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Spain. Art Remains and Art Realities, Painters, Priests, and Princes. By H. Willis Baxley, M.D. (London: Longmans & Co., 1875.) THESE volumes are the result of a nearly three years' residence in Spain by a valetudinarian American physician in search of health. He is a man evidently of strong aesthetic tastes, and of equally strong religious feelings. The whole of what is commendable in the book may be attributed to the cultivation of the first, while a great deal of what is the reverse of commendable springs from an undue indulgence of the second. Not that we have any quarrel with him on the score of his religious principles; quite the contrary. It is our frequent accordance with the matter of these that makes us more deeply regret the manner and the bad taste of their expression. It may seem strange to rush at once into such a subject in a review of a book which professes to be a kind of Art-guide to Spain. But unhappily the subject is forced on the notice of the reviewer, for religious, almost as much as aesthetic, discussion forms the staple of the book. And akin to these disquisitions of second-hand theology are also disquisitions of second-hand history. Thus many wearisome pages in an otherwise interesting description of Granada and of the Alhambra are taken up with discussions of minute points of difference between Prescott and Washington Irving, without any reference to, or apparent knowledge of, the original authorities, either Spanish or Arabic.

Disquisitions and discussions of this kind, longer or shorter, take up at least one-third, if not more, of the two volumes; and we have preferred to speak of them first in order to be able to devote ourselves with

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greater freedom to the more grateful task of examining what is more meritorious in this work. Indeed if, instead of argument, the writer had given fact, or even simply related the impressions produced on him by the sight of the acts of worship which he condemns, his testimony would have been most valuable. We should have been glad to have the evidence of one who speaks of a gem of art as a shrine at which he might excusably stand transported to, at least the verge of worship" (vol. i. p. 89), and who is yet so staunch a Protestant, to the actual truth in Spain of Dean Milman's dictum : “In general, the ruder the art, the more intense the superstition. The perfection of the fine arts leads rather to diminish than to promote such superstition. There is more direct idolatry paid to the rough and ill-shapen image, or the flat, unrelieved, or staring picture, than to the noblest ideal statue, or the Holy Family with all the magic of light and shade (Latin Christianity, vol. ii. p. 349). Nowhere could the truth or falsity of this axiom, or of the almost opposite one of Mommsen as regards art-"As colours are effects of light, and at

the same time dim it, so art and science are not merely the creations, but also the destroyers, of faith"-be better studied than in Spain. We are glad to see Dr. Willis Baxley admit and appreciate the exceeding beauty of the wood-carving, and even of some of the polychrome wooden statues of Spain, which are often contemptuously passed by by those who take for granted that every coloured image in wood must be merely a doll. We have seen some whose beauty and others whose intensity of expression have moved us as much as the finest painting, but we have never found these creations of art objects of popular worship or of superstition; nor, as far as we are aware, with but one exception, has any miraculous legend been attached to any really artistic image. But our experience is limited, and we should gladly have had it confirmed or modified by the wider observation of Dr. Baxley.

possessed a copy of the whole works of Confucius in Chinese characters, the gift of a Jesuit missionary. Roman coins are yet in occasional circulation in out-of-the-way places, and mediaeval ones are of almost daily occurrence.

Our author entered Spain by the eastern route, and gives an excellent account of the Roman remains of Tarragona, Sagunto, and other towns of that coast, and also of the Gothic cathedrals of the first-named place, and particularly of Siguenza, with which he was much struck. Thence he passed by Valencia and Malaga to Granada, whose beauties and those of the Alhambra he most carefully examined and highly appreciated. In fact, his enthusiasm for the beauty of Moorish architecture makes him unjust, not only to the art and civilisation, but even to the religion, of the successors of the Moors. A strange sentence to this effect will be found in vol. i. p. 223. Again, in vol. ii. p. 77, he writes of bells replacing the Muezzin's cry: 'Here, where once went forth the summons to prayer, vocal with music as with mind, now is heard hourly the clatter, and at times the crash, of twenty bells to tell of the

