possibly interfere with things of more moment. We will not say this of our Italian friend; he is never prosy, or common-place; when he hangs on hand, it is not from dulness; his touch is always spirited and true. Still he wants power; he has a rich and beautiful instrument, full of variety and grace, but he wants the strength of head, the cool, unembarrassed eye, to manage it; his thoughts, as they rise up in his mind, overpower and overwhelm his steadiness, his power of measuring, comparing, and marshalling them; he seems never to have been able to take in the whole view of his story at once, and to hold it together while he looked on it with a quiet, comprehensive, adjusting gaze. The story does not move of itself; he has to move the pieces himself, to push forward this part, to carry back that, to bring up another from where it was left lagging behind. It is carried through by starts and intervals, instead of one thing playing into another, drawing out of another, and all finding their places with that indefinite but unfailing freedom, which looks like accident and shows design, like the parts of a great, manifold, whirling engine. You see the hand at work continually, pushing, tying together, making preparation. And this want of power shows itself not merely in the network of the story, but also in his characters and descriptions. There is a lack of bold drawing; every thing is done by touches-small, delicate touches; and, while you admire the work for its truth and beauty, it does not stand out as you want it to do; the leading decisive line, or shadow, has not been caught; you recognise what is meant, you see that the writer has a scene or a person before his imagination, but the image is not perfect when transferred to your own; it has suffered, it comes out dimmed and blurred, in the medium through which it has passed.

Yet Marco Visconti leaves an impression which many novelwriters have tried to produce, and in vain. You do not feel that you have been in the hands of a powerful master or painter of human feelings; but you do feel that you have been reading about life-real human life, and life in its more remarkable and elevated forms. The book all through is a picture of life. There is no effort to make it interesting: it is not worked up, and set off; it is faithfully described, and left to tell and produce its effect as it may. It is unartificial; the writer throws no skill, no passion of his own, into it; only he analyzes what touches himself, and takes care that this shall come before the reader's eyes;it may touch him, too. In the Baron's hall, besides the Baron himself, his looks and his words, he jots down what is about him: his arm-chair, with its back ending in a point;' his page, carrying on a by-play of signs with his greyhound; his hawk, with its staid demureness and pettish pride: all this has amused him, and so he describes it. No incident, not the merest fact, is lost, which calls

6

up a feeling. Who that has been on the water, in a dark, stormy, plashing night, does not understand the half cheerlessness, half satisfaction, with which the travellers, from the boat, saw the Mole of Varenna, brilliant with lights, and could hear the voices of the people, crowded upon it?'

He cannot resist a bit of the characteristic in scenes or persons. A complete instance of this is the pig-headed, loutish peasant, Bernardo, who has nothing in the world to do except to make himself a goose. But Signor Grossi was tickled with the sketch of a stupid clodhopper, who had got some scraps of Latin and Ghibellinism from a heretic monk, and was perpetually making himself a fool with them. He was too good a foil to his unlettered brethren,-brimful of real character and quickness, —not to be made the most of.

The novel is a historical one, and, of course, antiquarianism is in place; but we are overwhelmed with it. The grotesque mixture of grace, buffoonery, and blood, in chivalry and its customs, was, no doubt, the temptation to a writer who delights in all that is quaint; but his long descriptions of quintain matches and tournaments have no more to do with the story than the ballet has with the opera; and whatever be the necessities of the opera, in a decent novel we do not want such mere pageantry. The only piece of antiquarianism, who at all helps the story, is a certain secular Canon who has turned jester-Canons, it seems, were sometimes given to such practices then-but even he is more of a puppet, pulled by strings, than a real man; and the most that can be said in his favour is, that he is of more use than his fellow, the uninteresting troubadour exquisite, who is his rival at the tournament.

