The Italy of the ancient Romans is a
foreign country to us, and must always continue so; but the Italy of
the Middle Ages is nearer, not so much in time, as because there is no
impassable rift of religious faith, and consequently of ideas and
motives, between us and it. Far enough away in the centuries to be
picturesque, it is near enough in the sympathy of belief and thought to
be thoroughly intelligible. The chapter on the Brotherhood of the
Misericordia at Florence is remarkably interesting, and the coincidence
which Mr. Norton points out in a note between the circumstances which
led to its foundation and those in which a somewhat similar society
originated in California so lately as 1859 is not only curious, but
pleasant, as showing that there is a natural piety proper to man in all
ages alike. In his account of the building of the Cathedral of Orvieto,
and his notices of Rome as it was when Dante and Petrarch saw it, Mr.
Norton has struck a rich vein, which we hope he will find time to work
more thoroughly hereafter. By the essential fairness of his mind, his
patience in investigation, and his sympathy with what is noble in
character and morally influential in events, he seems to us peculiarly
fitted for that middle ground occupied by the historical essayist, to
whom literature is something cooerdinate with politics, and who finds a
great book more eventful than a small battle.
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