Italy, who have always held that religion and patriotism are not incompatible and that the Church has most injured itself in prolonging the antagonism. In this respect, The Saint, like Uncle Tom's Cabin and similar books which crystallize an entire series of ideals or sum up a crisis, leaped immediately into importance, and seems certain to enjoy, for a long time to come, the prestige that crowns such works. Putting it on the Index can only add to its power.
VI
In conclusion, we go back to the book as a work of art, meaning by art not more artifice, but that power which takes the fleeting facts of life and endues them with permanence, order and beauty. In this sense, Signor Fogazzaro is a great artist, he has the gift of the masters, which enables him to rise without effort to the level of the tragic crises. He has also a vein of humour, without which such a theme as his could hardly be successfully handled. And although there is, by measure, much serious talk, yet so skilfully does he bring in minor characters with their transient side-lights, that the total impression is that of a book in which much happens. No realist could exceed the fidelity with which Signor Fogazzaro outlines a landscape, or fixes a passing scene; yet being an idealist through and through, he has produced a masterpiece in which the imagination is supreme.
Such a book, sprung from "no vain or shallow thought," holding in solution the hopes of many earnest souls, spreading before us the mighty spiritual conflict between mediaevalism still triumphant and the young undaunted Powers of Light, showing us with wonderful lifelikeness the tragedy of man's