In one respect we find the title of the book too large-Spain: Art Remains and Art Realities, Painters, Priests, and Princes. The book is in many respects an admirable guide to the remains of art and architecture, Roman, Moorish, and Christian, in the large sounding brass and tinkling cymbal' of towns of the east and south of Spain (in religionism." We have heard the Muezzin's the west and north even places like Burgos call for months together. It seemed to us and Leon are greatly hurried over); but like most other intoning. Once in about though such cities contain the chief, they twenty times it is well done, and is most certainly do not contain the whole of the effective; the other nineteen times it is a remains of Spanish art. Even Ford's en- nasal quaver, drawl, or whine. On the cyclopaedic Handbook does not cover the whole, we prefer the bells. Dr. Baxley suc whole ground. In many an out-of-the-way ceeds, however, in imparting to his readers spot, in many a small town or remote half- some of his own enthusiasm of delight in dilapidated convent, works of art or curiodilapidated convent, works of art or curio- the architectural beauties of the Alhamsities of archaeology are to be found well bra, and would do so still more but for worthy the attention of the student of art the insertion of the tedious discussions on or architecture. We especially draw atten- Prescott and Washington Irving alluded to tion to this because through negligence and above. He does not seem to have noticed, the destruction of civil war these objects however, that in their "cellulo-pendulous," are gradually disappearing or sometimes get or "honeycombed stalactite ceilings," the removed from the original locality. One of removed from the original locality. One of Arabs are the only people who have reconthe chief uses of the author's book, even in ciled ornament with an almost perfect sys the towns where catalogues are to be bought tem of ventilation. Nor does he remark the and information to be procured, will be found influence which that marvellous harmony of to consist in the statement of the actual locality colours in combination-the especial gift of and present numbering of the works of art Orientals-had for a moment on the colour. which he describes; and if such a thing is ing of the stained windows of mediaeval necessary in Granada, Seville, and Madrid, art. Like the Arabic mosaics and mural much more is it needed in more remote dis- colouring, some of these ancient stained tricts where art-critics have scarcely pene- windows, in spite of their brilliance, are a trated and where catalogues do not exist. repose and relief to the eye wearied with More especially still is this the case with the glare of outdoor sunlight. But unhap literary treasures. The amount of unpub- pily the secret of this harmony and repose lished MSS. in Spain is enormous, and they in the combination of colour was soon lost, are often in private hands or in conventual and is now replaced by the painful preor municipal establishments. After having dominance of whatever may be the favourite been closed for many years, the library at hues of the artist or the manufacturer. In Roncesvalles has now been removed for the same way the peculiar richness and exusafety (?) to Pampeluna. The celebrated berance of detail in Spanish Gothic archiCastellon inscription has entirely disap-tecture may be traced to the influence of the peared. Refugee Capuchin monks tell us of convents where MSS. are daily being consumed for vilest uses, or are slowly rotting away through damp and neglect. No one can say what treasures may be lost in these out-of-the-way places; for through her missionaries, especially the Jesuits, MS. wealth in all languages was constantly being sent home to the parent convent in Spain MSS. which remain there still uncopied and unexamined. For instance, the Prior of Roncesvalles assured us that the library

subtle and infinite variety of the tracings of Moorish arabesque; though in this case it may be a question whether this influence has been altogether beneficial in hiding and overloading the simpler and severer outlines of the Gothic style.

No part of the book will be read with greater pleasure than the criticisms and descriptions of the pictures of Murillo and the other masters of the Spanish school; though this pleasure is somewhat marred by the polemical tone adopted against Velasquez,

Rubens, and others, both critics and painters. We quite agree with our author that it was an advantage, and not a loss, to art that Murillo was unable to visit Italy, and that his genius developed itself in almost complete independence of the influence of the Italian school. Gazing on Murillo's masterpieces, we think, had the blessed Virgin Mary been a Spanish maiden, thus she might have looked; but the ideal and semi-classical beauty of the Madonnas of the Italian school seems hardly of the earth at all. Perhaps a truer type of the Virgin mother is yet to be found when artists grow familiar with the girl-matrons of the East, where the grace and seeming innocence of childhood yet linger round the wondering young

mothers.

