Carlo Zeno, the Venetian adventurer, merchant, soldier and admiral, has been strangely neglected by novelists. He appears, though indeed as a very lum-mous figure in Henty's delightful story "The Lion of St. Mark," but other-rise little has been done to revive one of the most interesting characters of history; and one may, therefore, welcome on other grounds than that of an excellent. story, Mr. Marion Crawford's romance of Arethuaa, It must be presumed that the incidents are largely imagitary, bat the whole picture is none the less attractive or instinct with the atmosphere of past ages which Mr. Crawford is well able to reproduce. The scene of the story, which takes place some years tofore Zeno combined with Pisani to drive the Genoese from Chioggia for the deliverance of Venice, is Isid in Constantinople during the appalli niurderous rivalries of the Byza Emperors Andronicus and Zeno's share in the extrication el down from prison for the story; its mai of the Venetian and background to theme ix the love beautiful slave-girl Arethusa, whom eno has bought on the commission of a friend in Venice. It ix inevitable, apart from history, that Arethusa should turn out. to be herself a Venetian of good fam But these things are part of the romance which is too charming to be spoiled by the mere enmneration of bald incidents, The letterpress is amply illustrated, and every justice done to Arethusa's beauty, although Carlo Zeno is made to resemble a certain popular English actor a little tore closely, perhaps, than was really the case. There is but one question we should like to ask: How did Zeno get out of the pit? Even for doughty a hero as he the problem seems difficult; and so the author evidently felt.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.