It is true she had entered a harem; she
had seen the much-pitied Oriental ladies (though only through their
veils); she had with her own eyes seen our dresses, our jewellery, the
nimbleness with which we sat down on the floor--and that was all. She
could not boast of having seen more than any other foreign lady who
had called before her. She is conducted upstairs and downstairs, and
is watched all the time. Rarely she sees more than the
reception-room, and more rarely still can she guess or find out who
the veiled lady is with whom she conversed. In short, she has had no
opportunity whatsoever of learning anything of domestic life, or the
position of Eastern women.

No one who is interested in the social position of women in the East
should fail to read these pleasantly-written memoirs. The Princess is
herself a woman of high culture, and the story of her life is as
instructive as history and as fascinating as fiction.

* * * * *

Mrs. Oliphant's Makers of Venice is an admirable literary pendant to the
same writer's charming book on Florence, though there is a wide
difference between the beautiful Tuscan city and the sea-city of the
Adriatic. Florence, as Mrs. Oliphant points out, is a city full of
memories of the great figures of the past. The traveller cannot pass
along her streets without treading in the very traces of Dante, without
stepping on soil made memorable by footprints never to be effaced. The
greatness of the surroundings, the palaces, churches, and frowning
mediaeval castles in the midst of the city, are all thrown into the
background by the greatness, the individuality, the living power and
vigour of the men who are their originators, and at the same time their
inspiring soul. But when we turn to Venice the effect is very different.
We do not think of the makers of that marvellous city, but rather of what
they made. The idealised image of Venice herself meets us everywhere.
The mother is not overshadowed by the too great glory of any of her sons.
In her records the city is everything--the republic, the worshipped ideal
of a community in which every man for the common glory seems to have been
willing to sink his own. We know that Dante stood within the red walls
of the arsenal, and saw the galleys making and mending, and the pitch
flaming up to heaven; Petrarch came to visit the great Mistress of the
Sea, taking refuge there, 'in this city, true home of the human race,'
from trouble, war and pestilence outside; and Byron, with his facile
enthusiasms and fervent eloquence, made his home for a time in one of the
stately, decaying palaces; but with these exceptions no great poet has
ever associated himself with the life of Venice. She had architects,
sculptors and painters, but no singer of her own. The arts through which
she gave her message to the world were visible and imitative. Mrs.
Oliphant, in her bright, picturesque style, tells the story of Venice
pleasantly and well. Her account of the two Bellinis is especially
charming; and the chapters on Titian and Tintoret are admirably written.