t delight of the eager
biographer, is not to be had in the case of Madame de Stael, the De
Broglie family having either destroyed or successfully concealed all the
papers which might have revealed any facts not already in the possession
of the world. Upon the other hand, the book has the excellent quality of
condensation, and gives us in less than two hundred pages a very good
picture of Madame de Stael and her day. Miss Duffy's criticism of
Corinne is worth quoting:

Corinne is a classic of which everybody is bound to speak with
respect. The enormous admiration which it exacted 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 Stael was the most
conspicuous personage of her day. Except Chateaubriand, 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.

The 'dreary and ponderous generation, the most deficient in taste that
ever trod the earth,' seems to me a somewhat exaggerated mode of
expression, but 'glorified guide-book' is a not unfelicitous description
of the novel that once thrilled Europe. Miss Duffy sums up her opinion
of Madame de Stael as a writer in the following passage:

Her mind was strong of grasp and wide in range, but continuous effort
fatigued it. She could strike out isolated sentences alternately
brillia