which is neither exactly flirtation nor exactly passion, which sets
convention at defiance, but retains its own code of morality; at
exhibiting the national differences, as Madame de Stael conceived them,
of the English and French and Italian temperaments; and at preaching the
new cult of æsthetics whereof Lessing and Winckelmann, Goethe, and
Schlegel, were in different ways and degrees the apostles. And it seems
to have been generally admitted, even by the most fervent admirers of
Madame de Stael and of _Corinne_ itself, that the first purpose has not
had quite fair play with the other two. "A little thin," they confess of
the story. In truth it could hardly be thinner, though the author has
laid under contribution an at least ample share of the improbabilities
and coincidences of romance.

Nelvil, an English-Scottish peer who has lost his father, who accuses
himself of disobedience and ingratitude to that father, and who has been
grievously jilted by a Frenchwoman, arrives in Italy in a large black
cloak, the deepest melancholy, and the company of a sprightly though
penniless French _émigré_, the Count d'Erfeuil. After performing
prodigies of valour in a fire at Ancona, he reaches Rome just when a
beautiful and mysterious poetess, the delight of Roman society, is being
crowned on the Capitol. The only name she is known by is Corinne. The
pair are soon introduced by the mercurial Erfeuil, and promptly fall in
love with each other, Corinne seeking partly to fix her hold on Nelvil,
partly to remove his Britannic contempt for Italy and the Italians, by
guiding him to all the great spectacles of Rome and indeed of the
country generally, and by explaining to him at great length what she
understands of the general theory of æsthetics, of Italian history, and
of the contrasted character of the chief European nations. Nelvil on his
side is distracted between the influence of the beauty, genius, and
evident passion of Corinne, and his English prejudices; while the