Romola

Romola, one of the best-known novels by George Eliot (C. P. P.), was originally published in 1863. The scene is in Florence, Italy, at the end of the fifteenth century. Roinola, the heroine, a daughter of the Italian family of Bardi, marries Tito Melema, a Greek, but the marriage proves a failure, and she sacrifices herself in devotion to the people during the plague. A marvellously able story of the revival of the taste and beauty and freedom of Hellenic manners and letters, under Lorenzo di Medici and the scholars of his Court, side by side with the revival of Roman virtue, and more than the ancient austerity and piety, under the great Dominican, Savonarola. The period of history is one which of all others may well have engrossing interest for George Eliot. Treasures of learning and discipline, amassed for mankind ages before, for ages stored and hidden away, see again the sun, are recognized and put to use. What use they will be put to, with what new and fruitful effects on the State and the citizen, with what momentary and with what lasting consequences, this she strives to discover ; this she follows through the public history of Italy during the modern invasion of Charles VIII., and the events which succeed his invasion, and through the private fortunes of her admirably chosen group of characters, some of them drawn from life, all of them true to nature.