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LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

you. We hope or fear for, admire or censure them,as if they were our friends. She speaks of love withheartfelt knowledge of the mighty powers of pas-sion, and of all those delicate, so to speak, fibres andevanescent tints that foster and adorn it. The faults ofsuch a hook are a very secondary consideration. TheItalians will not allow that it is by any means a truerepresentation-of society in their country ; and any onewho has lived there can perceive that she had but asuperficial knowledge of Italy and the Italians ; still shegives a true picture of the surface such as she saw it.Her account of Corinne’s life in England is admirable.The English , with all their pride, are less vain thanthe Italians , and readily acknowledge their faults. EveryEnglish person is at once astonished and delightedwith the wonderful truth of her sketch of county societyin England. In this novel, as in “ Delphine,” the he-roine dies broken-hearted. Her lover proving false, shelives miserably a few years, and then closes her eyes ona world grown dark and solitary. Madame de Stael was naturally led to portray death as the result of sor-row ; for when we are miserable, we are apt to dwell onsuch as the dearest relief; yet we do not die. Theauthoress also might wish to impress on men an idea ofthe misery which their falsehood produces. That is astory as ancient as Dido, and told by Virgil more impres-sively and beautifully than by any other writer. For thedignity of womanhood, it were better to teach how one,as highly gifted as Corinne, could find resignation orfortitude enough to endure a too common lot, and risewiser and better from the trial.

Madame de Stael was exiled to forty leagues fromParis; her love of France caused her to approach sonear to its capital. She established herself first atAuxerre and afterwards at Rouen . Here she termi-nated and brought out “ Corinne." She exercised the ut-most caution in her conduct, saw but few friends, andobserved that silence with regard to politics whichNapoleon rigorously exacted throughout his empire.