A. C. McCLURG & CO., Publishers,
Cor. Wabash Ave. and Madison St., Chicago.
MONK AND KNIGHT.
An Historical Study in Fiction.
By the Rev. Dr. F. W. Gunsaulus.
Two Vols. 12mo, 707 pages. Price, $2.50.
This work is one that challenges attention for its ambitious character and its high aim. It is an historical novel,—or, rather, as the author prefers to call it, "An Historical Study in Fiction." It is the result of long and careful study of the period of which it treats, and hence is the product of genuine sympathies and a freshly-fired imagination. The field is Europe, and the period is the beginning of the sixteenth century,—a time when the fading glow of the later Renaissance is giving place to the brighter glories of the dawning Reformation.
The book deals, in a broad sense, with the grand theme of the progress of intellectual liberty. Many of its characters are well-known historical personages,—such as Erasmus, Sir Thomas More, Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII. of England, Francis I. of France, the disturbing monk Martin Luther, and the magnificent Pope Leo X.; other characters are of course fictitious, introduced to give proper play to the author's fancy and to form a suitable framework for the story.
Interwoven with the more solid fabric are gleaming threads of romance; and bright bits of description and glows of sentiment relieve the more sombre coloring. The memorable meeting of the French and English monarchs on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, with its gorgeous pageantry of knights and steeds and silken banners, and all the glitter and charm of chivalry, furnish material for several chapters, in which the author's descriptive powers are put to the severest test; while the Waldensian heroes in their mountain homes, resisting the persecutions of their religious foes, afford some thrilling and dramatic situations.