St. Paul daily globe., 1895-12-15

Sister Maria Addolorota, abbeSs OF
the Carmelite convent of Subiaco,
daughter of the house of Braccio, a
beautiful woman with an angel S
voice He persuades her to elope with
him. On the evening of their flight
Annetta, daughter OF Stefanone, the
peasant with whom Dalrymple lodges,
swallows poison by accident in Dali
rymple's laboratory. He carries her
body to the convent, places it in the
nuns cell and fires the room before
they depart. Thus the sisters believe
their abbess has been burned to
death, and Stefanone believes his
daughter has been carried away by
Dalrymple. After a few years of
sacrilegious happiness, his wife dies,
and Dalrymple returns to Rome with
their daughter Gloria, who is undls-
cipllned to the verge Of hysteria, and
endowed with her mothers glorious
voice. She marries an Italian artist,
Reanda, with whom she fancies her,
self unhappy, and leaves him for
Paul Griggs, whom, however, she
does not love. She kills herself, Re-
anGa dies, but not without sending
Griggs a packet of letters full of
abject alteration and regret that
Gloria had written to her husband
after her flight. To Griggs, who had
worshiped and trusted her absolute
ly, the letters are more cruel blow
than her death. Stefanone, who has
waited long for vengeance, stabs Dali
rymple as he kneels in st. Peters,
and the story ends.
Such a plot gives tremendous
scope for Mr.. Crawford's dramatic
ability, and he rises to the oppor-
tunity. Its distinct ethical intent is
a new quality in Mr.. Crawford's
work. The flight of the Scotchman
and the abbess is treated throughout
as a sacrilege, which is the direct
cause of all the succeeding trage-
dies, and the writer produces some
thing of the effect of inevitability
which accompanies Greek tragedy.
And vet the reader suspects that,
after all, Mr. Crawford would rather
tell us about the sins of the first
generation, than the punish
ment of the second. Certainly the
chapters which deal with the love
and flight of Angus Dalrymple and
Sister Maria Addolorata are the
strongest and best things in a book
which is full of strong and good
work. There are some writer's who
are so constituted that they can only
see a subject in it's ethical aspect
Mrs. Ward is the most convenient
example-while there are others,
among whom Mr.. Crawford is chief,
whose insight is primarily dramatic,
and to whom the ethical point of
view must forever be of secondary
Importance The former add more
to the wisdom of the world, the lat
ter to it's delight. May Mr.. Craw-
ford confine himself to his speciality
hereafter, and give us many more
such firmly-wrought tales of pas
sion and vengeance, steel and flame,
as casa Braccio."
("Casa Braccio." By F. Marion CraW-
ford. New York. Macmillan q 60.
volumes 81. For sale by the st;
Paul Book and Stationery Company
"The British Barbarians,' by
Grant Allen, is a hilltop novel.
that is, says Mr.. Allen, zone of my
stories which I write of my own ac-
cord, simply and solely for the sake
of embodying and enforcing my own
opinions. Whatever one may think
of Mr.. Grants opinions-and it is,
of course, impossible to esteem both
the golden rule and the apostle of
the New Hedonism 1T is a relief
to know that he has stopped writ
ing such novels as he wrote of yore-
yapid, tiresome and unreal, the most
offensive variety of pot boilers, in
fact. THE British Barbarians" has
the merit of being Interestingly writ
ten, which nowadays excuses many
things otherwise ineXcusable. 1t also
is the third of the novels of the sea
son which seeks to furnish an outside
view of human society. A man who
belongs to the twenty-fffth century