The Press.
London, England, 1857-01-10 00:00:00

42

The Sisters of Soleure. A Tale of the Six-
teenth Century. By C. S. W. London :

Nisbet.
THIS little work is designed to illustrate the
opposing principles of Romanism and the
Reformed Faith in the age of their fiercest
and deadliest struggle,—when to refuse out-
ward adoration of the Wafer was heresy, and
when heresy was but a synonym for persecu-
tion, torture, and the stake. Some readers
may think we [have already said enough to
indicate the character of " The Sisters of
Soleure,“ and conclude that it is one of those
virulent stories with a purpose in which, under
a clumsy disguise of fiction, the author's only
purpose is the enunciation of his own parti-
cular views, utterly regardless of natural
character, probable events, and all the rules of
art. Plentiful as such works unhappily are,
the tale before us does not add to their num-
ber, and possesses merits both of design and
execution which place it far above the usual
compositions of this class. The style. with a
few trifling exceptions, is excellent ; the Eng-
lish pure and unaffected ; and the plot is both
well conceived and skilfully wrought out, dis-
playing in the more stirring scenes consider-
able power of dramatic effect and picturesque
colouring. An outline sketch of the story will
better enable us to give an idea of its scope
and character.

The opening scene is laid in the Swiss can-
ton of Soleure, unno 1570, and introduces us
to the two young daughters of Count Julien,
hearing, for the first time, from the lips of
their dying mother the dark story of her life.
The daughter of a Swiss pastor of the " new
religion," her happy home in the Valley of
Interlaehen had been attacked and burnt, her
aged father dragged from the altar and cruelly
murdered, at tha instigation of a stern and
bigoted Romanist whose passionate suit she
had persisted in rejecting, and who, as was
not unusual in those violent and fanatical
times, had appeased his private thirst for ven-
geance under the pretence of zeal for the holy
work of exterminating heretics. This person-
age, who plays an important part in the sequel
as Cardinal Archbishop of Turin, is one of
those embodiments of duplicity and wicked-
ness which we might perhaps condemn as
overdrawn, (lid not authentic history furnish
too minay like monsters among the Romish
hierarchy ; and we are justified in believing
that worthiness was not a necessary condition
of the advancement of its members, on the
authority of Pope Pius V., who is said to have
exclaimed on his death-bed, " I had some
" hopes of salvation when I was in a low con-
" dition ; after I had been advanced to be a
" cardinal I greatly doubted it ; but since I
'• have come to be Pope I have no hope ut all."

The Swiss maiden left thus alone and un-
protected became the wife of Count Julien, a
soldier in the service of the illustrious Emma
nuel Philibert, and, though himself a Romanist,
her husband had respected her creed, and she
had brought up her daughters in the same
faith At her death the old count had thank-
fully accepted the invitation of the Duchess
of Savoy to place his motherless girls under
her protection, while the duties of his profes-
sion called him to join the expedition under
Don John of Austria which won its glorious
laurels at Lepanto. Beatrice, the younger of
the two sisters, becomes maid of honour to the
duchess, and is finally won over to renounce
her faith and be received into the Roman
Catholic communion, under the belief that by
so doing she will remove the only obstacle to
her union with a cavalier who has sought and
won her heart. We must refer our readers to
the book itself for the details of the atrocious
plot of which the poor girl is the victim : the
interest is admirably sustained, and reaches
its climax in a very striking scene when the
young convert publicly makes her profession,
and learns, ahnost at the same moment, that
the lover for whose sake alone she has taken
the final step is a monk, a tool of the wily
archbishop
While these events were passing at Turin,
the old count was living in peaceful retire
mcnt at Soleure with his elder daughter,
Marion. But a message reaches him which
excites alarm for his favorite child : he seta off