Fiesole. By Beatrice Ley. 2 vole. (Quaritch.)—This is a bright
story of Florentine life, with two distinct threads of narrative running through it, which do not meet till two-thirds of the book are passed. One deals with peasant life, the other with representations of art and aristocracy. That part which deals with the peasants is amusing, clever, and vivacious. ' The beautiful, passionate, little contadina, her hand: some, savage lover, the two good mothers, and the sour aunt, with their ejaculatory conversation and their proverbs, are very lively and pleasant sketches. The proverbs, by the way, are overdone. They give the impression of laborious search in a proverb-book kept at hand for reference. That part of the book which deals with the upper classes, and carries out the motto from Ruskin on the title-page, is, we regret to say, though high in tone, a failure,—high-flown, unnatural and gushing in style, and impro- bable in incident. We are overwhelmed with ecstatic love and adulatory friendship. The pages teem with italicised words, and such expressions as " Goddess among women," " Heart's queen," " Love of my soul," " Ideal of my life," " Son of my affections, noble Alleesio "—bet here and there bathos, very amusing and quite inevitable, as such high-pressure cannot always be kept up, relieves the monotony of rapture. It is comical, for instance, to hear that Allessio's " chivalrous spirit bad long ago decided that a man's kisses should only be bestowed upon his heart's queen and female relatives." There is also a little • want of variety in the circumstances and char- acters of the hero and heroine. They are both noble, poetic, artistic, spiritual ; they are in the world but not of it ; they both fall violently in love with their own ideals in the persons of a wicked count and vain contadina; the wicked count and vain contadina carry on a flirtatien which is discovered and made known to their adoring lovers; the adoring lovers are both disillusionised, and their noble hearts oast out utterly the worthless pair. The noble pair are both also rich till the close of the book, when the lady decorously loses her fortune. One thing in the book, bat not in the story, we must not forget to mention with great approbation, and that is the chronological list of the anther's works, in the beginning of the second volume. It is a capital innovation. If all authors would but follow Miss Ley's example, it would add greatly to the convenience of readers and reviewers, and also, in many cases, to the sale of the works.
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