Another point for which we must commend our author is the honesty and fairness with which he speaks about climate. Nothing is more rare than to get, especially from a medical man, an impartial statement on this subject. Prejudice either for or against some particular locality almost always biasses the judgment. We fully agree with the author that the possibility or the reverse of procuring in-door comforts should be greatly considered in the choice of any winter station in Europe. No spot outside the tropics is free from occasional damp and cold, and either of these confines the invalid within doors, and where the house is cheerless, and artificial warmth unattainable, most deplorable results may ensue. Still, we think he hardly does justice to the marvellous curative influence of climate in cases where disease is not too far developed, even in spite of all these discomforts and nonsanitary drawbacks; and we speak from no inconsiderable observation.

The remarks scattered through these volumes on the political and social condition of Spain are of singularly little value. Apparently the author did not mix at all in Spanish society, and he has formed his opinions from the information of foreign residents and of visitors like himself. So, too, forming his opinions from Spanish art, the author has missed the gaiety and fun and caustic wit which is a frequent characteristic of Spanish character of the lower classes. It has often been remarked that the Spanish rogue is the only amusing rogue in Europe. In spite of the Inquisitional and ecclesiastical tyranny which weighed so heavily on the work of the great painters, the religious and Christian folk-lore of the Spanish people is characterised by an exuberance of tender playful fancy, such as we find in no other people. For proof of this we refer to the numberless scraps of legends, carols, ballads, and nursery rhymes which have gathered round the Nativity and the Crucifixion in the popular traditions. As to darker traits of the Spanish character we must remind our author that two wrongs do not make one right. He is especially fond of girding at what he imagines to be the faults of the British aristocracy and traders, to excuse the Spaniards. But if fox and hare hunting be cruel, that fact would not make bull-fights less so. If money marriages are undesirable, that fact does not make a breach of the marriage bond less excusable. Too eager a pursuit of wealth

in one country does not form a valid excuse
for idleness, and wanton neglect or waste of
nature's bounties in another.

WENTWORTH WEBSTER.

THE REGICIDES.

Briefe Englischer Flüchtlinge in der Schweiz.
Aus einer Handschrift der Berner Staats-
Archivs herausgegeben und erläutert von
Alfred Stern, a. Professor der Geschichte
a. d. Universität Bern. (Göttingen: Robert
Peppmüller, 1874.)

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are careful and instructive, and contain references to entries in the Calendar of State Papers, which will probably be new to many readers, corroborative of Ludlow's statements as to the complicity of the English Court in the attempts against the refugees, such as the two letters, or rather reports, in French, the one endorsed "Major Riodon's paper, received December 29, '63," and referring to previous letters, "ecrites à monseigneur le comte," and the other endorsed Pontarby proche Neufchasteau 8 Aug. 64, Mr. Riordan," and directed, "For the most right honorable Sir Henry Benet, Knight, THE letters from English Republican refu- Principal Secretary of State, annd unto the gees published in this pamphlet range from privi conseil of his most excellent Maiestie 1663 to 1671, and comprise two of Cawley's of Great Britanny," letters which, however, (who took the name of Johnson), one of from the idiomatic if not orthographic French Lisle's, three of Ludlow's (writing under the in which they are written I should feel inname of Philipps), and four of "John Ralfe-clined to attribute rather to Du Pré or Desprez son," whom Professor Stern is disposed to than to the very likely illiterate Irishman identify with Nicholas Love. To these are MacCarty, who took the name of Riordan. added two letters (1668) on the absence of But indeed such complicity could never have the refugees from the celebration of the been doubted except by those who will believe Communion, and a number of extracts against all evidence, since by the favour (1662-65) from the Archives of Bern and shown to Lisle's murderers-the author of Lausanne relating to the refugees, and Regicides no Saints nor Martyrs admits that more particularly to that "Monsieur Du Pré" "somewhat was done for them, mostly in (or, as it is generally spelt in these ex- military commands during the Dutch war, tracts, Desprez) who is often mentioned in and afterwards as occasion serv'd "-the Ludlow's Memoirs as engaged in the plots English Court virtually took up the position against them. The pamphlet is chiefly of an accomplice after the fact. valuable as illustrative of the third volume of Ludlow's Memoirs. His letters are distinguished from those of his fellow-refugees by their strongly marked political character, and show that he must have been in constant correspondence with England. The two letters on the absence of the refugees from communion are curious. The fact of such absence, it seems, had been remarked, and two persons, both apparently ministers, had been called on by the "bailif" of Vevay to report upon it. From their letters it appears that the Puritanism of the exiles was offended at the too lax admission of communicants in the Swiss churches, but Ludlow only claimed to be dealt with on the footing of the text, "He that is not against us is for us." The refugees are recognised as persons "qui mènent une vie irréprochable."

