Institutions Sociales;" and in 1802, rejoining her sick husband, from whom she had lived some time apart, she closed his eyes on their way together to Coppet, when Napoleon issued an order forbidding her to reside within forty leagues of Paris. To Madame de Staël France was nothing without Paris. Soon after what she considered a banishment she proceeded to Germany, to study its literature and make the personal acquaintance of its chief authors. Her principal guide in the new and strange world of German literature was August Wilhelm Schlegel, who became the tutor of her son and her companion for several years. A visit to Italy succeeded that to Germany, and with the material for "Corinne," she retired for a time to Coppet. "Delphine," a fiction of doubtful morality, had been published in 1802, but far superior to it in every respect was "Corinne," which appeared in 1807, and which breathes in every page the glowing and brilliant Italy which it partly paints. In a second visit to Germany Madame de Staël completed, as she thought, her studies of that country and its literature, and with the manuscript of her work "De l'Allemagne," proceeded to the neighbourhood of Blois. The book was printed at Paris, but not published. The whole edition was seized by the police, the plea afterwards given for its suppression being that it was an anti-national work. Ordered out of France, she returned to Coppet; but even there Napoleon persecuted her. During this stay at Coppet she made the acquaintance (1810) of a young Italian of good family named Rocca, who had fought in the French army in Spain, and had gone to Geneva to recover from his wounds. He worshipped Madame de Staël and she married him, but the marriage was kept secret, in order, it is said, that she should not be obliged to change her celebrated name. Napoleon having banished Schlegel from Coppet and subjected herself to other annoyances, she set forth on her travels once more—this time to the north of Europe, leaching St. Petersburg, where she was well received by the emperor, during the French invasion of Russia. Returning by way of Sweden, where she began her plaintive work, "Dix Années d'exil," she arrived in England in 1813. She was the lion, or lioness, of at least one London season, the whig aristocracy fêting her, and Sir James Mackintosh trumpeting her praises in the Edinburgh Review. It was at London in 1814 that her "De l'Allemagne" was first published. After the fall of Napoleon she would have settled in Paris, but the failing health of her husband led her to go with him to Italy. In the spring of 1816 she was at Coppet, the centre of a brilliant circle, with her former friend of London, Lord Byron, near her at the villa Diodati. In the autumn of 1816 she visited Paris, but her own health was failing, and she did not long enjoy the society of the metropolis which she loved so dearly. She died at Paris on the 14th July, 1817, and her husband soon followed her to the grave. She said on her deathbed, "J'ai aimé Dieu, mon père, la liberté." Her posthumous and interesting work, the "Considérations sur la Révolution Française," was published in 1818. When the range of her thought, feeling, and culture is remembered, Madame de Staël may be pronounced the greatest writer who has as yet been produced among women. While there is an Italy, and while there are young hearts, her "Corinne" will find readers. Her "De l'Allemagne" forms an era in the history of modern literature. For, with all its faults, it first broke down, as Göthe has said, "the Chinese wall of prejudice" which separated the rest of Europe from the fruitful and flowery empire of German thought and imagination. The influence which the philosophy and poetry of Germany has exerted on the intellect of France and England, is in the first instance traceable to the eloquence and appreciative sympathy of Madame de Staël "Allemagne." There is an instructive and unaffected English biography of this celebrated Frenchwoman, The Life and Times of Madame de Staël, by Maria Norris, London, 1853.—F. E.
STAFFORD, Anthony, a learned English writer, descended from a noble family, was born in Northamptonshire. He studied at Oriel college, Oxford, and there graduated MA, in 1623. He was the author of "Niobe Dissolved into Nilus, or his Age drowned in her own tears;" "Meditations and Resolutions;" "The Life and Death of Diogenes;" "The Life of the Virgin Mary, or Female Glory;" "The Pride of Honour;" "Honour and Virtue triumphant over the Grave, exemplified in the Life and Death of Henry Lord Stafford." Anthony Stafford died in 1641.—F.
