Page:Sévigné - Letters to her Daughter and Friends, 1869.djvu/12



6 views. It is only by a just development of the intellectual faculties that the heart can be properly regulated, and nowhere is this truth more strikingly illustrated than in the life of Madame de Sévigné.

Her passionate love for her daughter was always made to yield to the dictates of a wise prudence and just propriety. Though born with excessive sensibility, great vivacity, amiable instincts, and warm imagination, that is to say, with the qualities and feelings most likely to lead their possessor astray or into indiscretions, yet this youthful widow managed her estate and her children with admirable wisdom, and so regulated her own conduct as to be above the slightest censure in a court of relaxed morals and of many temptations. This was accomplished because her brilliant qualities rested on the solid basis of serious and valuable acquirements, a practical knowledge of business, and a trusting and sincere piety.

To make the example of this excellent woman more widely and familiarly known in America is the main object of this volume. As a model in private life, her conduct and character deserve to be studied. Her "Letters" are referred to by the best authorities, as the most charming specimens of epistolary art extant, yet no edition has ever been issued in this country. Nor would one be profitable, because the complete work is too large. Still it is desirable to have access to this treasury of beautiful sentiments and entertaining sketches ; and we have here selected such portions of her correspondence as will make her virtues known and give those lessons of practical goodness her life so happily illustrated.

In order to do this we have arranged the correspondence on a new plan. Hitherto the "Letters" have been thrown together according to date, and the reader was compelled to change from one correspondent to another, even on the same page, often finding similar details in several consecutive epistles. In this volume each person addressed has his or her own department — thus the Letters to Madame de Grignan, the soul of the correspondence, form one unbroken series. Much care has been taken to keep the fine and often sparkling threads of narrative inwoven in the Letters continuous, and errors in the only English translation we have seen (published in London, in 1811) have been corrected by comparing it with the best French editions of the