Serao shows us Rome in _Lettere d’una Viaggiatrice_, a splendid piece of the kind of resonant prose, she only knew how to make. Goethe’s pictures in letters to friends in Germany, and in that remarkable verse-sequence, _Die Römische Elegien_, and Winklemann’s _Rome_, cold, plastic, devoid of color. I refer to what Winklemann called his _little writings_ of Greek and Roman art, and the majestic, almost too glorious Rome of d’Annunzio. It is interesting to follow reactions of such people of power as these to the call of the Eternal City. In the opening lines of d’Annunzio’s _Il Piacere_, there are sentences so luxurious, silken, they remind me of rich reflections upon old Venetian velvet. Loti, accomplished _savoureur_ of all that was exquisite in space or in time, steered carefully from Rome the Mighty. Rome, divine and immortal, lured the immortals. Other superb cities have known and felt the magic of his art. But Rome he left untouched. Edward Lucas White’s novel of Rome, _Andivius Hedulio_, is a moving-picture scenario printed in book form. It is a large and attractive skeleton, wearing a little more flesh than skeletons in good society have been in the habit of wearing, even in New York. The most brilliant author’s introductions I know are those Nietzsche, Poet of Philosophy, has written for books of his epoch-making thinking. No one has been able to throw surer, more far-reaching noose over the problematical future. His _Jenseits v. Gut u. Böse_ he called philosophy of the future. That is daring. It may be true. It is conceivable at least, a world in which good and evil, as we understand them, may not be standardized. Life cast huge shadows for Nietzsche, like childhood’s flickering fireplace-shadows, on the wall. His philosophy is these stalking shadows, terrifying sometimes, astonishing and always superhuman, these shadows of men who live. Truth does not stand still and let us build clean, white, picket fences around it, and label it _Exhibit A_. It changes, takes new forms, under new suns. There is nothing fixed, eternal, except the pitiful drama of man, and the hopeless hope in his heart. It may be real; at the same time, it is unstable as the sea. It would not be easy to be happy, even keep sane, and look upon existence with the scorn with which Nietzsche viewed it. A bitter, laughing tongue with deadly penetrating power, was his. As the French Revolution cleared the air for different social, economical living, the philosophy of Nietzsche (by surprising power to destroy), helps clear the atmosphere for less prejudiced thinking.