not gay reading. This may be pastoral life – no doubt it is; but it is not what we have been taught to understand by that term. A favourite theme that recurs, and is probably but too true in real Sicilian life, is that treated in 'Jeli,' where a woman succeeds in deluding her husband until, at last, his suspicions confirmed, his hot Southern blood aroused, his docility changes to a tiger's fury, and, regardless of consequences, instinctively, instantaneously, he murders the culprits. The impressionism that reigns in modern Italian art finds its reflection also in literature. As a piece of word-painting, of word-impressionism, Verga's sketch, 'Malaria,' is notable. The heavy terrible curse that hangs over landscape and population, is here positively put into words. Masterly, also, are two pendant sketches, 'Cos' è il re?' and 'Libertà,' in which he reproduces with photographic exactitude, the ideas concerning legitimate royalty and freedom as they exist in the heads of the people. The old monarchy, behind which ever stood the executioner, and which yet, nevertheless, exerted its fascination, and occasionally let gold pieces fly, contrasted with much vaunted liberty. What has this liberty given to the people – this hotly desired liberty? A wild frenzy has seized the populace; they cool their ardour upon the rich, they burn, plunder, rob. Calm returns; everyone goes back to his occupations. The Galantuomini cannot till the land with their own hands, and the poor people cannot live without the Galantuomini. So they make peace one with another. Then the lawsuits and the galleys. "Oh why? And when not even for one day a foot of earth is my own. And they had told me freedom had come!" In a word, in his rustic tales, Verga treats of a world turning upon rusty hinges, which yet are very strong, and exert no inconsiderable influence. In 'Per le vie' he gives a number of sketches of the city life of the poor; lives void of variety, from whose monotony, especially for the women, there is no escape save by disgrace and fall. They are all sad, some, like 'Il Canarino del No. 15,' deeply pathetic. The caged canary is a paralysed girl, whose outlook on life is limited by the tiny view across the narrow street. Nearly all the girls go to the bad, and we can scarcely wonder, can certainly not blame. Their ethical sense is rudimentary, their inborn southern need of life's pleasures very strong. It is a fact worth notice, that throughout the fathers are more pained by their daughters' fall than the mothers. Though the material of each narrative is slender, the narratives themselves make a strong impression on the mind.
But I have still to speak of Verga's masterpiece, 'I Malavoglia.' The modern social romance, taken out of the innermost life of a people, has here been first created for Italy; and it is no exaggeration when a leading Italian critic places its author beside Manzoni on this account. 'I Malavoglia' is the first, and as yet only published, portion of a series, 'I Vinti' (The Vanquished). The leading idea, according to Verga's own words, is
"an earnest, dispassionate study of the probable birth and development, in the most humble conditions of life, of a dark, vague, restless desire after a better material condition. As this desire in man is gradually satisfied, there comes the greed of wealth, which I propose to treat in a burgher type and in a provincial city, in 'Maestro Don Gesualdo.' Afterwards it becomes aristocratic vanity in the 'Duchessa di Leyra,' ambition in 'Onorevole Scipione,' to arrive at last at the
