WHAT

FROM DELPHINE'

LETTER OF DELPHINE TO LÉONCE

AT motive could prevent me from seeing you? Léonce, no selfish emotions have power over me. God is my witness that for no possible advantages would I give up an hour, a single hour, that I could pass with you without re

morse.

We are very wretched. O Léonce, do you think I do not feel it? Everything seemed to unite only a few months ago to promise us the purest happiness. I was free; my position and my fortune assured me perfect independence; I had seen you; I had loved you with my whole soul: and the most fatal stroke — one that the slightest accident, the merest word, might have turned aside —has separated us forever!

If it is sweet to you, Léonce, when you suffer, to think that at that moment, whenever it may be, Delphine, your poor friend, overwhelmed by her sorrows, implores Heaven for power to bear them, the Heaven which hitherto has always supported her, and which now she implores in vain,-if this idea, both cruel and sweet, can comfort you, ah! you may indulge in it at will! But what have our sorrows to do with our duties? That nobleness of life we worship in our days of happiness, is it not always the same? Shall it have less empire over us, because the moment has come to attain those heights we admired?

Fate has willed that the purest enjoyments of heart and soul should be denied us. Perhaps, my friend, Providence has thought us worthy of that which is noblest in the world,— the sacrifice of love to duty.

What still depends on us is to command our actions: our happiness is no longer in our power; we must trust that to the care of Heaven: after many struggles, God will give us at least calmness, yes, at least calmness. Let us strive to lead

a life of devotion to others, a life of sacrifices and of duties; such a life has given almost happiness to virtuous souls.

M. DE SERBELLANE (in conversation)

"One can still make serviceable for the happiness of others a life that promises ourselves only pain; and this hope will give you the courage to live."

THE

FROM CORINNE›

HE following day, the same company* again assembled at her house; and to interest her in conversation, Lord Nelvil turned the talk to Italian literature, and excited her natural animation by affirming that England possessed a greater number of true poets than all those of which Italy could boast,- poets superior in strength and delicacy of feeling.

"In the first place," answered Corinne, "foreigners only know, for the most part, our poets of the highest rank,- Dante, Peitrarch, Ariosto, Guarini, Tasso, and Metastasio; while we have a number of others, such as Chiabrera, Guidi, Filicaja, Parini, etc., -without counting Sannazaro, Politian, etc., who have written admirably in Latin. All these poets, with more or less talent, know how to bring the marvels of the fine arts, and of nature, into the pictures created by words. Undoubtedly there is not in our poets that profound melancholy, that knowledge of the human heart, that characterizes yours; but does not this kind of superiority belong rather to philosophical writers than to poets? The brilliant melodiousness of the Italian language is better suited to express the splendor of external objects than the moods. of meditation. Our language is more adapted to depict passion than sadness, because the sentiments of reflection demand more metaphysical expressions than it possesses."

"Undoubtedly," answered Lord Nelvil, "you explain as well as possible both the beauties and the deficiencies of your poetry; but when these deficiencies, without the beauties, are perceived in prose, how will you defend them? What is only vagueness in poetry becomes emptiness in prose; and this crowd of commonplace ideas that your poets know how to embellish by the melodious and the imaginative qualities of their language, reappears unveiled in prose with wearisome vividness. The greater part of your prose writers, to-day, use a language so declamatory, so diffuse, so abounding in superlatives, that one would say they all wrote by command with every-day phrases, and for an artificial intelligence: they seem not to suspect that to write is to express one's personal character and one's own thought.”

*The principal personages were Lord Nelvil and Mr. Edgermond, Englishmen; the Count d'Erfeuil, a Frenchman; and the Prince Castel-Forte, an Italian. Corinne was an Italian.

"You forget," Corinne eagerly interrupted, "first Machiavelli and Boccaccio; then Gravina, Filangieri; and in our own day, Cesarotti, Verri, Bettinelli, and so many others who know how to write and to think. But I agree with you that during these last centuries, unfortunate circumstances having deprived Italy of her independence, her people have lost all interest in truth, and often even the possibility of uttering it. From this has resulted the habit of taking pleasure in words, without daring to approach ideas. When prose writers have no sort of influence on the happiness of a nation, when men write only to become conspicuous, when the means is substituted for the end,-a thousand steps are taken, but nothing is attained. Besides, southern

nations are constrained by prose, and depict their true feelings only in verse. It is not the same with French literature," she added, addressing Count d'Erfeuil: "your prose writers are often more poetic than your poets."

"It is true," replied Count d'Erfeuil, "that we have in this style true classical authorities: Bossuet, La Bruyère, Montesquieu, Buffon, cannot be surpassed. These perfect models should be imitated as far as possible by foreigners as well as by ourselves."

