Part 4
Modern civilisation has created modern vices, modern crimes, modern virtues, austerities, and generosities. The crimes of to-day were not dreamed of a hundred years ago, any more than the sublimity of the good deeds done in our time to remedy our time’s mistakes. And between the angel and the beast of this ending century lie great multitudes of ever-shifting, ever-changing lives, neither very bad nor very good, but in all cases very different from what lives used to be in the good old days when time meant time and not money. There, too, in that vast land of mediocrities, emotions play a part of which our grandfathers never heard, and being real, of the living, and of superior interest to those who feel them, reflect themselves in the novel of to-day, diverting the course of true love into very tortuous channels and varying the tale that is ever young with features that are often new. Within a short few months I myself have lived in a land where modern means of communication are not, and I have come to live here, where applied science is doing her best to eliminate distance as a factor from the equation of exchanges, financial and intellectual. The difference between the manifestations of human feeling in Southern Italy and North America is greater and wider than can be explained in intelligible terms. Yet it is but skin-deep. Sentiment, sentimentality, taste, fashion, daily speech, acquired science, and transmitted tradition cleanse, soil, model, or deface the changing shell of mutable mortality, and nothing which appeals to that shell alone can have permanent life; but the prime impulses of the heart are, broadly speaking, the same in all ages and almost in all races. The brave man’s beats as strongly in battle to-day, the coward’s stands as suddenly still in the face of danger, boys and girls still play with love, men and women still suffer for love, and the old still warn youth and manhood against love’s snares--all that and much more comes from depths not reached by civilisations nor changed by fashions. Those deep waters the real novel must fathom, sounding the tide-stream of passion and bringing up such treasures as lie far below and out of sight--out of reach of the individual in most cases--until the art of the story-teller makes him feel that they are or might be his. Cæsar commanded his legionaries to strike at the face. Humanity, the novelist’s master, bids him strike only at the heart.
THE END
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LIST OF WORKS BY MR. F. MARION CRAWFORD.
Uniformly bound in Cloth. =12mo.= =Price=, $1.00 each.
_Just Published._ CHILDREN OF THE KING. A Tale of Southern Italy.
MACMILLAN & CO. take pleasure in announcing that they have made arrangements to add the following volumes (with the author’s latest revisions) to their uniform edition of the works of Mr. F. Marion Crawford, thereby enabling them to issue a complete edition of all his novels.
A ROMAN SINGER. _Now Ready._ New Edition, revised and corrected.
TO LEEWARD. _February._
PAUL PATOFF. _March._
AN AMERICAN POLITICIAN._April._ New Edition, revised and partly rewritten.
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The Saracinesca Series.
“His greatest achievement is the group of three novels on Modern Italy. The three books present a wonderfully vivid picture of Italian social life.”--_N. Y. Life._
SARACINESCA.
“His highest achievement, as yet, in the realms of fiction. The work has two distinct merits, either of which would serve to make it great,--that of telling a perfect story in a perfect way, and of giving a graphic picture of Roman society in the last days of the Pope’s temporal power.... The story is exquisitely told.”--_Boston Traveller._
“One of the most engrossing novels we have ever read.”--_Boston Times._
SANT’ ILARIO.
A Sequel to “Saracinesca.”
“A singularly powerful and beautiful story.... Admirably developed, with a naturalness beyond praise.... It brings out what is most impressive in human action, without owing any of its effectiveness to sensationalism or artifice.”--_New York Tribune._
DON ORSINO.
A Continuation of “Saracinesca” and “Sant’ Ilario.”
“The third in a remarkable series of novels dealing with three generations of the Saracinesca family, entitled respectively ‘Saracinesca,’ ‘Sant’ Ilario,’ and ‘Don Orsino,’ and these novels present an important study of Italian life, customs, and conditions during the present century. The ‘new Italy’ is strikingly revealed in ‘Don Orsino.’”--_Boston Budget._
“We are inclined to regard the book as the most ingenious of all Mr. Crawford’s fictions. Certainly it is the best novel of the season.”--_Evening Bulletin._
“The plot of the story (‘Don Orsino’) is one of the best that the author has constructed. The mystery of Maria Consuelo’s birth and her relation to Spicca is most ingenious, continually suggesting a false trail to the reader, and its end surprising and satisfying him with its adequateness. When you combine all these things with a wonderful beauty of diction and facility of expression, you have that very difficult achievement--a thoroughly good modern romance.”--_Life._
The three volumes in a box, $3.00. Half morocco, $8.00. Half calf, $7.50.
THE THREE FATES.
“Mr. Crawford has manifestly brought his best qualities as a student of human nature and his finest resources as a master of an original and picturesque style to bear upon this story. Taken for all in all it is one of the most pleasing of all his productions in fiction, and it affords a view of certain phases of American, or perhaps we should say of New York, life that have not hitherto been treated with anything like the same adequacy and felicity.”--_Boston Beacon._
THE WITCH OF PRAGUE.
A Fantastic Tale.
ILLUSTRATED BY W. J. HENNESSY.
