The age-herald., 1898-11-20
IT SWNY6N RmnlrC Roman lnnOrtaliteS u WV AOVVuNAOooo ...ByF F. Marion
 Tho Bss st. of tss s.s.:s Strong ...Of The Week

F. Marion Crawford needs no introduction to an American audience, for no writer of the day is better known or appreciated. Those who are perfectly familiar with his Italian stories will readily concede that nc man Is better fitted, by training, by tenn perament and by association for the task of writing an authoritative work on Rome than is MT. Crawford. His story of Rome -"the most brilliant romance in all history lis unlike any of the numerous books that have been written about Rome. It is not merely a guide book to the sights and scenes of the Eternal City. though it con tains the best features of a guide book, nor Is it a mere chronicle of events, though notable also in this respect. MT. Crawford takes the fourteen different regions into which the city was divided in mediaeval times and runs rapidly over the history of the early days of the republic, of the em- pire and down to the present era. He de- scribes the characteristic buildings of each as they have been in different ages, and as we see them now, giving also the histories of the peoples who lived in them. For the Pope MT. Crawford has the highest admi- ration. Of his personal character, he says: ''Leo Tx probably appreciates as nearly such superiority as any great man now iv- ing As a statesman his abilities are ad- mitted to be of the highest order; scholar he is indisputably one of the first Latinists of our time; as a man he pos sesses the simplicity of character which al- most always accompanies greatness to- gether with a sobriety of temper, habit and individual taste rarely found in those be- fpp Uh yua oh terc, men,"
 Of course Rome as the residence of the Pope, not as the capital of Italy, is still the stronghold of a tremendous fact, and it is this interesting feature which has car ried the city's importance from the dark. turbulent days of the Caesars across the chasm of the Dark Ages to the present. Immortal .Rome-eternal with the secret shadows and stories more startling than any writer of fiction would dare to invent. The fascination of Rome, MT. Crawford informs us, "is variable, like the beauty of some most fascinating women. There are days and times when it seems hardly to exist at all. One walks along the Via Nazionale and looks up at the succeed houses, and glances at the cheap signs of the cheap shops, and resents the superla- tive VulBarlty or the people ne sees. The gaudy advertisements of poisonous drinks, the disquieting features of the overdressed men and women who drive by in over showy equippages. +' On such days, in the hour of ones discontent, the very air has an evil taste, the blue Roman sky has a dusty, colorless look and all artificial hues are offensive, so that one longs for the nobility of black and white universe. Perhaps the climate has special powers to call up these moods in man, as it has virtue, also, to soothe and charm him at other times The wind changes and blows softly from the west, the sun sinks to- wards the distant sea, the pale sky turns as blue as sapphire, and the swallows shoot down like the flight of thousand arrows from the lofty caves of an old f1 palace.'
 The book possesses a rare interest for the reader, which is emphasized by thirty full-page illustrations in photogravure, and hundred other illustrations which have been especially drawn for the text.
 sss
 It is interesting to watch the career of a young aspirant in litrary fields who wins his success by constant improvement and growth. Many authors, whose names come to mind readily, seem to spring into fame and full maturity with one bound. Gil- bert Parker, though, is a young writer who was not content with the praise and approval which was given his Seats of the Mighty" but has evidently been se- were critic of his own work. Where he found weak point in one he remedied the defect in the next. In "The Battle of the ond impression has already appeared. the first having been exhausted before publi- cation, there no interminable mono