HEROINES OF GENOA.*
MR. EDGCUMBE STALEY'S knowledge of the history, art, and literature of Italy is wide, if not deep. He has written at least one book on the subject which is of real value—we refer to his work on The Guilds of Florence—and all his Italian studies show both industry in research and a pleasantly enthusiastic spirit, the effect of which, it must, however, be added, is sometimes marred by language too ornate and a taste not always faultless.
In Heroines of Genoa Mr. Staley is pursuing a path on which he entered two or three years ago, and which leads him through a land of romance where a wonderful crop of stories is to be gleaned; stories based on truth, of course, but borrowing much of their light and colour from the gossips,. tale-writers and poets of old time, not to mention their modern editor. The present volume owes even more than its predecessors to this decorative and imaginative process, and evidently the materials for it mast have been collected' with more difficulty. The ladies of Florence and of Venice, great in fame and dignity, the loves of the Medici, the wives of the Doges, stand out on the surface of history in much more familiar and distinguished fashion than most of those who are here celebrated as the heroines of Genoa. Yet the citta superba had some amazing beauties and some devoted saints among the women of her centuries of pride. The fame of Simonetta Cattaneo and Caterina Fiesta lived • Heroines of Genoa and the Riviera': By Edgenmbe Staley, author of " Tragedies of the Medici," &c. Illustrated. London: T. Werner Laurie. [12s. 6d. net.] side by side with that of the fearless, restless, courageous band, led by Madonna Marietta Grimaldi, whose darling desire was to perfect themselves in manly exercises and to organise a crusade of their own for the rescue of the Holy Places. And they would have carried it out, in the year 1400, but for the wise discouragement of Pope Boniface VII. All their story is very picturesquely told by Mr. Staley. He goes on from the Crusades and the various episodes of war by land and sea which built up Genoa's fortunes, and in which the courage and self-sacrifice of Genoa's women bore a great part, to the home life of the city, the crafts and guilds on which her mercantile greatness depended.
All sorts of curious and romantic figures emerge from this chronicle; but, like that of Venice, the moral character of Genoa, the real foundation of her glory, weakened and failed in the prosperous days of riches, grandeur, and luxury. The tale of the Dories ie as tragic as it is splendid, and in the whole of Genoese history there is no more pathetic figure than that of one of their victims in the struggle with their rivals the Fieschi, the lovely young Countess Leonora, whom the ambitious hopes of her mother and her relatives saw crowned as Queen of Liguria.
Most interesting details of the social life of the Genoese women are to be found in the chapters called " Villas, Villa-gardens, and their Company " and " Riviera Romances." In this we are led wandering along both Rivieras, Ponente and Levante, for a considerable distance on each side of Genoa —roughly speaking, from Monaco to Lerici—and are pleasantly reminded of stories differing so far as that of Sant'Agnese and her Saracen lover, and that of the heroic Maria and Caterina Avenga of Camogli, who ventured their lives to save British soldiers from the wreck of the Croesus ' in 1855; thus showing that the women of Liguria have not lost the gallant spirit which moved Marietta Grimaldi and her com- panions of old.
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