all sober truth—­nay, to her much of it was even sad reality.  Her career was a glorious one, but lonely as the position of her pictured palm-tree, and oftentimes only upheld by her own consciousness of the right; she has felt the trials of minds isolated by greatness.  Singularly gifted by nature with both mental and physical, as well as social superiority, the Princess united in an unusual degree masculine strength of character, grasp of thought, philosophical calmness, love of study and research, joined to an ardent and impassioned love of the grand, the true, and the beautiful.  She had the grace and tenderness of the most sensitive of women, added to mental endowments rare in a man.  Her beauty, which had been remarkable, was the result of perfect health, careful training, and an active nature.  Her physical training made her a fearless swimmer, a bold rider, and an excellent walker—­all of which greatly added to her active habits and powers of observation in travelling, for she travelled much.  Only a person of uncommon bodily vigour can so enjoy nature in her wildest moods and grandest aspects.

This quotation is from a long article which Mrs. Grace L. Oliver, of Boston, published in an early number of Scribner’s Magazine.  I never had known of the existence of this learned, accomplished woman, but after reading this article I ventured to ask her to send me the material for a lecture and she responded most generously, sending books, many sketches of her career, full lists of the subjects which had most interested her, poems addressed to her as if she were a goddess, and the pictures she added proved her to have been certainly very beautiful.  “She looked like Venus and spoke like Minerva.”

My audience was greatly interested.  She was as new to them as to me and all she had donated was handed round to an eager crowd.  In about six months I saw in the papers that Dora D’Istria was taking a long trip to America to meet Mrs. Oliver, Edison, Longfellow, and myself!

I called on her later at a seashore hotel near Boston.  She had just finished her lunch, and said she had been enjoying for the first time boiled corn on the cob.  She was sitting on the piazza, rather shabbily dressed, her skirt decidedly travel-stained.  Traces of the butter used on the corn were visible about her mouth and she was smoking a large and very strong cigar, a sight not so common at that time in this country.  A rocking chair was to her a delightful novelty and she had already bought six large rocking chairs of wickerwork.  She was sitting in one and busily swaying back and forward and said:  “Here I do repose myself and I take these chairs home with me and when de gentlemen and de ladies do come to see me in Florence, I do show them how to repose themselves.”

Suddenly she looked at me and began to laugh immoderately.  “Oh,” she explained, seeing my puzzled expression, “I deed think of you as so deeferent, I deed think you were very tall and theen, with leetle, wiggly curls on each side of your face.”