is somewhat familiar with the renaissance period, and who can appreciate the ethical intention of the book, it will be found to be a work of genius and profound insight.  It will help such a reader to a clearer comprehension of this period than he could well obtain in any other manner, and the ethical purpose will add a new and living interest to the story of Florentine life.  He will be greatly helped to comprehend the moral and intellectual life of the time, with its—­

strange web of belief and unbelief; of Epicurean levity and fetichistic dread; of pedantic impossible ethics uttered by rote, and crude passions acted out with childish impulsiveness; of inclination toward a self-indulgent paganism, and inevitable subjection to that human conscience which, in the unrest of a new growth, was filling the air with strange prophecies and presentiments. [Footnote:  Proem to Romola.]

The artistic features of this period were many and striking, but George Eliot has not made so large a use of them as could have been wished; at least they appear in her book too much under the influence of historic information.  She could not be content merely to absorb and reflect an historic period; but her active intellect, full of ideas concerning the causes of human changes, must give an explanation of what was before her.  This philosophic tendency mars the artistic effect and blurs the picture which would otherwise have been given.  Yet the critic must not be too sure of this, and he must be content simply to note that George Eliot was too energetic a thinker to be willing to portray the picturesque features of Florentine life in the fifteenth century and to do no more.  She had at least three objects,—­to give a picture of Florentine life in the fifteenth century, to show the influence of the renaissance in conflict with Christianity, and to inculcate certain ethical ideas about renunciation, tradition and moral retribution.  While the book thus gains in breadth and in a certain massive impression which it produces, yet it loses in that concentration of effect which a more limited purpose would have secured.  It gives the impression of having been written by a vigorous thinker rather than by a genius of the first order.  The critic has no right to complain of this, however, or even to assume that genius might do other work than it has done.  Had George Eliot been less thoughtful than she was, she would not have been George Eliot. Romola grew out of a genius so large and original that it can well endure the criticisms caused by any defects it may have.