our century, will at least have something of
the charm of novelty for most American readers.
In Europe this lady was everywhere known, beloved by
many personal friends, and admired by all who
had read her works. Her thought was profound
and liberal, her views were broad and humane.
As an author, philanthropist, traveller, artist,
and one of the strongest advocates of freedom and
liberty for the oppressed of both sexes, and of
her suffering sisters especially, she was an
honour to the time and to womanhood. The
women of the old world found in her a powerful, sympathizing,
yet rational champion; just in her arguments in their
behalf, able in her statements of their needs, and
thoroughly interested in their elevation and improvement.
Her works embrace a vast range of thought, and show profound study and industry. The subjects are many. They number about twenty volumes on nationality, on social questions more than eight, on politics eighteen or twenty. Her travels fill fifteen books, and, beside all this, she wrote three romances, numerous letters and articles for the daily papers, and addresses to be read before various learned societies, of which she was an honoured member. M. Deschanel, the critic of the Journal des Debats, has said of her that “each one of her works would suffice for the reputation of a man.” As an artist, her paintings have been much admired. One of her books of travel, A Summer on the Banks of the Danube, has a drawing by its author, a view of Borcia in Roumania. From a notable exhibition at St. Petersburg she received a silver medal for two pictures called “The Pine” and “The Palm,” suggested to her by Heine’s beautiful little poem:
“A pine-tree sleeps
alone
On northern mountain-side;
Eternal stainless snows
Stretch round it far and wide.
“The pine dreams of
a palm
As lonely, sad, and still,
In glowing eastern clime
On burning, rocky hill.”
This princess was the idol of her native people, who called her, with the warm enthusiasm of their race, “The Star of Albania.” The learned and cultivated also did her homage. Named by Frederika Bremer and the Athenians, “The New Corinne,” she was invested by the Greeks with the citizenship of Greece for her efforts to assist the people of Candia to throw off the oppressor’s yoke, this being the first time this honour had ever been granted to a woman.
The catalogue of her writings fills several pages, the list of titles given her by learned societies nearly as many more and, while born a princess of an ancient race and by marriage one also, she counted these titles of rank as nothing compared with her working name, and was more widely known as Dora D’Istria than as the Princess Koltzoff Massalsky.
There is a romantic fascination about this woman’s life as brilliant as fiction, but more strange and remarkable in that it is