The Ballet - 1)2liter, and On Guard. By Matilde Servo. (W. Heinemann.
6a.)—These stories by Madame Serao are at once beautiful and terrible. The method of her art is to move and instruct, not by any obvious didacticism of manner or oon.- elusion, but by delicately defining a character of exceptional loveliness against an uncompromisingly realistic background, and allowing it to suffer the frustration or deterioration that too often occurs in real life. Carmela Minino, the modest ballet-dancer, without beauty, means, or friends, fights a brave battle in the beginning, but yields to the pressure of circumstance before the story ends. But her lapse is the cause of such bitter humiliation and sorrow to herself that one recognises her as one of those to whom " much will be forgiven because she loved much." And this is the more truly and the more artistically indicated in that her great love and her sin are kept apart. The story is a cruel tragedy, but it is justified by its powerful truth and exquisite art. " On Guard " gives us a glimpse of convict life in Italy, and a hero in the person of Captain Gig% the humane Governor of the prison island. Nothing could be more pathetic than the conflict in the Governor's heart between his sense of Christian duty towards the criminals under his care, and tenderness for the shrinking fastidiousness of his wife. The whole situation, and every character in the story, stand out with a distinctness and vividness that is more than picturesque,—it is sculpturesque.
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