would not allow her to listen with approval to this proposal. After leaving Coppet, Madame Recamier resided at Lyons two years. As she determined to take no steps for the repeal of her exile, she decided upon a journey to Italy. There, as everywhere else, she was received with universal and lively admiration. Painters copied her loveliness; Canova has perpetuated her features in marble. Madame Recamier's sentence of banishment was never reversed. She returned to Paris with the Bourbons. After the death of Madame de Stael she took up her residence at the Abbaye aux Bois, where, though out of the tumult of dissipated society, she enjoyed the intimate friendship and constant visits of an extended circle of literary and otherwise distinguished persons. Among these may be mentioned Chateaubriand and Guizot.

For some years before her death she became blind, an affliction which she bore with the greatest serenity; never complaining of it, except as it prevented her attentions to her Mends. She died on the 10th. of May, 1849, of the cholera. Her distinguished traits were an extreme sweetness of disposition and tenderness of heart, which obtained her the affection of all about her. It should be noted that she was quite unspoiled by the homage that was always paid to her extraordinary beauty.

REEVE, CLARA, born in 1745, at Ipswich, daughter of a clergyman. An early admiration of Horace Walpole's "Castle of Otranto" induced Miss Reeve to imitate it in a Gothic story entitled "The Old English Baron." Mr. Chambers, in his Cyclopaedia, says of this work,—"In some respects the lady has the advantage of Walpole: her supernatural machinery is better managed, so as to produce mysteriousness and effect, but her style has not the point or elegance of that of her prototype. Miss Reeve wrote several other novels, 'all marked,' says Sir Walter Scott, 'by excellent good sense, pure morality, and a competent command of those qualities which constitute a good romance.' They have failed, however, to keep possession of public favour, and the fame of the author rests on her 'Old English Baron,' which is now generally printed along with the story of Walpole."

"The Old English Baron" was published in 1777. and Miss Reeve died in 1803.

REISKE, ERNESTINE CHRISTINE, maiden name was Müller, was the wife of Johann Jacob Reiske. She was born, April 2nd., 1735, at Kumberg, a small town near Wittemberg, in Prussian Saxony. In 1755, she became acquainted with Reiske at Leipzic, where she was making a visit. Her beauty, modesty, goodness, and love of literature, attracted the eminent scholar, and, although he was twenty years her senior, they became very much attached to each other; but, owing to the war then raging in Saxony, they were not married till 1764.