The bloody and sometimes bestial passions of the Renais- sance
come to life in these vivid volumes of Signor Corrado Ricci, about that " beautiful parricide " Beatrice Cenci (Heinemann, 2 vols., 32s.) and her death, on one of those " stifling, enervating mornings that come in a Roman Sep- tember." Her brother Giacomo had been " torn " after the terrible manner of the time with red-hot pincers before he paid the last penalty. Her sister Luerezia, upborne by the Com- forters of St. John the Beheaded, was decapitated before her eyes. Then Beatrice laid her pretty head on the block, and when it fell severed the populace heaped it with flowers. Italy of the seventeenth century had its very seamy side. Reading of these wickednesses and violences makes us grateful for living when we do ; it makes us, also, wonder whether such probing into the details of the past is worth while. Will posterity one day review our times in the light of wretched Mrs. Thompson's execution 1'
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