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grandson, is taken for service, and on the day of his sister Mena's betrothal to the son of a well-to-do farmer, two sailors bring to the village the news that the ship in which Luca was known to be, had gone down at the battle of Lissa. No news, no letter comes for several days. "Have you seen a cat who has lost her kittens?" said the neighbours of the poor mother. She went at last with padron 'Ntoni to Catania and there, after being sent from pillar to post, they found a clerk who looked up the list of casualties, and Mara "la Longa " had to be taken home in a cart. Now it was good-bye to the "casa del nespolo," to marriage and to hopes of prosperity. The Malavoglias leave their home and huddle into a smaller cottage, but they still maintain their brave, hopeful struggle. Mena, the heroic little housewife, helps her mother and tends the children, and the young 'Ntoni refuses to leave his own folk to marry the girl of his heart. To get back the house of the medlar tree is their day-dream, but luck is against them. Old 'Ntoni is injured in a storm, and young 'Ntoni, whose eyes have been opened by his short experience of a city's ease and luxury, revolts against the life of grinding labour that is their lot. When his mother dies of cholera he tries his luck abroad, but fails and returns to become a drunkard and a ne'er-do-well. Finally he is captured in a smuggling affair in which he wounds the village brigadiere; and at his trial the defence is put forward that he knew the goings-on of his younger sister Lia with the brigadiere. The old man on hearing this last disgrace is carried senseless out of court, and before his return Lia disappears for ever. For old 'Ntoni there is nothing left but death. He takes to his bed and slowly fails; yet Mena and Alessi, the youngest, would have supported him to the end out of their scanty earnings, had he not in a last gesture of resigned fortitude persuaded neighbour Alfio, the carter, to carry him to the hospital. Alessi thrives and marries; he and Nunziata and Mena buy back the house of the medlar tree, but too late for the old man to die there. A new cycle of life-toil, danger, hard striving and simple family devotion-is beginning again at the " casa del nespolo," the glance at which we have through the eyes of the outcast 'Ntoni, who comes back from prison for one night, is warmly welcomed, but knows that he has no place there. As he walks away from his home at the break of dawn he sees in imagination the re-opening

of the day's life which he knew so well and, shouldering his wallet, passes onward.

It would take many pages to give a convincing idea of what colour and varying emotion fill up this bare outline. The characterisation is extraordinarily vivid; the form of the language is indescribably graphic, and the alternation of dramatic incident with effective pauses in which the nimble tongues of Trezza comment on the turn of events is masterly. Through all the scenes of comedy and tragedy, in the delicate touches of Mena's love for Alfio, in the bitter eloquence of young 'Ntoni's revolt, in the marvellous descriptions of the day's work and the night's storm at sea, in the chatterings of the women, in the rabid political disputes of Don Franco, the druggist, and Don Giammaria, the priest, in the talk at Santuzza's hostelry, in the occasions of mourning and rejoicing, and in the stedfastness of old 'Ntoni's rectitude, the rhythm of life runs strong and unbroken. It is a great and memorable book, which has firmly and justly taken its place beside " I Promessi Sposi."

Over "Mastro-Don Gesualdo " we need not linger, for Mr. Lawrence has made it accessible to all English readers. Its gist is already in the masterly sketch called "La Roba " (Novelle Rusticane) and partly in another sketch " I Galantuomini " in the same volume. Gesualdo Motta is a peasant who by his passion for property becomes a rich man, forces his way into the society of his little town and marries the dishonoured daughter of a decayed noble house. But in the end the envy of his neighbours, the intrigues of the gentry and the extravagance of his ducal son-in-law overwhelm him. He dies, desperately clutching the thought of all his property to the end, an unwelcome guest in his daughter's house. In portraying the scenes of communal life, the threshings and harvests, the hum of the piazza, the eagerly canvassed disputes of neighbours, the rumblings of revolution and the panic of the cholera, Verga's power here shows no falling-off. But at times the tone is too biographical and too documented, as if the material had for a moment gone beyond the author's control. Gesualdo is a tragic character, undoubtedly, and the novel is a true work of art but, compared with " I Malavoglia " and the best of the short stories, it falls a little into the shade. The epic quality had faded and the note of the "study " was beginning to

be heard. Verga bowed his head to the commands of his inner consciousness. Except for some successful dramatisations of his stories he gave little more to the world: so that he could look back in his old age, in spite of all disappointments, like padron 'Ntoni, upon an unspoiled reputation.

