"Everything here sleeps: but in a country where great interests are dead, repose and carelessness are more noble than a busy anxiety about trifling concerns.
"Even literature languishes in a country where thought is not renewed by the strong and varied action of life.—But what nation has testified more admiration for literature and the fine arts than Italy? We are informed by history, that the popes, the princes, and the people, have at all times paid to painters, poets, and distinguished writers, the most public homage. This enthusiastic veneration of talent is I confess, my lord, one of the first motives of my attachment to this country.—We do not find here that blasée imagination, that discouraging temper of mind, that despotic mediocrity, which in other countries so effectually torment and stifle natural genius.—A happy idea, sentiment, or expression, sets an audience on fire, if I may say so. By the same rule that talent holds the first rank amongst us, it excites considerable envy; Pergolese was assassinated for his Stabat Mater; Giorgione armed himself with a cuirass when he was obliged to paint in public; but the violent jealousy which talent inspires amongst us, is that which, in other nations, gives birth to power. This jealousy does not degrade its object; it may hate, proscribe, and kill, but it is nevertheless mingled with the fanaticism of admiration, and encourages genius, even in persecuting it. To conclude; when we see so much life in so confined a circle, in the midst of so many obstacles and so much subjection of every kind, we cannot avoid in my opinion taking the deepest interest in a people who inhale, with so much avidity, the little air which the loopholes of imagination allow to enter through the walls that confine them.
"That this confinement is such, I will not deny: nor that men rarely acquire in Italy that dignity, that boldness, which distinguishes free and military nations.—I will even admit my lord, if you choose, that the character of such nations is capable of inspiring women with more love and enthusiasm. But might it not also be possible, that a noble and interested man, cherishing the most rigid virtues, might unite in his character every quality that can excite love, without possessing those which promise happiness.
"Corinne."
FOOTNOTE:
[21] Mr Roscoe, author of the History of the Medici, has recently published an History of Leo X., which is truly a masterpiece in its kind, in which he relates all those marks of esteem and admiration, which the princes and the people of Italy have conferred on distinguished men of letters; he also shows, with impartiality, that the conduct of many of the Popes has been, in this respect, very liberal.
Chapter iv.
Corinne's letter made Oswald a second time repent the idea he had formed of detaching himself from her. The intellectual dignity, the attractive tenderness with which she repelled the harsh allegations he had made against her country, affected him deeply, and penetrated him with admiration. A superiority, so grand, so simple, and so true, appeared to him above all ordinary rules. He felt that Corinne was not the weak, timid woman, without an opinion on any subject beyond the sphere of her private duties and sentiments, which he had chosen in his imagination as a partner for life. The remembrance of Lucilia, such as he had beheld her at the age of twelve years, agreed much better with this idea;—but could any woman be compared with Corinne? Could ordinary laws and rules be applied to one, who united in herself so many different qualities, cemented by genius and sensibility? Corinne was a miracle of nature, and was it not a miracle worked in favour of Oswald, when he could flatter himself with interesting such a woman? But her real name and condition were unknown to him. What would be her future projects were he to avow his intention of uniting himself to her? All was yet in obscurity; and although the enthusiasm with which Corinne had inspired Oswald made him desirous of espousing her, yet the idea that her life had not been wholly irreproachable, and that such an union would certainly have been condemned by his father, threw his soul into confusion, and racked him with the most painful anxiety.
He was not now so sunk in grief, as before his acquaintance with Corinne; but he no longer felt that sort of calm, which may even accompany repentance, when our whole life is devoted to the expiation of a crime. Formerly, he was not afraid to abandon himself to his recollections, bitter as they were; but now he dreaded those long and profound reveries, which would have revealed to him what was passing at the bottom of his soul. In the meantime he prepared to visit Corinne, in order to thank her for her letter, and obtain pardon for what he had written to her, when Mr Edgermond, a relation of young Lucilia, entered the room.