The House by the Medlar-Tree

hest to the Mystery immeasur-ably above the whole earth, must find a rare and tender pleasure in this simple story of an Italian fishing village. I cannot promise that it will interest any other s

lly reproduced, or with a profounder regard for the poetry that resides in facts and resides no-where else. Signor Verdi began long ago, in his Vita dci Cainpi (”: Life of the Fields”) to give proof of hi

l prej-udices against the Southern Italians to know that such souls as Padron ‘Ntoni and Maruzza la Longa, with their impassioned conceptions of honor and duty, exist among them; and that such love idyls as that of Mena and Alfio, so sweet, so pure, and the happier but not less charming every-day romance of Alessio and Nunziata, are passages of a life supposed wholly benighted and degraded. This poet, as I must call the author, does again the highest office of poetry, in making us intimate with the hearts of men of another faith, race, and condition, and teaching us how like ourse

the feebler novels; often it is in the retrospect that you recognize their importance and perceive their full signifi-cance. In this most subtly artistic management of his material the author is most a mas-ter, and almost more than any other he has the rare gift of trusting the intelligence of his reader. He seems to have no more sense of authority or supremacy concerning the person-ages than any one of them would have in telling the story, and he has as completely freed himself from literosity as the most unlettered among them. Under his faithful touch life seems mainly sad in Trezza, because life is mainly sad everywhere, and because men there have not yet adjusted themselves to the on

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