which represented them as simply passionate, romantic, imaginative and indulgent. This theory has cropped up now and again in literature from her days to our own, and if partially correct, overlooks the subtler shades and complex contradictions of the Italian mind.
Roman society in the beginning of this century was far from being the transfigured and exotic thing represented in Corinne. The modern Sibyl's prototype, poor Maddalena Maria Morelli, was mercilessly pasquinaded, and on her road to the Capitol pelted with rotten eggs. This gives a very good idea of the sort of impression that would have been produced on a real Prince of Castel-Forte and his fellows by the presence in their midst of a young and beautiful woman, unmarried, nameless, and rich. Corinne's lavish exhibition of her accomplishments is another "false note," as singing and dancing were but rarely, if ever, performed by amateurs in Italy. What redeems the book are the detached sentences of thought that gem almost every page of it. Madame de Staël had gradually shaken off the vices of style which her warmest admirers deplore in her, and in her Allemagne she was presently to reveal herself as singularly lucid, brilliant, and acute. This work of hers on Germany is, perhaps, the most satisfactory of her many productions. As a review of society, art, literature, and philosophy, it naturally lends itself to the form best suited to her essentially analytical mind.
Madame de Staël was always obliged to generalize, that being a law of her intelligence, and this disposition is accentuated in the Allemagne, through her desire to establish such contrasts between Germany and France, as would inspire the latter with a sense of
