322 MORE POT-POURRI 



strong literary contrast has only to take up afterwards 

 Paul Bourget's 'Sensations d'ltalie' (published in 1891, 

 and dedicated to Robert Lord Lytton by his affectionate 

 friend and admirer) and his most daintily illustrated 

 little gem called 'Un Saint,' published in 1894. Here 

 the forty years have indeed altered sentiment, feeling, 

 aspiration, and description. Both are French ; I prefer 

 the Bourget. 



The famous 'Voyage en Italie' by H. Taine (1866) 

 is literature of a much more serious kind. It is descrip- 

 tive rather than critical in the modern sense, and the 

 chapter ' La Peinture Florentine' should be read by any- 

 one seriously interested in the Florence galleries. It 

 contains an enlightened sentence on the famous Venus 

 de' Medici, forcing one to remember what so many for- 

 getthat the arms were a restoration by Bernini, and 

 are very likely the cause of much that fails to please in 

 this statue. What he says of the galleries are only 

 slight sketches, but these are by the hand of a master. 

 The end of the second volume is Venice ; the first vol- 

 ume is Rome. 



'The Makers of Florence,' by Mrs. Oliphant, is a 

 most helpful book and one of her best. It should be 

 read, I think, before the more detailed ' Life and Times 

 of Savonarola,' by Professor Pasquale Villari, as the mind 

 then will be in a more receptive condition for absorbing 

 the greater detail of the larger book. It is almost in- 

 conceivable that Savonarola's skull formation should 

 have been as low as it is represented in the portrait re- 

 produced in this book of Mrs. Oliphant' s, with the head 

 covered with his Dominican cowl. 



' The Life and Times of Savonarola' by Villari, trans- 

 lated as it is into English by his wife, has been lately 

 republished in a cheap edition by Fisher Unwin. 



Signora Villari has also written a pretty little book 



