Notwithstanding his innate hospitality, the Arab has the greatest possible objection to having his home pried into by those of another land and creed.  Whenever, therefore, a European lady called on us, the enormous circumference of her hoops (which were the fashion then, and took up the entire width of the stairs) was the first thing to strike us dumb with wonder; after which, the very meagre conversation generally confined itself on both sides to the mysteries of different costumes; and the lady retired as wise as she was when she came, after having been sprinkled over with attar of roses, and being the richer for some parting presents.  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