y little, but
he is fascinated by great personalities. Yet it is only fair to remember
that the age itself was one of exaggerated individualism and that
literature had not yet become a mouthpiece for the utterances of
humanity. Men appreciated the aristocracy of intellect, but with the
democracy of suffering they had no sympathy. The cry from the
brickfields had still to be heard. Mr. Symonds' style, too, has much
improved. Here and there, it is true, we come across traces of the old
manner, as in the apocalyptic vision of the seven devils that entered
Italy with the Spaniard, and the description of the Inquisition as a
Belial-Moloch, a 'hideous idol whose face was blackened with soot from
burning human flesh.' Such a sentence, also, as 'over the Dead Sea of
social putrefaction floated the sickening oil of Jesuitical hypocrisy,'
reminds us that rhetoric has not yet lost its charms for Mr. Symonds.
Still, on the whole, the style shows far more reserve, balance and
sobriety, than can be found in the earlier volumes where violent
antithesis forms the predominant characteristic, and accuracy is often
sacrificed to an adjective.

Amongst the most interesting chapters of the book are those on the
Inquisition, on Sarpi, the great champion of the severance of Church from
State, and on Giordano Bruno. Indeed the story of Bruno's life, from his
visit to London and Oxford, his sojourn in Paris and wanderings through
Germany, down to his betrayal at Venice and martyrdom at Rome, is most
powerfully told, and the estimate of the value of his philosophy and the
relation he holds to modern science, is at once just and appreciative.
The account also of Ignatius Loyola and the rise of the Society of Jesus
is extremely interesting, though we cannot think that Mr. Symonds is very
happy in his comparison of the Jesuits to 'fanatics laying stones upon a
railway' or 'dynamiters blowing up an emperor or a corner of Westminster
Hall.' Such a judgment is harsh and crude in expression and more
suitable to the clamour of the Protestant Union than to the dignity of
the true historian. Mr. Symonds, however, is rarely deliberately unfair,
and there is no doubt but that his work on the Catholic Reaction is a
most valuable contribution to modern history--so valuable, indeed, that
in the account he gives of the Inquisition in Venice it would be well
worth his while to bring the picturesque fiction of the text into some
harmony with the plain fa