“A tale of sorrow that has lain long in a rich mind, like a ruin in a fertile country, and is not the less gravely impressive for the grace and beauty of its coverings ... at the same time the most determined novel-reader could desire no work more fascinating over which to forget the flight of time.... No sketch of foreign oppression has ever, we believe, been submitted to the English public by a foreigner, equal or nearly equal to this volume in literary merit. It is not unworthy to be ranked among contemporary works whose season is the century in which their authors live.”—London Examiner.
“The book should be as extensively read as ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ inasmuch as it develops the existence of a state of slavery and degradation, worse even than that which Mrs. Beecher Stowe has elucidated with so much pathos and feeling.”—Bell’s Weekly Messenger.
“Few works of the season will be read with greater pleasure than this; there is a great charm in the quiet, natural way in which the story is told.”—London Atlas.
“The author’s great forte is character-painting. This portraiture is accomplished with remarkable skill, the traits both individual and national being marked with great nicety without obtrusiveness.”—London Spectator.
“Under the modest guise of the biography of an imaginary ‘Lorenzo Benoni,’ we have here, in fact, the memoir of a man whose name could not be pronounced in certain parts of northern Italy without calling up tragic yet noble historical recollections ... its merits, simply as a work of literary art, are of a very high order. The style is really beautiful—easy, sprightly, graceful, and full of the happiest and most ingenious turns of phrase and fancy.”—North British Review.
“This has been not unjustly compared to ‘Gil Blas,’ to which it is scarcely inferior in spirited delineations of human character, and in the variety of events which it relates. But as a description of actual occurrences illustrating the domestic and political condition of Italy, at a period fraught with interest to all classes of readers, it far transcends in importance any work of mere fiction.”—Dublin Evening Mail.
Memoirs of a Distinguished Financier.
FIFTY YEARS