SANT' ILARIO.*
Mn. CRAWFORD'S stories are always interesting and well told. As we have remarked before, he is a first-rate story-teller, and Sant' Ilario is likely to be quite as popular as any of his books. We do not, it is true, think it equal to Saracinesea, of which it is a continuation; but this is partly because the subject— Roman society and its changes—in Mr. Crawford's hands, has, perhaps, a little lost its freshness. The strength which was displayed in Saracinesca has become a little hurried, a little violent ; the manner of dealing with the characters is somehow arbitrary. If the ideal found small place in the former book, it is here still more remarkably absent; the intense matter-of-factness of Italian life is shown so pitilessly that at times the picture almost amounts to caricature. Even the love of Gouache and Faustina, which certainly had in it all the elements of romance, fails to move our hearts or to interest us very deeply, merely from the want of that indescribable touch which weaker hands often know how to give,—that touch which turns human passions into poetry. We are meant to believe, and we do, that the feelings of Gouache and Faustina were quite ideal ; but why do we not feel this ? And why, after the marvellous and painful adven- tures they go through, are we left in the vaguest uncertainty about the future of these young people ? There was more hope for them, no doubt, after the death of the miserable old Prince—whose villainy, by-the-by, is hardly conceivable in a proud Roman noble—but it is something of a reason for welcoming Mr. Crawford's half-promise of a third series of Saracinesca chronicles, that we may hear more of our friend Gouache, who, from a philosophic young French artist and Radical, has in this book become a Papal Zouave and a favourite of Antonelli, besides being the lover of Donna Faustina Montevarchi.
"Prince of Sant' Ilario " is the title of Giovanni Saracinesca, and it is in the strong, bold portraiture of himself, his wife Corona, and the fine old Prince his father, that Mr. Crawford's brush has the freest sweep. The main subject of the book is, of course, the familyihistory of the Saracinesca, and the time is about two years after Giovanni's marriage with Corona d'Astrardente. The Garibaldian wars, and the attack on Rome, followed by the battle of Mentana, make a stirring background to the story. The underplot of this book, dealing with the crimes, love-affairs, and adventures of the Montevarchi family, is much more prominent than that carried on by Del Fence and Donna Tullia in Sara- einesea ; and this, to our minds, is not an improvement. Still, the real nobleness of the Saracinesca family shines out with a striking grandeur, in contrast with these other speci- mens of Roman nobility. Giovanni himself is very fine ; and the unreasoning passion of jealousy which goes near to losing
• Sant' Dario. By F. Marion Crawford. 3 vols. London: Macmillan and Co. 1889.
him his wife's love is perfectly natural in a man of his character and race. Corona we still feel, as we felt in Saracinesca, though she too, in her way, is very fine, to be an unlovable person. But the old Prince is our favourite in the family ; the heroic sturdiness with which he accepts the claim of his cousin San Giacinto, and is ready on the instant to give up palace and everything, is splendidly drawn. There is something rather like a fairy-tale in the sudden stride of San Giacinto, whom we remember as the innkeeper of Aquila, to the position of Marchese and supposed head of the family. There is a certain natural greatness about him, however, in mind as well as in stature, which seems to prove his claim to belong to it; but we cannot help fancying that Mr. Crawford first meant to make him the villain of the piece, and on second thoughts transferred the burden of wickedness to the shoulders of old Prince Montevarchi. Why should San Giacinto have had "piercing black eyes, set near together under eyebrows
that met in the midst of the forehead thin and cruel lips," nose "pointed and keen," if he was to turn out nothing but a strong, fierce, clever, discreet, and not un- generous savage ? We must also venture to point out that in Saracinesca the innkeeper's two children were a boy and a girl; in Sant' Ilario, San Giacinto has two boys. The incon- sistency may seem slight, but to the faithful novel-reader these things are of importance.
Prince Montevarchi and his librarian Meschini, their crimes and their punishment, are very strikingly drawn. The old Prince, miser, cheat, and hypocrite, richly deserves his terrible fate. We hope and think that the Saracinesca, rather than he, may be regarded as types of the Roman noble of twenty years ago. We also hope that strangling, as a form of murder, may soon cease to commend itself to Mr. Crawford. But Meschini is throughout a wonderfully clever picture; the accomplished forger of old manuscripts, haunting the Monte- varchi library like a ghost, with no companions but the old forgotten books ; the desperate, grasping wretch, wild with hate and revenge when his ungrateful master turns upon him ; the terrified coward, flying to drink and opium in search of courage, and so gradually falling lower and lower, till the avenging fate descends on him in the shape he had always feared, San Giacinto the giant, and in the last despair he finds strength enough to make discovery and death the same thing. Perhaps the history of Meschini and his miseries is a little too long drawn out ; the stages of decay in his miserable mind and body are described with rather un- necessary minuteness ; but the fact is that his evil doings share the interest of the story, to a great measure, with the love-quarrels of Giovanni and Corona. One of the cleverest scenes in the story, perhaps, is Faustina's visit to him in the library, not long before the end; the young girl, innocent and curious, asking questions about her father of the miserable librarian, who fancies all the while that she suspects him, and if his cowardice had not been too much for him—no trace here of the "psychological moment" which, as as we are told, visited the old Prince before he carried out his robbery—might have tried to ensure his safety by a second and still more awful crime.
On the whole, it will be seen that we should not place Sant' llario in the front rank of Mr. Crawford's books. It has not the concentrated power of To Leeward, the beauty and suggestiveness of Marzio's Crucifix, or the stateliness of Saracinesca. Still, it has a cleverness and a power of its own ; there-is much varied interest in the story, and it is, no doubt, a faithful picture of a curious and interesting time in the most interesting city of the world,—that old Rome which has passed away for ever.
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