The Italian _novella_, of course, admits wild passions and extravagant crimes: but the general tone of it is _bourgeois_--at any rate domestic.

With its great number of situations and motives, presented in miniature, careful work is necessary to bring out the effect: and, above all, there is abundant room for study of manners, for proverbial and popular wisdom and witticism, for "furniture"-- to use that word in a wide sense.

Above all, the Italian mind, like the Greek, had an ethical twist--twist in more senses than one, some would say, but that does not matter.

Manners, morals, motives--these three could not but displace, to some extent, mere incident: though there was generally incident of a poignant or piquant kind as well.

In other words the _novella_ was actually (though still in miniature) a novel in nature as well as in name.