ian romances for
a great deal of enjoyment, the afterglow of which still warms my memory.
But that was long ago. A young man is apt to enjoy in a book quite as
much what he himself supplies as that which the author has deposited
therein. Each word is a key which unlocks a store of imprisoned
emotions. The very word Italy has a magic which imparts to it a charm
even in the geography. And Bergsoee, though he works, without suspicion
of its decrepitude, the ancient machinery of Italian romance, is
unaffectedly eloquent and unsophistically entertaining. The historic
whisperings which he catches from the names, the ruins, the facial
types, and the very trees and grass of Genazzano invest his letters from
that picturesque neighborhood with a certain beautiful glow of color and
a dusky richness of decay. The autobiographical form imposes, to be
sure, an increasing strain on the reader's credulity, as the plot
thickens, and we find ourselves, half-unexpectedly, involved in a lurid
tale of monks, priests, disguised revolutionists, cruel, mercenary
fathers, etc., and the Danish author playing his favorite _role_ of
_deus ex machina_. Still more incredible is the part of benevolent
Providence which he assigns to himself in "The Bride of Roervig," where
he saves the heroine's life by restoring to her a ring given to her
lover, and thus assuring her that he is alive when she believes him
dead. The autobiographical story (especially when the writer is a mere
convenient supernumerary, designed, like the uncle from America in the
old-fashioned melodrama, to straighten out the tangled skein), is apt to
involve other difficulties than the mere embarrassment of having to
distrust the author's assertion, or censure his indiscretions. The
illusion is utterly spoiled by that haunting _arriere pensee_ that this
or that writer, whom you know perhaps at first or second-hand, or whose
features, at all events, are familiar to you from pictures, never could
or would have played the more or less heroic _role_ with which he here
delights to impose upon you.

Altogether the best book which Bergsoee has written is the
autobiographical romance "From the Old Factory," the scene of which is
laid in Denmark. This book evidently contains a great deal of genuine
reminiscence, and is therefore devoid of that air of laborious
contrivance and artificial intrigue which brings the foregoing novels
into such unpleasant relationship with Wilkie Collins and his _ge