Francesca Varini is described with an exactitude which defines her peculiar charms and traits to any reader who has fondly noted the modifications of female beauty and character incident to race and locality in Italy; and old Marta Varini is such a stoical, acute, and persistent woman as signalized the days of the Carbonari; while Stella and Madalina are local heroines with characteristic national traits. In "Beppo the Conscript" we are transported to "the narrow strip of territory shut in between the Apennines and the Adriatic, to the south of Bologna and the north of Ancona," where European civilization once centred, Tasso sung and raved, and the Dukes of Urbino flourished. But not to revive their past glories are we beguiled to the decayed old city of Fano, and the umbrageous valleys that nestle amid the surrounding hills; it is the normal, primitive, agricultural life and economy of the region, and the late political and social condition of the inhabitants, which this story illustrates. The means and methods of rural toil,--the "wine, corn, and oil" of Scriptural and Virgilian times; the avarice, the pride, the love, the industry, and the superstition of the _Contadini_ of the Romagna; a household of prosperous rustics, their ways and traits; and the subtle and prevailing agency of priest-craft in its secret opposition to the new and liberal Italian government,--are all exhibited with a quiet zest and a graphic fidelity which take us into the heart of the people, and the arcana, as well as the spectacle, of daily life as there latent and manifest. The domestic, peasant, and provincial scenes and characters are drawn with fresh and natural colors and faithful outlines.