There is certainly nothing more contrary to the habits and opinions of an Englishman, than this great publicity given to the destiny of a woman; but even foreigners are affected, at least for a moment, with that enthusiasm which is inspired in the Italians by all those talents that belong to the imagination, and they forget the prejudices of their country amidst a nation so warm in the expression of its feelings.  The common people of Rome reason with taste upon their statues, pictures, monuments and antiquities; and literary merit, carried to a certain pitch, excites in them a national interest.

Oswald quitted his lodgings to repair to the public square, where he heard everybody speaking of the genius and talents of Corinne.  The streets through which she was to pass had been decorated; the people, who rarely assemble together except to pay their homage to fortune or power, were, upon this occasion, almost in a tumult to behold a female whose mind was her only claim to distinction.  In the actual state of the Italians the field of glory is only open to them in the fine arts, and they possess a sensibility for genius in that department, which ought to give birth to great men, if applause alone were sufficient to produce them, if the stress of vigorous life, great interests and an independent existence were not necessary to nourish thought.

Oswald walked the streets of Rome, waiting the arrival of Corinne.  At every instant he heard her name accompanied with some anecdote concerning her, which implied the possession of all those talents that captivate the imagination.  One said that her voice was the most touching in Italy; another, that nobody played tragedy like her; somebody else, that she danced like a nymph, and designed with as much taste as invention:  all said that nobody had ever written or improvised such fine verses, and that, in habitual conversation she possessed by turns, a grace and an eloquence which charmed every mind.  Disputes were entered into as to what city of Rome had given her birth; but the Romans maintained, warmly, that she must have been born in Rome to speak Italian in such purity as she did.  No one was acquainted with her family name.  Her first work had appeared five years before, and only bore the name of Corinne; nobody knew where she had lived, nor what she had been before that time:  she was, however, nearly twenty-six years of age.  This mystery and publicity both at the same time, this woman of whom everybody spoke, but whose real name was known to nobody, appeared to Lord Nelville one of the wonders of the singular country he had just come to live in.  He would have judged very severely of such a woman in England, but he did not apply the usual etiquette of society to Italy, and the coronation of Corinne inspired him beforehand with that interest to which an adventure of Ariosto would give birth.