Madame de Staël was the most distinguished authoress of her time. As a woman, she was always independent and sincere, and her faults--vanity and an uncontrollable thirst for applause--may easily be pardoned in view of her many talents. Napoleon could have won her to his government at any moment, had he chosen to do so. It is perhaps fortunate for literature that she was compelled to live in isolation, as neither "Corinne" nor "Germany" would have been written had she been able to reside in Paris, instead of travelling to occupy her exile. It is a singular and not unfair commentary upon Napoleon's reign, that its most remarkable literary celebrity--in point of mere chronology--owed her supremacy to his persecution; and it is a permissible inference, that had his government preferred to foster and cherish her genius, Madame de Staël would have been known to posterity as little more than a precocious child, a brilliant conversationalist, an unsexed woman, and a factious politician. [1] Mém. de Madame de Genlis, 92. [2] Soc. Franç. sous le Directoire, 298. [3] Napoléon et ses Contemporains, i. 229. [4] Lac. Rév. Française, ii. 140. [5] Vide "Delphine," vol. ii. 386. [6] Ducrest, Mém. de Joséphine, 23. [7] It is from a copy of this portrait, by Gérard, in the Historical Gallery of Versailles, that the most accurate likenesses of Madame de Staël are taken. [8] Bour. viii. 101. CORINNE BOOK I. OSWALD. CHAPTER I. In the year 1794, Oswald, Lord Nevil, a Scotch nobleman, left Edinburgh to pass the winter in Italy.[1] He possessed a noble and handsome person, a fine mind, a great name, an independent fortune; but his health was impaired; and the physicians, fearing that his lungs were affected, prescribed the air of the south. He followed their advice, though with little interest in his own recovery, hoping, at least, to find some amusement in the varied objects he was about to behold. The heaviest of all afflictions, the loss of a father, was the cause of his malady. The remorse inspired by scrupulous delicacy still more embittered his regret, and haunted his imagination. Such sufferings we readily convince ourselves that we deserve, for violent griefs extend their influence even over the realms of conscience. At five-and-twenty he was tired of life; he judged the future by the past, and no longer relished the illusions of the heart. No one could be more devoted to the service of his friends; yet not even the good he effected gave him one sensation of pleasure. He constantly sacrificed his tastes to those of others; but this generosity alone, far from proving a total forgetfulness of self, may often be attributed to a degree of melancholy, which renders a man careless of his own doom. The indifferent considered this mood extremely graceful; but those who loved him felt that he employed himself for the happiness of others, like a man who hoped for none; and they almost repined at receiving