MAY 321 



Vernon Lee's ' Studies of the Eighteenth Century in 

 Italy' I have not read ; but if they are half as interest- 

 ing as this 'Life,' I have something to look forward to. 

 The pictures of even a portion of society in Florence 

 drawn in this 'Life' of the Countess of Albany set one 

 wondering how a hundred years can have brought about 

 such changes. Vernon Lee's later works, mostly about 

 Italy, 'Limbo and Other Essays' and 'Genius Loci,' 

 there seems no need for me to praise ; they have been so 

 recently in the reading public's mind, and so much 

 appreciated. 



It seems to me very clearing to the mind to read 

 French or German criticisms at the same time as Eng- 

 lish, especially with regard to Italy, as at all times the 

 French, of whom I know most, take such an absolutely 

 different point of view. 'L'ltalie d'Hier,' by the broth- 

 ers De Goncourt, written in the winter of 1855-56, is 

 entirely devoid of what we should call 'the feeling for 

 Italy.' To read this description of Italy is very like 

 taking up a book illustrating the contents of the first 

 Exhibition of 1851, when all sense of the beautiful 

 seemed absolutely lost. Georges Sand, in her youthful 

 bitterness, exclaimed, in the 'thirties, that Italy was 

 ' Peintures aux plafonds, ordure sous les pieds' ; but 

 that criticism is again of a totally different kind. Ed- 

 mond de Goncourt looks at a picture and says : ' La 

 Vierge chez ce peintre, c'est la Vierge du Vinci, mais 

 avec une expression courtisanesque.' The drawings by 

 one of the brothers in this book are rather clever, and 

 in describing a ball at the Pitti, in the Grand Duke's 

 time, he gives an absurd caricature of our English Min- 

 ister of the day, Lord Normanby, which no one who 

 remembers him can read now without a smile. The 

 book is well worth looking at as typical of French 

 criticism of that day, and anybody who cares to enjoy a 



