It is difficult to understand why critics like Sainte Beuve should so warmly have praised this novel. No doubt it shows talent, especially in the analysis of mental struggle; but it is false from beginning to end. All the characters want vitality, although some of the qualities attributed to them are described with penetration and force. Delphine and Léonce talk too much, and faint too much, and are simply insupportable. Finally, the book is drearily monotonous and unrelieved by one gleam of poetry or humor. _Corinne_ is a classic of which everybody is bound to speak with respect. The enormous admiration which it excited at the time of its appearance may seem somewhat strange in this year of grace; but then it must be remembered that Italy was not the over-written country it has since become. Besides this, Madame de Staël was the most celebrated woman, and, after Napoleon, the most conspicuous personage of her day. Except Châteaubriand, she had nobody to dispute with her the palm of literary glory in France. Her exile, her literary circle, her courageous opinions, had kept the eyes of Europe fixed on her for years, so that any work from her pen was sure to excite the liveliest curiosity. _Corinne_ is a kind of glorified guide-book, with some of the qualities of a good novel. It is very long-winded, but the appetite of the age was robust in that respect, and the highly-strung emotions of the hero and heroine could not shock a taste which had been formed by the _Sorrows of Werther_. It is extremely moral, deeply sentimental, and of a deadly earnestness—three characteristics which could not fail to recommend it to a dreary and ponderous generation, the most deficient in taste that ever trod the earth. But it is artistic in the sense that the interest is concentrated from first to last on the central figure, and the drama, such as it is, unfolds itself naturally from its starting-point, which is the contrast between the characters of Oswald and Corinne.