"It is difficult for me to believe," answered Corinne, "that it would be desirable for the whole world to lose all national color, all originality of heart and mind; and I venture to say that even in your country, Count d'Erfeuil, this literary orthodoxy, if I may so call it, which is opposed to all happy innovation, would in the long run render your literature very sterile."

"Would you desire, fair lady," answered the count, “that we should admit among us the barbarisms of the Germans, the 'Night Thoughts' of the English Young, the concetti of the Italians and the Spaniards? What would become of the truthfulness, the elegance, of the French style, after such a mixture?"

Prince Castel-Forte, who had not yet spoken, said: "It seems to me we all have need of each other: the literature of each country opens, to one familiar with it, a new sphere of ideas. The Emperor Charles V. said that a man who knows four languages is four men. If this great political genius so judged in regard to affairs, how much truer it is as regards letters! All foreigners know French, and so their point of view is more extensive than that of Frenchmen who do not know foreign languages."

"You will at least acknowledge," answered the count, "that there is one matter in which we have nothing to learn from any

one. Our theatrical works are certainly the first in Europe; for I do not think that even the English themselves would dream of opposing Shakespeare to us."

"I beg your pardon," interrupted Mr. Edgermond: "they do imagine that."

"Then I have nothing to say," continued Count d'Erfeuil with a smile of gracious disdain. "Every man may think what he will: but still I persist in believing that it may be affirmed without presumption that we are the first in the dramatic art; and as to the Italians, if I may be allowed to speak frankly, they do not even suspect that there is such a thing as dramatic art. The music of a play is everything with them, and what is spoken, nothing. If the second act of a play has better music than the first, they begin with the second act; if they like two first acts of two different pieces, they play these two acts the same day, and put between the two one act of a prose comedy.

The Italians are accustomed to consider the theatre as a great drawingroom, where people listen only to the songs and the ballet. I say rightly, where they listen to the ballet, for it is only when that begins that there is silence in the theatre; and this ballet is a masterpiece of bad taste."

"All you say is true," answered Prince Castel-Forte gently: "but you have spoken only of music and dancing; and in no country are those considered dramatic art."

"It is much worse," interrupted Count d'Erfeuil, "when tragedies are represented: more horrors are brought together in five acts than the imagination could conceive. . The tragedians

are perfectly in harmony with the coldness and extravagance of the plays. They all perform these terrible deeds with the greatest calmness. When an actor becomes excited, they say that he appears like a preacher; for in truth there is much more animation in the pulpit than on the stage. There is no better comedy than tragedy in Italy. The only comic style that really belongs to Italy is the harlequinades: a valet, who is a rascal, a glutton, and a coward, and an old guardian who is a dupe, a miser, and in love,- that's the whole subject of these plays. You will agree that 'Tartuffe' and 'The Misanthrope' imply a little more genius."

This attack from Count d'Erfeuil greatly displeased the Italians who were listening to it, but yet they laughed; and Count d'Erfeuil in conversation liked better to display wit than courtPrince Castel-Forte, and other Italians who were

esy.

there, were impatient to refute Count d'Erfeuil, but they thought their cause better defended by Corinne than by any one else; and as the pleasure of shining in conversation scarcely tempted them, they begged Corinne to make reply, and contented themselves with only citing the well-known names of Maffei, Metastasio, Goldoni, Alfieri, Monti.

Corinne at once agreed that the Italians had no great body of dramatic works; but she was ready to prove that circumstances and not lack of talent were the cause of this. The play-writing which is based on the observation of society, can exist only in a country where the writer lives habitually in the centre of a populous and brilliant world: in Italy there are only violent passions or lazy enjoyments. But the play-writing that is based on the unreal, that springs from the imagination, and adapts itself to all times as to all countries, was born in Italy.

The observation of the human heart is an inexhaustible source for literature; but the nations who are more inclined to poetry than to reflection give themselves up rather to the intoxication of joy than to philosophic irony. There is something, at bottom, sad in the humor that is based on knowledge of men: true gayety is the gayety of the imagination only. It is not that Italians do not ably study men with whom they have to deal; and they discover more delicately than any others the most secret thoughts: but it is as a method of action that they have this talent, and they are not in the habit of making a literary use of it. One can see in Machiavelli what terrible knowledge of the human heart the Italians are capable of: but from such depths comedy does not spring; and the leisureliness of society, properly so called, can alone teach how to depict men on the comic stage.

The true character of Italian gayety is not derision, it is fancy; it is not the painting of manners, but poetic extravagances. It is Ariosto and not Molière who has the power to amuse Italy. But to know with certainty what comedy and tragedy might attain to in Italy, there is need that there should be somewhere a theatre and actors. The multitude of little cities who all choose to have a theatre, waste by dispersing them the few resources that could be collected.

These different ideas and many others were brilliantly developed by Corinne. She understood extremely well the rapid art of light talk, which insists on nothing; and the business of pleasing, which brings forward each talker in turn.