“Mr. Crawford has written in many keys, but never in so strange a one as that which dominates ‘The Witch of Prague.’... The artistic skill with which this extraordinary story is constructed and carried out is admirable and delightful.... Mr. Crawford has scored a decided triumph, for the interest of the tale is sustained throughout.... A very remarkable, powerful, and interesting story.”--_New York Tribune._
“Mr. Crawford has not lost his oft-proved skill in holding his readers’ attention, and there are single scenes and passages in this book that rival in intensity anything he has ever written.”--_Christian Union._
MR. ISAACS.
A Tale of Modern India.
“The characters are original, and one does not recognize any of the hackneyed personages who are so apt to be considered indispensable to novelists, and which, dressed in one guise or another, are but the marionettes, which are all dominated by the same mind, moved by the same motive force. The men are all endowed with individualism and independent life and thought.... There is a strong tinge of mysticism about the book which is one of its greatest charms.”--_Boston Transcript._
“This is a fine and noble story. It has freshness like a new and striking scene on which one has never looked before. It has character and individuality. It has meaning. It is lofty and uplifting. It is strongly, sweetly, tenderly written. It is in all respects an uncommon novel.... In fine, ‘Mr. Isaacs’ is an acquaintance to be made.”--_The Literary World._
DR. CLAUDIUS.
A True Story.
“‘Dr. Claudius’ is surprisingly good, coming after a story of so much merit as ‘Mr. Isaacs.’ The hero is a magnificent specimen of humanity, and sympathetic readers will be fascinated by his chivalrous wooing of the beautiful American countess.”--_Boston Traveller._
“The characters are strongly marked without any suspicion of caricature, and the author’s ideas on social and political subjects are often brilliant and always striking. It is no exaggeration to say that there is not a dull page in the book, which is peculiarly adapted for the recreation of student or thinker.”--_Living Church._
WITH THE IMMORTALS.
“Altogether an admirable piece of art worked in the spirit of a thorough artist. Every reader of cultivated tastes will find it a book prolific in entertainment of the most refined description, and to all such we commend it heartily.”--_Boston Saturday Evening Gazette._
“The book will be found to have a fascination entirely new for the habitual reader of novels. Indeed, Mr. Crawford has succeeded in taking his readers quite above the ordinary plane of novel interest.”--_Boston Advertiser._
MARZIO’S CRUCIFIX.
“We take the liberty of saying that this work belongs to the highest department of character-painting in words.”--_Churchman._
“‘Marzio’s Crucifix’ is another of those tales of modern Rome which show the author so much at his ease. A subtle compound of artistic feeling, avarice, malice, and criminal frenzy is this carver of silver chalices and crucifixes.”--_The Times._
“It is as if it could not have been written otherwise, so naturally does the story unfold itself, and so logical and consistent is the sequence of incident after incident. As a story, ‘Marzio’s Crucifix’ is perfectly constructed.”--_New York Commercial Advertiser._
KHALED.
A Story of Arabia.
“That it is beautifully written and holds the interest of the reader, fanciful as it all is, to the very end, none who know the depth and artistic finish of Mr. Crawford’s work need be told.”--_The Chicago Times._
“It abounds in stirring incidents and barbaric picturesqueness; and the love struggle of the unloved Khaled is manly in its simplicity and noble in its ending. Mr. Crawford has done nothing better than, if he has done anything as good as, ‘Khaled.’”--_The Mail and Express._
A TALE OF A LONELY PARISH.
“It is a pleasure to have anything so perfect of its kind as this brief and vivid story.... It is doubly a success, being full of human sympathy, as well as thoroughly artistic in its nice balancing of the unusual with the commonplace, the clever juxtaposition of innocence and guilt, comedy and tragedy, simplicity and intrigue.”--_Critic._
“It has no defects. It is neither trifling nor trivial. It is a work of art. It is perfect.”--_Boston Beacon._
ZOROASTER.
“The field of Mr. Crawford’s imagination appears to be unbounded.... In ‘Zoroaster’ Mr. Crawford’s winged fancy ventures a daring flight.... Yet ‘Zoroaster’ is a novel rather than a drama. It is a drama in the force of its situations and in the poetry and dignity of its language; but its men and women are not men and women of a play. By the naturalness of their conversation and behavior they seem to live and lay hold of our human sympathy more than the same characters on a stage could possibly do.”--_The Times._
A CIGARETTE MAKER’S ROMANCE.
“It is a touching romance, filled with scenes of great dramatic power.”--_Boston Commercial Bulletin._
“It is full of life and movement, and is one of the best of Mr. Crawford’s books.”--_Boston Saturday Evening Gazette._
GREIFENSTEIN.
“Another notable contribution to the literature of the day. It possesses originality in its conception and is a work of unusual ability. Its interest is sustained to the close, and it is an advance even on the previous work of this talented author. Like all Mr. Crawford’s work, this novel is crisp, clear, and vigorous, and will be read with a great deal of interest.”--_New York Evening Telegram._
MACMILLAN & CO., NEW YORK.
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Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
of very valuaable=> of very valuable {pg 71}
End of Project Gutenberg's The Novel; what it is, by F. Marion Crawford