But Corinne and Nelvil (whom our contemporary translator[1] has endeavoured to acclimatise a little more by Anglicising his name further to Nelville), do not content themselves with making love in the congenial neighbourhoods of Tiber or Poestum, or in the stimulating presence of the masterpieces of modern and ancient art.

A purpose, and a double purpose, it might almost be said, animates the book.

It aims at displaying "sensibility so charming"-- the strange artificial eighteenth-century conception of love 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 aesthetics 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.