Professor Stern mentions with some surprise that no copy of the first edition of Ludlow's Memoirs, dedicated, as is well known, "to their excellencies the Lords of the Council for the Canton of Bern," is to be found in Bern itself, but only one of the folio edition of 1751, a presentation copy, richly bound, and which, according to a letter which has since been addressed to the editor of the ACADEMY by Professor Stern, appears to have been forwarded by Thomas Hollis to the Town Library. On this it may be remarked that the imprint "Vevey" of the first edition of the Memoirs is probably a fictitious one, the type and general get-up of the volumes being altogether English. As respects the third volume, at all events, a tract of 1700,"Regicides no saints nor martyrs, freely expostulated with the publishers of Ludlow's third volume," says of this imprint, "Had they said at Derby it had been nigher home, and nigher truth too."

Professor Stern's introduction and notes

J. M. LUDLOW.

NEW NOVELS.

By A. C. M.
Elsie, a Lowland Sketch.
(London: Macmillan & Co., 1875.)
The Village Coquette. Translated from the
German of Friedrich Spielhagen, by
J. L. Land. (London: Chapman & Hall,
1875.)

Profit and Loss. By Mrs. E. R. Pitman.
(London: James Clarke & Co., 1875.)
Dolores. By Mrs. Forrester. (London:
Hurst & Blackett, 1875.)

Two Kisses. By Hawley Smart. (London:
R. Bentley & Son, 1875.)
Restless Human Hearts. By Richard Jef-

feries. (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1875.) Elsie, a Lowland Sketch, is an attempt by a new aspirant to achieve a very difficult task, that of producing a novel variation on the trite theme of the betrayal, through a false marriage, of a peasant girl by a lover of a higher social grade. At first it does not appear that success will be attained, for the writer does not exhibit much descriptive power. The story is rightly called " a Lowland sketch," in so far that it is localised near the English border; but there are no such graphic details of scenery or accurately marked peculiarities of dialect as meet us in the Harbour Bar, and some other recent Scottish novels. Border Scotch is quite distinct from the Scotch of Lanark or Edinburgh, much more from that of Aberdeen; but in this story there are only a few conventional phrases introduced here and there to give local colour. Nor are the characters forcibly drawn. The heroine, gentle and sweet, is yet little more than a shadow; John Elliott, her stern father, is but a very faint transcription of Scott's David Deans; and the lover is a mere conventional Epicu

rean. All this marks immaturity; and the earlier part of the volume is by no means striking. But there is a steady improvement throughout; the author displays increased grasp of her subject, and gradually rises into a tone of subdued yet sustained pathos, which never degenerates into mere sentiment. The incident of the invalid marriage is given a novel and yet perfectly consistent and possible treatment; and the story of the home-coming of the wanderer is told with a tender grace which fully redeems any weakness at the beginning. The hand which drew this sketch is capable of bolder composition and more vivid colouring, if only it will be diligent and conscientious in future work.

"The Village Coquette" is a subject which would have just suited Victor Hugo, who would have elaborated it with a fantastic vigour very far removed from the somewhat tame style of the German author, who has devised a very striking situation, with some telling effects, but has not known how to work them out to the best results of which

they are capable. Only the bare outline of the story is given, in about the same compass as one of Poc's tales, and there is considerable faculty and conception displayed in it; but the opportunity of giving it some dramatic form has been thrown away by the device of putting it all into the mouth of one narrator, instead of bringing the characters themselves in person on the scene. If Herr Spielhagen would work with a partner, after the fashion of MM. Erckmann-Chatrian, and find the plots, leaving their evolution to his colleague, we might look for some tales which would live.

