dreaded everyone who wrote with any freedom. Her book, _De la
Littérature_, in 1800, was taken as a covert attack on the Napoleonic
_régime_; her father shortly after republished another on finance and
politics, which was disliked; and the success of _Delphine_, in 1803,
put the finishing touch to the petty hatred of any kind of rival
superiority which distinguished the Corsican more than any other man of
equal genius. Madame de Stael was ordered not to approach within forty
leagues of Paris, and this exile, with little softening and some
excesses of rigour, lasted till the return of the Bourbons.

Then it was that the German and Italian journeys already mentioned (the
death of M. Necker happening between them and recalling his daughter
from the first) led to the writing of _Corinne_.

A very few words before we turn to the consideration of the book, as a
book and by itself, may appropriately finish all that need be said here
about the author's life. After the publication of _Corinne_ she returned
to Germany, and completed the observation which she thought necessary
for the companion book _De l'Allemagne_. Its publication in 1810, when
she had foolishly kindled afresh the Emperor's jealousy by appearing
with her usual "tail" of worshippers or parasites as near Paris as she
was permitted, completed her disgrace. She was ordered back to Coppet:
her book was seized and destroyed. Then Albert de Rocca, a youth of
twenty-three, who had seen some service, made his appearance at Geneva.
Early in 1811, Madame de Stael, now aged forty-five, married him
secretly. She was, or thought herself, more and more persecuted by
Napoleon; she feared that Rocca might be ordered off on active duty, and
she fled first to Vienna, then to St Petersburg, then to Stockholm, and
so to England. Here she was received with ostentatious welcome and
praises by the Whigs; with politeness by everybody; with more or less