Daily Kennebec journal., 1905-12-11
BY A MAINE WOMAN.
A Remarkable Book. "ltaly, Her Peo-
pie and Their Story"

Everyone who read Mrs. Augusta
Hale Giflord's "Gernany; Her People
and TheiI story" can imagine what a
wealth of treasure this brilliant Maine
woman has been able to write into her
newest work, Italy: Her People and
Their Story" recently from the press
of the I1OthrOp Publishing Company of
Boston. Everybody in New England
knows Mrs. Clifford as Il member of an
old Maine family, for many years a
| resident of Cumberland County. and
the wife of the Hon. George Clifford
American Consul at Basle. Switzerland
Mrs. Gifford's latest work contains a
singularly graceful dedication in which
she pays tribute to her husband. from
whose genius she received her earliest
literary aspirations"
We who know Italy a little where
Mrs. Clifford knows it so well-and in
deed any general reader who has
sought for book in which the WONDER
full history of the italian Peninsula
might be adequately outlined, know
that this volume from the Lothrop
press does indeed fill a want which has
very long been felt. The least search
of the best American libraries reveals
| the tdearth; and Mrs. Gifford's book
comes to us al the very time when the
whole trend of European affairs turns
our attention markedly toward Italy.
anc gives; us desire to know more in
timately Of This people, and tC throw
the significant light of the past upon
| the great deeds which are being accom-
plished on this soil in the present. No
people in the wOrld-not even the
japanese, have made such advances as
the Italians have in the past forty
years; no other people have attained
national unity against such peculiarly
powerful odds; other country, it
seems to me. so fdscinates the atten-
ton of the American observer, himself
alive to the vast achievement of his
own natiOn since 1916. A study of the
| past history of this Peninsula. of the
| warning elements which made it their
battle-ground, of the jealous ambitions
Whlch coveted its riches, of the con-
temptuous disregard which once de-
clared Italy is nothing more than a
geographical expression and of the
dlSunlon bred into it's very blood by
the cruelties and expressions of those
to whom it was variOusly subjectcd-a
| study of such previous conditions
makes us wonder, with a very growing
amaze1nent. that in the forty years
since Garibaldi this has become a
| united People invested with the true
dignity and the true enthusiasm of n
normal national life.
| IhlS is the work to which Mrs. Gif-
| 1ord Dent her pen i'm "ItaIy; Her PeO-
pie and Their Story With a toucb
az once faithful and exquiSitely ap-
preclative, she tells us of the begin
| hlhg, rise. development and progress of
| Italy from the time of ROmulus to that
| oi victor Emanuel Third-a work truly
| marvellous in scope. infinit> i'm depth.
| brilliant in its scientific exactitude and
SO simple in its style and plan that its
appeal is felt by every member Of the
| house and its message delivered alike
| 10 every one. The book is in two
| parts, the one for the ancient and the
other for the modern story. Thus the
author gives us all the strangely enter
| tanning history of the former great
| days of Rome and Rome's dependents.
| and. again, the downfall of the Leonine
| CITY, the disinteeratiOn of the PENN
| sular peoples, the stirring romances of
/ '''N tHc tkcltlfS DOiItlc3I
revivals, the development of the spirit
OF liberty. the gradual concentration of
forces and the birth of the nation.
And through it all there is the intangi-
| Bile touch of genius which alone rem
| ders historical writing worth the read
| ing, and the invariable. though by no
\ means intentionally obvious en-
phasis of the human side which after
all is what we want history for. Mrs.
| Clifford has given us, therefore, ancient
history in that new light which dis
| closes more clearly than any book T
know its vital relation to the present:
and has revealed the modern outcomes
| OF the ancient to us with a store of in
| formation never before seen in the
| English language. At once writing
with the eXactitude Of Macaulay and
| the sparkling vivacity of John Fjske
She has rendered to every student and
to every school in which the English
| tongue is the medium of instruction. a
most uncommon benefit.
L think few Americans, certainly few
among the hundreds l have met in
Italy, have any clear conception Of the
real meaning of the national develop-
ment of these people. If it is truo that
IN America we have misjudged the
, many by the few, have remembered the