STAFFORD, an illustrious and powerful English family, which has figured conspicuously in the annals of the country. Its founder was one of the Bagots, who were landholders in Staffordshire at the Conquest. Its principal historical personages are Humphrey de Stafford, a zealous partisan of Henry VI., who was created Duke of Buckingham in 1465, and along with his eldest son fell in the wars of the Roses; and Henry, his second son and successor in the title, the friend and accomplice, and afterwards the victim, of Richard III., whose plots and tragic death have been immortalized by Shakspeare. The sad story of Edward, third duke, may also be read in the pages of the great dramatist. He imprudently quarreled with Wolsey, who trumped up a charge of treason against him, upon which the duke was found guilty, and beheaded on Tower Hill. When the Emperor Charles V. heard of his execution, he is reported to have exclaimed—"A butcher's dog has killed the finest buck in England." The ducal title became extinct by his attainder; and on the death of Henry, thirteenth Baron Stafford, in 1637, the barony descended to Roger Stafford, who, though he was great-grandson of the third duke of Buckingham, and also of Margaret Plantagenet, daughter and heiress of George, duke of Clarence, and niece of Edward IV., had sunk to the lowest condition, and during much of an unhappy life bore the surname of Fluddor Floyd. On his death, unmarried, in 1640 the male line of this great old family expired. His sister married a joiner in Newport in Shropshire, and they had a son who followed the trade of a cobbler. Meanwhile the sister of the last Baron Stafford had married William Howard, son of the twentieth earl of Arundel; and Roger having been induced to submit his title to the barony to the decision of the king, his majesty declared that this luckless scion of a great race, having no part in the family inheritance, "nor any other lands or means whatsoever," should make a resignation of all his claims to the title. A deed of surrender having been accordingly enrolled, in December, 1639, the king conferred the dignity on Sir William Howard and his wife, and soon after elevated him to the rank of Viscount Stafford. This nobleman is remembered in history as the last and most distinguished of the victims to the notorious Popish plot. He was a strict Roman catholic, and had adhered to the royal cause in the great civil war. His services, however, had, as he considered, been very inadequately rewarded, and he frequently voted against the court. He was first accused by the infamous Titus Oates on the 23rd of October, 1678, as an accessory to the plot, and was committed to the Tower on the 30th, along with several other Roman catholic noblemen. His trial, however, was twice postponed in consequence of a dissolution of parliament, so that it was not until the 30th of November, 1680, that he was brought to the bar of the house of lords on a charge of high treason. The trial lasted seven days, and terminated in a verdict of guilty; four of the Howards, his own relations, to their disgrace having voted for his condemnation. Though a Roman catholic, he employed Burnet to comfort him by his instructions touching those points on which all christians agree. He suffered with great firmness on the 29th of December, protesting his innocence with his last breath. His attainder was not reversed until 1824, one hundred and forty years after his iniquitous execution, when an act restoring the injured family to its ancient dignities was passed by both houses of parliament without a dissentient voice.—J. T.
STAGNELIUS, Erik Johan, a Swedish poet of great promise, who was cut off in the flower of his age, was born on the 14th of October, 1793, in the isle of Oeland, where his father was a parish priest. After receiving a desultory education at home, he went successively to the universities of Lund and of Upsal, where he was distinguished by his great capacity for acquiring knowledge. The liveliness of his imagination was displayed in a singularly keen sense he had of his personal ugliness, and ills consequent aversion to general society. In 1815 he became a clerk in the ecclesiastical chancery of Sweden, and two years afterwards published his first work, "Vladimir the Great," an epic poem on the conversion of the Russians to Christianity. His next publication, "Lilies of Sharon," a collection of small poems, placed him in the front rank of Swedish poets. His natural melancholy, augmented by the use of ardent spirits, preyed upon his health and imbued him with strange metaphysical notions. Without having had any declared illness, he was found dead in his bed on the morning of the 3rd of April, 1823.—(Howitt's Scandinavian Literature.)—R. H.
STAHL, Georg Ernest, a German physician and chemist, the founder or at least perfecter of the phlogistian hypothesis,
