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302 RAHEE*
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Letters Of Rahel, 3 Vols. 8vo, 1834; And...
foundl illustrious y , and of her winning time , impressing the most * general every one att as ention peculiarl , respect y as pro and
-, esteem . " Rahel Levin was of Jewish extraction , the daughter of an able
and opulent man of business in Berlin . She was born there on the first of the Whitsuntide holidays in the year 1771 , and
died there on the 7 th of March , 1833 , in the sixty-second year of her age , and the nineteenth of her union with M . Varnhagen von
Ense . She was the first living * child of her parents , and thoug \ h her organisation proved in after years powerful and energetic , she was
, as an infant , so small and delicate that we are told she was for a length of time after her birth wrapped up in cotton and laid in a
box . Her childish years were passed amidst physical suffering , which a more judicious treatment might have prevented , and which
the vitality of her constitution finally overcame , but she always remained in a high degree sensitive and impressionableeven to
, atmospheric changes , and the descriptions which remain to us are those of a woman whose sympathies with , animate and inanimate
nature were peculiarly deep and strong . Such a woman , whose life "was wrapped up in the life of her
fellow creatures , and who in equal measure received and gave forth ideas and emotions , who was herself neither a creator , nor the
subject of the creations of others , but who proved herself a tender help to the afflicted , and to genius an ever loving friend , can hardly
be better described than by her own husband . And if there be a tinge of poetical and affectionate exaggeration in all he says of her ,
it is but a proof of that marvellous influence which she possessed and retained , and which neither the disparity of years between
them , nor her death , which left him a "widower in what is in a man considered the prime of his years , could efface from the memory of
their married life . Accordingly it is to M . Varnhagen von Ense that we are indebted for the following' abridged sketchalthough it
, is to the collection of her " Letters , " several hundreds in number , beside as many more unpublished in the hands of her
correspondents , and also to the ' " Portraits" of her friends given by him , that we must turn for a full understanding of her genius and
character . In the year 1803 , M . Varnhagen , then a boy of fourteen , first
met his future wife , and he thus describes the interview ; we do not attempt to modify the German enthusiasm which expresses both
natures so well . " A visitor was announced , at the mention of whose name there
occurred that sort of excitement which is produced by expectations of the rare and pleasing . It was Hahel Levin . I had heard
her frequently named before with so much significance , that I could only think of comparing her with persons altogether
extraordinary , or rather with no other person whatever , as an union
of genius and simplicity in their most original energy and purest
302 Rahee*
302 RAHEE *
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), July 1, 1859, page 302, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01071859/page/14/
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