Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/878

 868 Revieius of Books conditions of the sea-cit_v invite an original and sparkling treatment, suffers from the mental monotony which spreads its shadow over the rest of the book. Looseness of thought usually breeds carelessness of speech. In the chapter on art (chapter xii.) no distinction is made between Roman and Romanesque, and the term Gothic is treated like a conversational stop-gap of no definite intellectual value. In this chapter, too, Mr. Molmenti yields with more than usual frequency to his preference for long lists of names about as interesting as a page of the city directory (pp. 107, 114), but it is a pleasure to report that his story of the construction of the ducal palace and the Ca' d'Oro has intrinsic if not literary worth. Many passages could be enumerated which furnish proof of knowl- edge and of' patient research : such are the notes on Venice as seen by rivals and contemporaries (pp. 88-92), the description of Venetian cos- tume (chapter ix.), and the history erf letters, with regard to which the author attempts to palliate the meagre results attained by the republic (chapter xiii.) ; but this and much besides does not suffice to rescue the work from its besetting sins of heaviness, disorder, and lack of significance. Why this bootless discussion as to whether the rich or the poor fled to the lagoons (p. 16) when we have practically no cer- tain information of any kind about the early settlements ? Miat are we to think in a book dealing with facts, of the many vapid deductions of which the following may serve as an example : " It is clear that an agglomeration of people . . . could not have held together during the preceding centuries . . . unless they had had to guide them a code that was both fixed and written " (p. 98). This to American and Eng- lish readers acquainted with states which have held together for cen- turies in spite of the deplorable lack of a code " both fixed and written " ! Of course it is only the matter for which Mr. Molmenti is personally responsible; conceivably in its original tongue the book is not the dreary waste it proves to be in the translation. In Mr. Horatio F. Brown of the title page it is hard to recognize the accomplished author of an earlier history of the Republic of St. Mark. Certainly in his original works he has not permitted himself to indulge in the mixed metaphors and loose periods which are found on almost every page of the translation. The chapter conclusions (c. g.. vol. II., p. 175) culmi- nate in flights of rhetoric truly Icarian in their daring as well as in their issue. We hope that the four additional volumes which the publisher announces will show a desire to remedy some of the shortcomings of the present installment. Ferdin.^nd Schwill.