Page:Madame de Staël (1887 Bella Duffy).djvu/154

144

quitting Sweden, Madame de Staël went to England. Some eighteen years or so had passed since she had wept in the lanes at Mickleham at the thought of separating from the charming colony at Juniper Hall. Her heart was still almost as young as in those days; the vivid flame of enthusiasm for all that was good still burnt as brightly in her soul. If her spiritual horizon had widened, and a fervent if rather vague religious sentiment had succeeded to her unquestioning faith in men—that was almost all the change in her. For her nature was a singularly homogeneous one, and growth, while widening and deepening it, did not render it more complex.

Her reception in English society was marked by all the enthusiasm which we are accustomed to lavish on illustrious foreigners. She was mobbed at routs and assemblies, and ladies mounted on chairs and tables to stare at her.

She took up her abode at 30, Argyll Place, Regent Street, a house now a bathing establishment. It