LADY BLUNT'S REMINISCENCES.*
THE writer of these reminiscences had perhaps the greatest good fortune that can fall to any man or woman—a full and varied life, enjoyed to the finger-tips, in a corner of the world that teems with interest, in the society of vital folk of her own race, and in close association with aliens, whose stimulation of her intellectual curiosity produced, forty years ago, the book entitled Tke People of Turkey. Lady Blunt spent the greater part of her life in the Near East. The record here set down goes back to the Crimean War—Lady Blunt attended her first ball in Constantinople in 1856—and includes an account of Consular work in Uskub at the close of that decade ; of Albanian brigands ; of a journey with Turkish ladies to Vienna ; a de- scription of Salonika in the late " seventies " ; of Creek free- booters, and excavations at Troy ; of Sultans Aziz and Abdul Humid—the latter bestowed upon Lady Blunt the Order of Virtue; of an attempt to make Mr. Gladstone see that them were two sides to the Turkish Question (an attempt received with politely veiled resentment) ; of Austrian men-of-war in the latter "eighties"; of the Young Turkey Party of that era; of meetings in Egypt with Lord Wolseley, General Kitchener, Sloths Pasha, and Khedive Ismail ; of the Jubilee, 1807 ; of the Greco-Turkish War of that year ; of Canca in the year following ; of the Germans in Constantinople ; of Sophia and Belgrade, and of Boston at the does of last century. The result is a book which will please both the deliberate reader and the fugitive dipper into literature. Space forbids us the pleasure of quotation, to show that Lady Blunt has a fluent pen, and a pleasant manner based on clearness of mind, capacity to visualize and to remember, and on a lively interest in men, places, and affairs. She was thrown much into contact with the men of the Senior Service. She loved the Navy, and it returned her affection in full measme for that reason this cheerful and informing volume is inscribed "To my 'Extraordinary Nephews,' and my many friends in the British Navy." Among the lads of parts and promise who aforetime claimed this title of kinship were Sir Rosalyn Wemyss, Sir Stanley Colville, A. W. Weymouth, Mark Kerr, and Captains Sir Douglas Brownrigg and Cecil M. Staveley, and many others. " It gladdens my heart to see these young fellows come in now and again, with an extra stripe or two on their sleeves, and I feel proud and full of gratitude as they bend down and embrace me, and say in voices of genuine affection, Dear Old Aunt Fanny.' "
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