The Project Gutenberg EBook of Romola, by George Eliot

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Title: Romola

Author: George Eliot

Release Date: December 24, 2007 [EBook #24020]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMOLA ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

ROMOLA, BY GEORGE ELIOT.

PART ONE.

PROEM.

More than three centuries and a half ago, in the mid spring-time of
1492, we are sure that the angel of the dawn, as he travelled with broad
slow wing from the Levant to the Pillars of Hercules, and from the
summits of the Caucasus across all the snowy Alpine ridges to the dark
nakedness of the Western isles, saw nearly the same outline of firm land
and unstable sea--saw the same great mountain shadows on the same
valleys as he has seen to-day--saw olive mounts, and pine forests, and
the broad plains green with young corn or rain-freshened grass--saw the
domes and spires of cities rising by the river-sides or mingled with the
sedge-like masts on the many-curved sea-coast, in the same spots where
they rise to-day. And as the faint light of his course pierced into the
dwellings of men, it fell, as now, on the rosy warmth of nestling
children; on the haggard waking of sorrow and sickness; on the hasty
uprising of the hard-handed labourer; and on the late sleep of the
night-student, who had been questioning the stars or the sages, or his
own soul, for that hidden knowledge which would break through the
barrier of man's brief life, and show its dark path, that seemed to bend
no whither, to be an arc in an immeasurable circle of light and glory.
The great river-courses which have shaped the lives of men have hardly
changed; and those other streams, the life-currents that ebb and flow in
human hearts, pulsate to the same great needs, the same great loves and
terrors. As our thought follows close in the slow wake of the dawn, we
are impressed with the broad sameness of the human lot, which never
alters in the main headings of its history--hunger and labour, seed-time
and harvest, love and death.

Even if, instead of following the dim daybreak, our imagination pauses
on a certain historical spot and awaits the fulle