Etienne de Jouy.

One reads the following in volume XVI of the complete works [Oeuvres complètes - Google books.] of Mr. de Jouy, entitled: Miscellanies, page 99. It is a dialogue between Madame de Staël, deceased, and Mr. the Duke of Broglie, living. n Mr. de Broglie – What do I see! Is it possible?

Madame de Staël – My dear Victor, do not be alarmed, and, without questioning me about a prodigy whose cause no living being could penetrate, enjoy with me a moment of happiness that this nocturnal apparition affords us both. As you see, there are bonds that death itself could not sever. The sweet concord of sentiments, of views, of opinions, forms the chain that links perishable life to immortal life and that prevents what has long been united from being separated forever. Mr. de Broglie – I believe I could explain this happy sympathy by intellectual concord.

Madame de Staël – I beg that we explain nothing; I have no time to lose. Those relations of love that survive the material organs do not leave me a stranger to the sentiments of the objects of my tenderest affections. My children are alive; they honor and cherish my memory, this I well know. But it is in this that my present relations with the Earth are confined; the falling night envelops all the rest. In the same volume, page 83 and following, there is another dialogue, where several historical personages come on the scene, revealing their existence and the role they played in successive lives.

The correspondent who sends us this note adds:

“Like you, I believe that the best means of bringing to the Doctrine we advocate a good number of the recalcitrant is to make them see that what they regard as a bogeyman, ready to devour them, or as a ridiculous jest, is nothing more than what dawned in the brains of the serious thinkers of all times, merely through meditation upon the destinies of man.” Mr. Jouy wrote at the beginning of this century. His complete works were published at the beginning of 1823, in twenty-seven volumes in-8º, by the house of Didot.

[1] [Achille-Charles-Léon-Victor de Broglie, 3rd Duke of Broglie ]