Of the after-life little is told us, but little needed to be told. We
have followed Romola thus far with dulled intelligence of mind and soul
if we cannot picture it clearly and certainly for ourselves. Love that
never falters, patience that never questions, meekness that never fails,
truth clear and still as the light of heaven, devotedness that knows no
thought of self, a life flowing calmly on through whatever of sorrow and
disappointment may remain toward the perfect purity and blessedness of
heaven. Few, we think, can carefully study the character and development
of Romola del Bardo and refuse to endorse the verdict that Imagination
has given us no figure more rounded and complete in every grace and glory
of feminine loveliness.
The sensational fiction of the day has laboured hard in the production of
great criminals; but it has produced no human being so vitally debased,
no nature so utterly loathsome, no soul so hopelessly lost, as the
handsome, smiling, accomplished, popular, viceless Greek, Tito Melema.
Yet is he the very reverse of what is called a monster of iniquity.
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