Profit and Loss belongs to a class of literature whose very existence is almost unsuspected by the great mass of cultivated persons. It is a story reprinted from the feuilleton of a syncretist religious newspaper called the Christian World, which has a large circulation amongst the lower middle class of Nonconformists, and supplies in this fashion the craving for fiction and amusement keenly felt in hundreds of families whence a novel, appearing avowedly under that name, would be rigidly excluded. This literature is a thing as much apart and peculiar to a class as the "penny awfuls" which the London street boy devours greedily; but it is of a very different character, and honestly aims at providing material for reading which shall not be merely harmless, but in the eyes of its producers instructive and salutary in the highest degree. Some few of these tales, notably such as are written by a lady named Worboise, have a good deal of literary merit of a certain kind, and bear some resemblance to the school of which Miss Yonge is the most prominent example. But it is not possible to say much in favour of Profit and Loss. We do not, for obvious reasons, touch on its directly religious teaching; but we may fairly enough condemn its English, which is very far indeed from good, or even tolerable; its overstrained and sensational tone; and that part of its morality which consists in depicting all rich people as being from the mere fact of their wealth the embittered enemies of piety in any shape. The main seat of the story is Bristol, the time that of West Indian

emancipation forty years ago; and yet Mrs. Pitman is so little acquainted with the history of the movement she professes to chronicle, that she forgets that her wicked merchant could not have carried on the trade in negroes after 1807; while the measure of emancipation was carried out mainly through the influence of the little knot known as the Clapham Sect," nearly all whose members were wealthy, and some of them great financiers. Wilberforce, Gisborne, Thornton, and Shore may surely be set off as realities against Mrs. Pitman's unreal Anthony Montague and Julius March.

66

Dolores derives all its interest from its heroine, who is imagined with a good deal of freshness and vigour as a child who would never reach maturity of mind, but also with a child's wild passionate longings, acute but short-lived sorrows, and above all, a child's desire for personal ease and comfort. The young lady, in perfect innocence, but with an unconscious eye to her own convenience throughout, manages to engage herself to three gentlemen successively, and to end by marrying the richest and most highlyplaced of the three at the end. Mrs. Forrester's real skill consists not in putting forward such a trite notion as this with the pretext that it is new, but in making her readers acquit Dolores of mercenary motives all along, while yet indicating subtly enough that an unavowed love of all that makes life easy and luxurious prompts each choice that the young lady decides on, while seeming to herself to be swayed by entirely different motives. The author is less successful in striving to represent the club-talk of men, and to give her readers glimpses into Bohemia. The true Czech accent is unmistakcable to accustomed ears, and it does not echo in her pages.

On the other hand, Mr. Hawley Smart, in his novel, Two Kisses, is a great deal more life-like in reproducing the conversation of men with one another, and his heroines are much less conventional lay-figures than Mrs. Forrester's heroes. But he is not nearly so careful a writer, and his style is slipshod to the last degree. Further, not content with the traditional errors of punctuation which printers have pretty well agreed among themselves to keep up for the exasperation of authors and the bewilderment of readers, he has invented a further device of his own, which entitles Two Kisses to rank after Daniel's Rural Sports and Martin Chuzzlewit as the worst punctuated book in the English language. Someone has told him that sentences ought to be short, and the way he has hit on to attain this end is not by writing them short, but by clapping in a full stop every here and there, and beginning the next member of the paragraph, albeit unintelligible by itself, with a capital letter as a fresh start. The book swarms with misprints besides, or, at all events, with mistakes which it is charitable to ascribe to the "chapel;" but we think Mr. Smart must undertake the responsibility of such words as "mysogonist" and "ciscebo." If there were such a vocable as the former, it would probably mean a "begetter of defilement," but we give up the latter. As regards the story of the book, which is shadowed out in the title, it belongs to the

class of incident out of which vaudevilles and farces are usually constructed. A newly. married husband and wife become convinced of each other's unfaithfulness by hearing in the one case, and seeing in the other, that a kiss has been given each by a supposed lover, and the clearing up of the estrange. ment thus caused makes the ending of the tale. But this is a mere peg on which to hang a novel of society belonging to the type of which Major Whyte Melville's Digby Grand is perhaps the best known example, and a very fairly readable one of its kind.

