of a great part of the war and the famine, and two-thirds of the plague." Other objections to Manzoni's romance refer to its real or supposed tendencies, which leave its artistic merits unaffected. It may be granted that panegyrics upon Cardinal Federigo Borromeo, however just, were hardly seasonable when the Pope was the fast ally of the Austrian; and Manzoni did still worse by his country when (1819) he wrote a treatise on Catholic Morals, unexceptionable when there should be no more question of the Temporal Power. But he then cherished generous illusions which he was ultimately obliged to renounce; though never parting withffone of the leading and most remarkable features of I Promessi Sposi, its sympathy with the poor and lowly. It is a remarkable proof of the difficulties of style which beset the Italian author, that Manzoni found it necessary to give his romance a thorough revision to bring its diction nearer to the Tuscan standard. His other prose works comprise, the Column of Infamy, an historical appendix to I Promessi Sposi, Letters on Romanticism, an able polemic on behalf of the romantic school, and Letters on the Unities of Time and Place, demonstrating that the unity of action is the only unity which need be regarded by the dramatist.
The success of I Promessi Sposi could not but create a school of historical novelists in Italy, whose works probably effected more for the propagation of Italian literature beyond the Alps than those of any writer except Manzoni himself. The Marco Visconti of Tommaso Grossi, the Ettorre Fieramosca of Massimo d'Azeglio, the Margherita Pusterla of Cesare Cantù, are romances of great merit, but, as the author of one of them exclaims, "How far we are behind Manzoni!"
