f her life.

It is impossible for me in this article to relate, even in outline,
the story of this exile, and of her travels in England, Italy,
Austria, Russia, and, above all, in Germany. Madame de Stael has
herself described this period of her life in her 'Ten Years of Exile,'
and all the details have been collected by Lady Blennerhassett with an
industry that leaves nothing to be desired. A woman of a more heroic
type would have borne with less repining an exclusion from Paris life
which was mitigated by wealth, and fame, and abundant occupation, and
a family that adored her, and troops of admiring friends. A woman who
was less essentially noble would have assuredly accepted the overtures
that were more than once made to her, and would have purchased her
peace with Napoleon by burning a few grains of literary incense on his
altar. But though, in a life of more than common vicissitude and
temptation, Madame de Stael was betrayed into great weaknesses and
into some serious faults, she never lost her sense of the dignity and
integrity of literature, and her works are singularly free from
unworthy flattery as well as from unworthy resentments and jealousies.
The homage which Napoleon desired was never received, and in her great
work on Italy and her still greater one on Germany there was no trace
of his victories, influence, or animosities. 'In France,' he once
said, 'there is a small literature and a great literature; the small
literature is on my side, but the great literature is not for me.'

The disfavour which thrust Madame de Stael out of political
influence, and then drove her into exile, proved a blessing in
disguise, for it turned her mind decisively from political intrigues
to those forms of literature in which she was most fitted to excel.
Her treatise on 'Literature,' which was published in 1800, was
conceived upon a scale too large for her own knowledge, and though she
herself attributed to it the great and general favour that she enjoyed
for a time in Paris society, it has not taken an enduring place in
French literature. 'Delphine,' the most personal, and also the most
censured, of her novels, had a still wider success, and made a deeper
and more lasting impression. It appeared in 1802, and it was followed
by a long interval, during which she appears to have published nothing
except a short but admirable notice of her father, who died in the
spring of 1804; but in 1807 'Corinne' burst upon the world, and