that Catholicism must be the remedy. Manzoni is a devout Catholic. He paints, with peculiar fervour, the merits and uses of a pious clergy; and personifying it under the names of Father Cristofero and Cardinal Borromeo, he shows the beneficial influence it may obtain over the people and the nobility, of whom Renzo and Lucia, the Innominato and Don Rodrigo, are the representatives. It is not the vulgar notion of bringing forward the Pope, with his army of priests and monks, as the regenerators of society, at which he aims; it is the Christian spirit of resignation and self-denial that he wishes to revive, and render the master-feeling of the world. Manzoni is eminently pious and resigned—this is the internal spirit; in form he adheres to ancient Catholicism, which he regards as the final tendency of humanity.
Manzoni was born at Milan in 1784. I have heard that his father was a man totally without instruction; while his mother, the daughter of the Marchese Beccaria, author of the well-known work, “Dei delitti e delle Pene,” was an accomplished and active-minded woman. Manzoni spent many of his early years on the Lake of Como, at the very spot where he places the scene of his romance. In his youth the Latin poets occupied his attention; he read Virgil and Tibullus with delight—while in Italian