ORLO WILLIAMS

THE REVIVAL OF DESIGN

1. Design in Modern Life and Industry. Intro. by JOHN GLOAG. Ernest Benn. 1925.

2. Design and Industry, 1922. By C. H. COLLINS BAKER. Ernest Benn.

1922.

3. Advanced Textile Design. By WILLIAM WATSON. Longmans, Green. 1925.

4. Modern English Architecture. By CHARLES MARRIOTT. Chapman & Hall.

IT

1924.

may

be said with sufficient justice that in all ages taste is apt to be controlled by one dominant art. Painting probably had its most glorious hours in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries; for during the later Renaissance sculpture rose to the highest eminence, and painting itself was affected by sculptural ideals. In the eighteenth century, it can hardly be denied, the dominant art was literature. People saw pictures in relation to the ideas of a time which was governed, in matters of taste, by the written word. The sculptural ideal was not wholly lost sight of in the work of Sir Joshua Reynolds and his more eminent contemporaries, but more and more, as the years rolled on, the taste of the time showed itself to be more concerned with idea than with form. Richard Wilson-the great genius who anticipated Constable, Turner and Old Crome in his devotion to pure landscape-was compelled by his patrons to people landscape, which alone absorbed him, with figures pretending to play a part in some legend of Greece or Rome. The importance attached to the subject in Victorian painting is a matter of common knowledge; this pre-occupation runs through all the schools, and threads together the warring styles of the Classics, the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelites. At its best it gave England a golden decade of illustration; at its worst it allowed the Royal Academy to sink into anecdotage. And of this time the slogan-the reverberation of which even yet has not altogether died awaywas: Every Picture Tells a Story."

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But about the middle of the nineteenth century a change in the general taste began to declare itself. Painters enunciated a new war-cry: "Every Picture Sings a Tune." Literature

gradually lost the leadership, and all the arts prostrated themselves before the altar of Music. Music, so to speak, was in the air. No works of art in the nineteenth century provoked so much attention, anger, discussion and controversy as the music-dramas of Wagner-Wagner who, contrary to the current of his time, was accused of degrading music from its height of splendid isolation and of dragging it into the hurly-burly in an attempt to make it a vehicle for the expression of concrete ideas. Indeed, Wagner with his mania for the association of ideas was a traitor to the true cause. Of that cause the most eloquent champion in England was Walter Pater, who in his essay on "The School of Giorgione" (1877) saw,

all the arts in common aspiring towards the principle of music; music being the typical or ideally consummate art, the object of the great Anders-streben of all art, of all that is artistic or partakes of artistic qualities.

All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music. For while in all other works of art it is possible to distinguish the matter from the form, and the understanding can always make this distinction, yet it is the constant effort of art to obliterate it.

Is it not significant that in the very year in which Pater penned these lines, Whistler reaped a whirlwind by exhibiting his "Nocturnes " at the Grosvenor Gallery? And had not Whistler previously displayed his aspiration towards the principles of music by describing other of his paintings as "Harmonies " and "Symphonies "?

Literature itself was swamped by the rising tide of music and on both sides of the Channel arose expositors who explained that the precious thing in poetry was not the sense, but the sound. Stevenson in his essay on "Elements of Style" (1885) almost persuaded us that the virtue of Shakespeare and Milton resided in their manipulation of letters, in the artful alliteration of consonants, in the subtle assonance of vowels. He made these things clear to us by presenting Shakespeare in a new setting:

"The Barge she sat iN, like a BURNished throNe
BURNT ON the water: the POOP was BeateN gold,
PURPle the sails and so PURFumed that

The winds were love-sick with them."

R.L.S. calls our attention to the F in "perfumed," because "this change from P to F is the completion of that from B to P,

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