A charming drive through the Casentino, or valley of the Upper Arno, showing us the aspect of a Tuscan valley very different from that of the Lower Arno, brought to an end an expedition which has always remained in my memory as one of the most delightful of my life.
I had much talk with George Eliot during the time--very short at Florence--when she was maturing her Italian novel, _Romola_.

Of course, I knew that she was digesting the acquisitions of each day with a view to writing; but I had not the slightest idea of the period to which her inquiries were specially directed, or of the nature of the work intended.

But when I read _Romola_, I was struck by the wonderful power of absorption manifested in every page of it.

The rapidity with which she squeezed out the essence and significance of a most complex period of history, and assimilated the net results of its many-sided phases, was truly marvellous.
Nevertheless, in drawing the girl Romola, her subjectivity has overpowered her objectivity.

Romola is not--could never have been--the product of the period and of the civilisation from which she is described as having issued.