Page:Sévigné - Letters to her Daughter and Friends, 1869.djvu/11



An honorable celebrity has been universally accorded to Madame de Sévigné. For nearly two centuries her "Letters" have been the admiration of all lovers of elegant literature. The natural grace, the " curiosa felicitas" of these epistles have rendered them remarkable as to style, and the artist-like pictures of manners, the lively accounts of contemporaneous incidents give them very great value as aids to the study of history. Then they are trustworthy documents; every word, every circumstance is read with particular satisfaction, because the character and position of the writer assure us of her perfect intent to communicate truth.

Madame de Sévigné lived in what the French consider their Augustan Age. Great men in arts, in arms, in literature gave glory to the most splendid monarch that ever sat on the throne of France. At the same time the position of women was both active and brilliant. The social existence of the women of the higher classes was one that gave scope to talent and opportunity to energy. In those days the great dame was occupied with the administration of her property and the exaltation of her family. Far from being absorbed in a narrow routine of personality, she considered the sacrifice of private feelings to family greatness a positive duty, and the sacrifice of family greatness to the king — that is, the state — a still more imperative obligation.

As our views of moral responsibility extend, the intellectual horizon enlarges. The woman who was accustomed to dwell upon considerations beyond mere fireside comforts or fashionable display, who went from the individual to the family, and from the family to the state, must of necessity have enlarged her understanding in proportion to the elevation and extent of her