3 i6 MORE POT-POURRI 



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 volume is Kome. 



' 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 incon- 

 ceivable that Savonarola's skull formation should have 

 been as low as it is represented in the portrait reproduced 

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

 with his Dominican cowl. 



' The Life and Times of Savonarola ' by Villari, 

 translated 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 of 

 her own, called ' On Tuscan Hills and Venetian Waters.' 



I have long had that amusing classic, the ' Memoirs of 

 Benvenuto Cellini ' by himself, translated by Thomas 

 Roscoe (1823), on the title-page of which is a saying of 

 Horace Walpole's : ' Cellini was one of the most extra- 

 ordinary men of an extraordinary age. His Life, written 

 by himself, is more amusing than any novel I know.' 

 This book was again translated into English by John 

 Addington Symonds, and published in 1888. It is 

 pleasanter reading than Eoscoe's, but the engraved 

 portrait in the old book is infinitely better than in the new. 



I found Symonds 's ' Life of Michael Angelo ' a book of 

 rare interest. Symonds is often criticised for inaccuracy 

 of detail. The same accusation is always brought against 

 Froude ; but both writers have a power of popularising 

 information which, joined to their gift for vivid description, 

 make one live in the past, in spite of the atmosphere of 

 modern thought through which they present it. 