But, as we have said, the author depends for his interest on his being able to remind us of life. He does not crowd his story with marked characters; they do not occur so thick in real life. He does not pretend that Bice is a heroine, or her lover, Count Ottorino a hero, though they are the persons round whom the story plays: the one is a fine, gallant, handsome young man, full of spirit and good feeling; he rides well, and jousts well, and is affectionately loyal to the great mind which has moulded him : and Bice is the beautiful spoilt child, with just enough pettishness and self-will to prevent her from being insipid when there is nothing else going on; she has been well brought up, and is very good and gentle and modest; even when we know that she is in love, we scarcely feel quite sure of it from seeing her. Still both she and her lover keep a strong hold on our interest; for they are unaffected, genuine characters; they have to suffer, and they suffer with faith and courageous calmness.

The back-ground of the story is formed by the Lombard

peasant character, in its many shapes. The chronicles of past centuries, and the contadini of the present, are the great mines from which the Italian novelists get their materials; and the contadini are as inexhaustible as the chronicles. We have them here in masses and in individuals. The specimens vary, but they are the same sort of people as those in the Promessi Sposi ;' very unenlightened, but very quick and intelligent; fierce and variable as the sea; roused in a moment, and soothed in a moment; a curious mixture of ferocity and delicacy. There is still the strong, deep religious basis of character; now combining with other feelings, in the most grotesque and horrible forms; now showing itself in a grand and almost scriptural simplicity; but in all cases equally real.

This peasant character is obviously a tempting study—it comes in again and again, where nothing but its intrinsic interest calls for it. But, if this spoils the story, and wastes the interest, it is an offence which many people will forgive, if they read Marco Visconti at all, for the vivid and characteristic painting of these sketches. We will hazard an extract or two, for the purpose of showing how Grossi draws out the religion of the Italian peasant. The characters are distinct and natural, and, without affectation, untamed and wayward; at the bottom is an immoveable strong faith, holding fast the whole man, and on the surface fierce human passions, struggling to get free from its grasp, and struggling in vain.

In a storm on the lake of Como a boat is wrecked; one of the rowers has fallen overboard, and is lost; but, for some time, his father, Michele, does not observe it.

'Ottorino, and the others who had escaped, after placing the Count del Balzo and his daughter in safety, dispersed in trouble and perplexity over the vast uneven mass, to look if the shipwrecked man was anywhere to be seen. His father alone, who had been the last to leave the boat, in all the confusion and disorder, was not yet aware that his son was wanting; seating himself at the foot of the rock, with the stump of an oar on his knees, he began to look for him among the others, but without any anxiety, feeling certain that no one had been lost.

However, the Count, having recovered from his first alarm, and feeling angry at the risk he had run, began to blame the helmsman and Arrigozzo; indeed, he too was far from suspecting what had happened. Michele heard the reproaches cast upon himself, with his head hung down, and all the air of a man who feels he has done wrong; but when he heard blame cast on Arrigozzo, touched to the quick, he could no longer contain himself, and he was about to reply. Happening to turn his face towards the lake, he caught a glimpse of something under water, that seemed to be entangled among the fragments of a rock at a short distance, which was covered by the waves. He fixed his eyes intently

upon this object, which appeared under various forms; he distinguished. the end of a brown mantle at last; he saw a hand, which now rose out of the water, now fell back, tossed by the waves.

The poor father was ready to fall down dead; but he grasped the broken oar which was before him, jumped up, and called, in a faltering voice, "Arrigozzo! Arrigozzo!" This was but for a moment. Receiving no answer, he ran to the top of the rock, looked all round, ran his eye over all who were safe, one by one, but could not find his son among them. Then seeing the Count, who had so lately been finding fault with his son's name, he roared out, "Dog, are you here!" and brandishing the broken oar, he rushed forward to strike him on the head. Bice uttered a cry, Ottorino was quick in warding off the blow; in a minute, Lupo, the Falconer, and the boatmen disarmed the frantic man, who, striking his forehead with both hands, gave a spring, and threw himself into the lake.

'He was seen fighting with the angry waves, overcoming them with a strength and a courage which desperation alone can give. He reached the body, he placed his hands upon it, feeling in the water, he seized it by the hair, but touched immediately with tender paternal compunction, as if this action was too rough a treatment for that loved corpse, he placed his left hand instead under the chin, to support the head, and with the right hand he began to buffet the waves, returning to the rock. The boatmen got into the vessel, now almost under water, and from thence threw out the cords of the sail to the old man, so that, holding by them, he was able to get back in safety, together with his mournful, though precious burden.

