sidered her best work. It is her longest poem, and has passages of exceeding beauty and deep pathos; her power in delineating passion and describing character is very great, and her versification always harmonious and suited to the subject. All her poems show uncommon versality of imagination, a warm enthusiasm, and remarkable facility of expression
LEZARDIERE, MADEMOISELLE,
Was a native of France. Without any encouragement she manifested an invincible taste for historical researches. In this she met with great opposition from her family. At a period when France, as a nation, was given up to most frivolous pursuits, when the court was occupied entirely by futile pleasures, to say no worse, it seemed monstrous, and inadmissible to common-place people, that a young girl should give up the world, and the usual routine of girlish life, to devote herself to musty manuscripts and severe study. Her perseverance, however, removed all obstacles, and she was at last indulged by her parents with the means of carrying out her views. She devoted the best years of her youth to the most laborious literary pursuits; living in solitude, unknown by the public, but encouraged by the approbation and sympathy of a few scientific men, among whom her principal friend was Malesherbes, the heroic advocate of Louis the Sixteenth. After twenty-five years of careful research, her work was printed anonymously, under the title of "Theory of the Political Laws of the French Monarchy." Alas! the book was printed in 1790, when the very word monarchy was an abomination. It was published after the Revolution, but the time was past; political science had also undergone a revolution, and the labours of a lifetime were lost. Augustin Thierry, unquestionably the best judge in the world of the subject of Mademoiselle Lézardière, since his own writings have formed an epoch in the manner of studying and treating such researches, gives her almost the preference over all the learned men who were her predecessors in this study. He speaks highly of her erudition and philosophic mode of reasoning; her theory he completely destroys, as he does those of all the foregoing savants, not excepting the great Montesquieu.
LICHTENAW, WILHELMINA, COUNTESS OF,
The celebrated friend of Frederick William the Second. Her father, whose name was Enke, travelled over the greater part of Europe, as a clever musician on the French horn, and was afterwards received into the royal musical chapel of Berlin. She had two sisters, the eldest of whom, on account of her splendid figure, was engaged at the Italian opera. Count Matuschki eloped with her to Venice, and married her, after which they returned to Berlin, where they lived in a brilliant style, their house becoming the resort of the fashionable world. Her sister, Wilhelmina, when ten years of age, lived with her. The hereditary prince, Frederick William, who visited the house of Count Matuschki, thus accidentally made her acquaintance. She was then thirteen. Her beauty inspired the prince with an enthusiastic love; and when, on some occasion, the two sisters had quarrelled, he considered it most proper to have her sent back to the house of her father.
