the immense sacrifices which love exacts and marriage implies, but which such a woman as Heloise is proud to make for him whom she deems worthy of her own exalted sentiments; and she shows in the person of Corinne how much weakness may coexist with strength, and how timid and dependent is a woman even in the blaze of triumph and in the enjoyment of a haughty freedom.  She paints the most shrinking delicacy with the greatest imprudence and boldness, contempt for the opinions and usages of society with the severest self-respect; giving occasion for scandal, yet escaping from its shafts; triumphant in the greatness of her own dignity and in the purity of her unsullied soul.  “Corinne” is a disguised sarcasm on the usages of society among the upper classes in Madame de Stael’s day, when a man like Lord Neville is represented as capable of the most exalted passion, and almost ready to die for its object, and at the same time is unwilling to follow its promptings to an honorable issue,—­ready even, at last, to marry a woman for whom he feels no strong attachment, or even admiration, in compliance with expediency, pride, and family interests.

But “Corinne” is not so much a romance as it is a description of Italy itself, its pictures, its statues, its palaces, its churches, its antiquities, its literature, its manners, and its aspirations; and it is astonishing how much is condensed in that little book.  The author has forestalled all poets and travellers, and even guidebooks; all successive works are repetitions or amplifications of what she has suggested.  She is as exhaustive and condensed as Thucydides; and, true to her philosophy, she is all sunshine and hope, with unbounded faith in the future of Italy,—­an exultant prophet as well as a critical observer.

This work was published in Paris in 1807, when Napoleon was on the apex of his power and glory; and no work by a woman was ever hailed with greater enthusiasm, not in Paris merely, but throughout Europe.  Yet nothing could melt the iron heart of Napoleon, and he continued his implacable persecution of its author, so that she was obliged to continue her travels, though travelling like a princess.  Again she visited Germany, and again she retired to her place near Geneva, where she held a sort of court, the star of which, next to herself, was Madame Recamier, whose transcendent beauty and equally transcendent loveliness of character won her admiration and friendship.

In 1810 Madame de Stael married Rocca, of Italian or Spanish origin, who was a sickly and dilapidated officer in the French army, little more than half her age,—­he being twenty-five and she forty-five,—­a strange marriage, almost incredible, if such marriages were not frequent.  He, though feeble, was an accomplished man, and was taken captive by the brilliancy of her talk and the elevation of her soul.  It is harder to tell what captured her, for who can explain the mysteries of love?  The marriage proved happy,