'Laying down the body of his son upon the rock, he took the head upon his knees, and bending over it, he began to feel the chest, and ascertain if the heart still beat: he pressed his chest to that of his son, his cheek to his son's cheek, kissing his eyes, his mouth, his whole face, breathing on him, as if to revive the spirit of life. A sudden breeze then shook the arm of the corpse, which hung down, and made it move. At that motion, the unhappy father started with hope; his cheeks were coloured for a moment, his features appeared to brighten, a sudden light sparkled in his eyes, which were fixed upon that cherished face; but perceiving his error, he buried his hands in his hair, and afterwards stretching his clenched fists towards the lake, he cried out, "Cursed wind! cursed waves! Cursed be this carcase of a boat, and the moment when I set foot in her! Oh, may all things go to ruin !"'—Vol. i. pp. 43, 44.

The party is taken off the rock, and the next morning Michele returns home with his son's body.

'He went on for a time in silence, grieving more and more; over come, at last, by the impulse of grief and anger, he struck the oar in his hand with all his force into the water, exclaiming, "Treacherous lake!" The oar gave way, and dragging the remaining one roughly into the boat with the stump of the first he still grasped, he struck the edge violently, and broke one of the pegs. But, in his agitation, he made

the boat reel, so that a third oar, laid along a bench, was displaced, and was on the point of falling on the body of his son. Michele was shocked; he jumped up, caught the oar, held it for a moment in his hands, looked at it, and cried out, "It is his !" then he gently placed it in its former position.

"O Lord!" he exclaimed, "help me! keep Thy holy hand upon me, lest the enemy try again to tempt me, and I die in desperation and destroy my soul!" Then he went on rowing, fervently repeating his prayers.

He went on praying, slowly moving on his boat; but while his arms, with their habitual motion, now met upon his breast, now expanded, stretching out with the oars, while his lips murmured the accustomed words, the mind of the poor man passed over all the life of his lost Arrigozzo, from the time when he was an infant, a boy, a youth, then a full grown man, to the present moment. He recalled the first words he had heard him lisp; words which had taught him to feel the delight of being a father; he remembered the hopes he had cherished, all of which he had seen growing and coming to maturity, upon that dear head. He thought of the last thoughts of support, of repose, and peace, for his declining years, and those of his aged helpmate, all grounded on his son. He began to think of his consolation, and the joy and pride of the mother, when, for the first time, they saw him bring the boat to shore, returning from the first voyage intrusted to him. He thought, too, of the fears he had so often shared with his wife, when they heard the wind howl among the chestnut-trees in the night, and went together to look out of a little window on the stormy lake, saying to one another, "Where is our Arrigozzo now?" He recalled his son's fame as one of the best rowers on the lake, and surpassed by none in the management of a sail or a rudder; he could fancy he heard at the prow the splash of that vigorous oar; he still heard in his ears that favourite song with which Arrigozzo used to enliven the mournful solitude of the lake and of the calm.

'While all these reflections crowded into the mind of the bereaved father, his mouth still uttered the words of prayer, which were as involuntary and as unmeaning as the murmur of the brook which flows down a hill-side. At last, unwittingly, in the middle of one of his prayers, his lips began gently to hum the favourite tune of his Arrigozzo; but this real sound struck upon his ear, and he shook his head; raising his face to heaven, he found it quite wet with his tears.'-Vol. i. pp. 50, 51. Arrigozzo is buried, and his father and mother are left alone.

'The hut of the boatman whose son had been drowned, lay out of the village, as we have said, on the north side. Those who looked for this hut, on the side where the lake is, could only distinguish a small corner of a badly-thatched roof, on the top of which was a wooden cross. Two old chestnut-trees, which bent over as if to embrace the hut, concealed the remainder. Within there was a wretched apartment, not paved, but with a floor of rafters, and the walls all blackened with smoke. 'In one corner there was a small bed covered over with a large coarse