exists between "Romola" and
the previous novels of George Eliot: they have little in common but
genius; and genius, we begin to think, has not only no sex, but no
nationality. "Romola" has peopled the streets of Florence still more
densely to our memory.

It would seem as though the newly revived interest in Savonarola, after
centuries of apathy, were a sign of the times. Uprisings of peoples and
wars for "ideas" have made such a market for martyrs as was never known
before. Could we jest upon what is a most encouraging trait in present
humanity, we should say that martyrs were fashionable; for even
Toussaint L'Ouverture has found a biographer, and _Frenchmen_ are
writing Lives of Jesus. Yet Orthodoxy stigmatizes this age of John
Browns as irreligious:--rather do we think it the dawn of the true
faith. It is to another _habitue_ of Villino Trollope, Pasquale Villari,
Professor of History at Pisa, that we owe in great part the revival of
Savonarola's memory; and it must have been no ordinary love for his
noble aspirations that led the young Neopolitan exile to bury the ten
best years of his life in old Florentine libraries, collecting material
for a full life of the friar of San Marco. So faithfully has he done his
work, that future writers upon Savonarola will go to Villari, and not to
Florentine manuscripts for their facts. This history was published in
1859, and it may be that "Romola" is the flower of the sombre Southern
plant. Genius requires but a suggestion to create,--though, indeed, Mr.
Lewes, who is a wonderfully clever man, _au fait_ in all things, from
acting to languages, living and dead, and from languages to natural
history, may have anticipated Villari in that suggestion.

Villino Trollope introduced us to "Owen Meredith," the poet from
melody,--one far older in experience than in years, looking like his
poetry, just so polished and graceful, just so sweetly in tune, just so
Gallic in taste, and--shall we say it?--just so _blase_! We doubt
whether Robert Lytton, the diplomate, will ever realize the best
aspirations of "Owen Meredith," the poet. Good came out of Nazareth, but
it is not in our faith to believe that foreign courts can bear the rare
fruit of ideal truth and beauty.--Then there was Blumenthal, the
composer, who talked Buckle in admirable English, and played his own
Reveries most daintily,--Reveries that are all languor, sighs, and
tears, whose fitting home is the boudoirs of French marquises