"LIFE IN MODERN ITALY."

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14566, 31 December 1910, Page 4 (Supplement)

"LIFE IN MODERN ITALY."

"The House of Serravaixe," by Richard Bagot (Methuen, London),, relates how a yo-ang Englishman becomes secretary to an Italian nobleman of vast possessions. Once in Italy, the Englishman finds himself the centre of a series of plots aimed at his employer life by a. mysterious and evil-minded priest, who hast gained an extraordinary .power over the mind of the Duca di Monteleone. In the effort to defeat these plots Walter Heron becomes aware of" the deep underlying problems created by the nature of the c uke's past lite. For the real heir to the, dukedom is a. lad originally supposed to be illegitimate, The interest of t? j story increases gradually in the telling till we have a very stirring narrative of hair-raising events. The style, which is curiously oldfashioned, proceeds by innumerable details of domestic life, even descending so far as to tell us of the soaps and essences used in their baths by the characters. The main value of the book lies not in the story, but in the incidental pictures it paints of the present condition of the Italian peasantry, of the evils of the system of fraud practised by the priests, and of the true character of Italian conscription. This book, in fact, explains the meaning of southern Anti-Cleri-calism, and of the southern dread of military autocracy. For that, if for nothing else, it is worth reading.