526.
This is a reprint of a remarkable book. It is the book of a person familiar
with Rome and with the Romans, who has thought seriously and felt deeply in
regard to their character and fortunes, who has studied with keen and
sympathetic imagination the hearts of the people, and observed closely the
outward aspect and common shows of the city. The story is well constructed,
and has the essential merit of interest. Not only are the characters
distinctly presented, but there is in them, what it is rare to find in the
personages of our modern novelists, a real and natural development, which
is exhibited not so much by what is said about them as by their own
apparently unconscious words and acts. So just a view is given in this
novel of Italian habits of thought and tones of feeling, so true an
appreciation is shown of the peculiarities of national disposition and
temperament, and so intimate and exact an acquaintance with public events
and the course of politics in Rome, as to lead to the conclusion that the
author writes from the fulness of personal experience, and was no stranger
to the interests of the stirring period in which the scenes of the story
are laid.
The book, indeed, has a double character. It is not a mere novel; for it
contains, in addition to its story, a sketch of the course of public
affairs in Rome during the three memorable years from the accession of Pius
IX. to the fall of the Republic and the entry of the French troops into the
city, which they still hold in subjection to rulers who claim to govern it
for the spiritual interests of the world.
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