11 JANUARY 1908, Page 26

THE ROMAN JOURNALS OF GREGOROVIUS4 • THE chief val u e of

this volume, which is essentially the rather belated translation of a book that was given to the public fourteen: years ago, lies in the biographical material which it contains. Herr Althaus tells up that an exhaustive

* The Queen of Letter-lVr;ters Marquise de Sevignd, Dame de Bourbilly, 1526. ROM. By Janet Aldis. With 18"Illustrations. London; Methuen and Co. [12a. 6(1. net.] t The Roman Journals of Ferdinand Gregorovius, 18524874. Edited by Friedrich Althaus, and Translated from the Second German Edition by Mrs. Gustavus W. Damilton. London : George Bell and Sons. [10s. 6d...I

biography of the friend with whom he corresponded for almost forty years will, in all probability, never be published, because

"instead of collecting materials for such a work he was at pains to destroy such as existed, not only in consigning his own papers to the flames, but also in requiring the destruction of his letters from the friends with whom he corresponded."

At the same time, the brief biography given by Herr Althaus of Gregorovius, who was born in 1821 and died at the com- pletion of his seventieth year, is that of a German student in the best sense of the word. Gregorovius was also to some extent a politician and a romanticist, even a poet; indeed, Herr Althans says of his Werdontar and TVladislaw, which appeared in 1845, and was a failure, that, "with its Polish German complications, its pre-revolutionary provincialism and prison adventures, its Titanic pessimism, and its enthusiastic hopes for the future, it was entirely the

product of the time." But above all things Gregorovius was an historian. This led him to make Italy his second

home. It was in 1852 that Herr .Althaus first met him, and in Nice, which had not then passed into the possession of France. The following year they met in Rome, where Gregorovius was engaged in his work upon Corsica, and it Is thus that he is photographed by his friend :—" A slight, dignified figure, of distinguished, and at the same time

genial bearing, a manly and expressive head, with a thick black beard, high open forehead and quick penetrating dark eyes." From this time onwards Gregorovius was mainly engaged with accounts of his own travel and his history of Rome in the Middle Ages. In the course of his life in Rome he wrote his Journals, which are here translated. They are interesting and informing, but they can scarcely be said to throw very much light upon the history of the time. Certain passages, however, are marvellously prophetic. Thus, writing in July, 1866, after the battle of Sadowa, he says :—

"Aroused Germany, the greatest intellectual power in the world, will revolutionise Europe as effectually as she formerly did by the Reformation. The consequences of the battle of Sadowa are at least as follows : the unification of Germany through Prussia, the consummation of Italian independence; the fall of the dominium temporale ; the deposition of France from the dominion which she has usurped over Europe. Napoleon III. has reached his zenith."

The Journals contain some interesting characterisations, and realistic descriptions. With two of these we close our notice of a volume belonging to the rare kind which can be dipped into or read continuously alike with pleasure and profit :—

"Called on Liebig yesterday. A tall figure, with handsome, clear-cut, impressive features ; his appearance expresses the perfection of life, based on securest foundations."

"Drove to Ferney : Voltaire's house is reached in half-an-hour. The castle stands in a park, surrounded by old trees, which Voltaire himself may have tended : a restored and modernised two-storeyed building in the Renaissance style. Voltaire's bed- room with his bed, and a little salon containing some pictures—the rooms devoid of luxury, and furnished in rococo style—are shown. The castle is now inhabited by rich cotton merchants who live in princely fashion."