The great historical personage whom George Eliot paints in “Romola” is Savonarola,—­and I think faithfully, on the whole.  In the main she coincides with Villani, the greatest authority.  In some respects I should take issue with her.  She makes the religion of the Florentine reformer to harmonize with her notions of self-renunciation.  She makes him preach the “religion of humanity,” which was certainly not taught in his day.  He preached duty, indeed, and appealed to conscience; but he preached duty to God rather than to man.  The majesty of a personal God, fearful in judgment and as represented by the old Jewish prophets, was the great idea of Savonarola’s theology.  His formula was something like this:  “Punishment for sin is a divine judgment, not the effect of inexorable laws.  Repentance is a necessity.  Unless men repent of their sins, God will punish them.  Unless Italy repents, it will be desolated by His vengeance.”  Catholic theology, which he never departed from, has ever recognized the supreme allegiance of man to his Maker, because He demands it.  Even among the Jesuits, with their corrupted theology, the motto emblazoned on their standard was, Ad majorem dei gloriam.  But the great Dominican preacher is made by George Eliot to be “the spokesman of humanity made divine, not of Deity made human.”  “Make your marriage vows,” said he to Romola, “an offering to the great work by which sin and sorrow are made to cease.”

But Savonarola is only a secondary character in the novel.  He might as well have been left out altogether.  The real hero and heroine are Romola and Tito; and they are identified with the life of the period, which is the Renaissance,—­a movement more Pagan than Christian.  These two characters may be called creations.  Romola is an Italian woman, supposed to represent a learned and noble lady four hundred years ago.  She has lofty purposes and aspirations; she is imbued with the philosophy of self-renunciation; her life is devoted to others,—­first to her father, and then to humanity.  But she is as cold as marble; she is the very reverse of Corinne.  Even her love for Tito is made to vanish away on the first detection of his insincerity, although he is her husband.  She becomes as hard and implacable as fate; and when she ceases to love her husband, she hates him and leaves him, and is only brought back by a sense of duty.  Yet her hatred is incurable; and in her wretched disappointment she finds consolation only in a sort of stoicism.  How far George Eliot’s notions of immortality are brought out in the spiritual experiences of Romola I do not know; but the immortality of Romola is not that which is brought to light by the gospel:  it is a vague and indefinite sentiment kindred to that of Indian sages,—­that we live hereafter only in our teachings or deeds; that we are absorbed in the universal whole; that our immortality is the living in the hearts and minds of men, not personally hereafter among the redeemed To quote her own fine thought,—­