The Dogaressa. By W. G. Melmonti. Translated by Clare. Brune.
(Remington and Co.)—Melmonti, besides giving us an interesting sketch of the Dogaressa (i.e., the Doge's wife), has also drawn with a powerful and spirited pen, a sad and splendid picture of Venice, the Venice of which Faber of Ulm said in the fourteenth century, " Nihil mirabilius, nihil curiosius ;" and our own Byron," The city resembles a dream, its story a romance." The earlz, Venetian women were of that modest and simple character which befitted their troubled surroundings. It is not until the fifteenth century, when the Republic reached its meridian of power, that women often appear in its chronicles. Exceptions there are. The first dogaressa we hear of, the wife of Orbelerio (804), is supposed to have had a somewhat partial leaning towards the French and King Pepin. Gueldrada, the wife of the unfortunate Peter Candiano IV. (966), played an important part in Venetian history till her revengeful hatred was pacified. Another dogaressa, Theodora, brought the luxury of the Byzantine Empire to Venice, and her death from a cancerous disease seemed to the Venetians the just punishment of Heaven on the woman who bathed in per- fumes and conveyed food to her mouth with a golden fork. Yet another, Felicia Michiele, saw the opening of Urban's crusade (1095), and the beginning of the age of chivalry, heralding those gorgeous pageants in Venice which astonished Europe. While the state and magnificence of the dogaressa increased, so also did the various promissiona defining her province, and the gifts she might receive, which were only those ad eornedendum. The corona- tion festivities of three dogaresse, Zilia Priuli, Morosina Grimani, and lastly Morosina Morosini, were the most gorgeous cere- monials that Venice had ever seen. Venice did not forget her heroes ; the widow of Viniero, the hero of Lepanto, received an allowance to keep up her dignity. The last dogaressa, elected in 1789, retired, revered, into private life on the fall of the Republic in 1797. If the dogaresse never reached the intellectual eminence of a Gonzaga or a D'Este, they never fell into the viciousness of a Borgia. Melmonti has certainly succeeded in " compelling history to give a just and worthy idea of the customs and manners of a people" surrounded by romance and eminently picturesque.
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