reciation that the reader shall have a
considerable acquaintance with Italian history in the fifteenth century and
with the social and literary changes of that period. Whether it is read
with a keen interest and relish will much depend on this previous
information. To the mere novel-reader it may seem dull and too much
encumbered by uninteresting learning. To one who is somewhat familiar with
the renaissance period, and who can appreciate the ethical intention of the
book, it will be found to be a work of genius and profound insight. It will
help such a reader to a clearer comprehension of this period than he could
well obtain in any other manner, and the ethical purpose will add a new and
living interest to the story of Florentine life. He will be greatly helped
to comprehend the moral and intellectual life of the time, with its--

strange web of belief and unbelief; of Epicurean levity and fetichistic
dread; of pedantic impossible ethics uttered by rote, and crude
passions acted out with childish impulsiveness; of inclination toward a
self-indulgent paganism, and inevitable subjection to that human
conscience which, in the unrest of a new growth, was filling the air
with strange prophecies and presentiments. [Footnote: _Proem to
Romola_.]

The artistic features of this period were many and striking, but George
Eliot has not made so large a use of them as could have been wished; at
least they appear in her book too much under the influence of historic
information. She could not be content merely to absorb and reflect an
historic period; but her active intellect, full of ideas concerning the
causes of human changes, must give an explanation of what was before her.
This philosophic tendency mars the artistic effect and blurs the picture
which would otherwise have been given. Yet the critic must not be too sure
of this, and he must be content simply to note that George Eliot was too
energetic a thinker to be willing to portray the picturesque features of
Florentine life in the fifteenth century and to do no more. She had at
least three objects,--to give a picture of Florentine life in the fifteenth
century, to show the influence of the renaissance in conflict with
Christianity, and to inculcate certain ethical ideas about renunciation,
tradition and moral retribution. While the book thus gains in breadth and
in a certain massive impression which it produces, yet it loses in that
concentration o