Restless Human Hearts propounds an opinion in its first chapter in the following

terms:

"What an enormous amount of verbiage, then, must there be in a book of a thousand pages! Say that it took one hundred pages to give a fair de scription of the one original thought which prompted the author to commence, then there reand seven words a line, giving a total of one main nine hundred pages, of thirty lines a page, hundred and eighty-nine thousand waste words." Restless Human Hearts consists of nine hundred and eight pages, and if we must thus deduct ninety-two from the ideal sum of one thousand, yet we may take an equal number from the other ideal of one hundred, so that the ultimate quotient of trash is very much what Mr. Jefferies indicates. We leave him to work out the sum at his leisure, merely observing that there are only twentyfive lines in each of his pages, so that he is entitled to any mitigation of judgment based on the reduction in quantity.

R. F. LITTLEDALE.

CURRENT LITERATURE.

says,

Mountain Warfare, illustrated by the Campaign of 1799 in Switzerland. By Major-General Shadwell, C.B. (H. S. King & Co.) This is just one of those books of which it is impossible to speak without respect for the author's purpose, though it is not so possible to predict that he will succeed in it. It is true, indeed, that there is no scientific account to be found in English of the greatest of modern mountain campaigns. But, as the Archduke Charles's narrative in its French dress, and that of Jomini, must be at the service of the military students chietly will addressed (who, indeed, as the author readily recognise many passages from their works), so it can hardly be hoped that the subject will be found by them to be clothed with any great charm of novelty. And, on the other hand, those "lovers of Switzerland and its mountains, apart from military men," to whom General Shadwell partly dedicates what he believes to be a narrative "concise, yet critical," will, we fear, hardly allow the strict justice of that description of the substantial octavo volume of some 300 pages that is before us, or take it in their knapsacks when they do the Furca on foot. Nevertheless, when these drawbacks have been mentioned, it is but the barest plished his self-imposed task in a thoroughly conjustice to say that General Shadwell has accomscientious spirit. He has determined to tell his countrymen the complete story of the extraordinary struggle in which were concerned leaders so famous as the Archduke Charles, Suwarow, Soult, Masséna, Lecourbe (the greatest commander in mountain operations of the last century), with a host of such minor generals as the rough Republican Castlebar defeat very shortly before he was heard Humbert, who had given our own militia their of near Zürich, and Hotze, the only Austrian commander under the Archduke who showed any original talent: and he certainly sets to work in

war.

the proper manner. He has found in that valuable warning: "They may some day find themselves old military periodical, La Revue Suisse Militaire, compromised on service from want of knowby far the best account yet written of the cam-ledge, not of talent "-a true saying no doubt, paign, it being in fact based on the two excellent at any rate as applied to those of his own arm histories already mentioned, but compared also care- in his own time. There have been great fully with the memoirs of Soult and Masséna, and changes since then, however. The system of worked into an harmonious narrative with the aid competitive examination-from which not many of the practical military judgment and local years since everything was hoped, as much is now knowledge of General Dufour, the chief soldier feared-has been of late applied even to those Switzerland has produced during the long peace modest entrance commmissions into the line she has enjoyed since the First Empire vanished. which were formerly left to be distributed at the It is, moreover, admirably illustrated by the pleasure of a Military Secretary. And after comnecessary maps, and rendered in good plain petition, according to the existing system-we English, such as the lay reader may find more state this with diffidence, for our military auto his taste than a more technically constructed thorities make such frequent changes that it is work would be. Beyond the preface, the teaching hardly safe to speak of any system as having a involved must be got at chiefly in the comments present existence-they, or at least many of them, left, by General Dufour apparently, in the course are duly entered at Sandhurst as sub-lieutenants of his narrative. In particular, the lesson ex- to undergo a course of theoretical instruction in pressed by the author at the beginning, in Le- military subjects before being transferred to their courbe's own words, "It is in the valleys that the various regiments. The plan is but experimental, mountains must be defended; though this refleca fact which must make it all the more difficult to tion will surprise those who have never made war in mountains," is perfectly illustrated at many points by the story of that general's marvellous exploits, and of the faults committed by his adversaries. Lecourbe, however, seems to have worked at this problem for himself by his own experience. At the commencement of the contest it is clear that neither side recognised the proper principles. Indeed, the Austrians almost throughout acted on the erroneous plan of trying to cover long chains of heights by watching every passage; while of French strategy, as first designed, Napoleon himself has said: "The campaign was planned at Paris by men who had no real knowledge of Mountains depend on the plains, and have no more influence in commanding the plains than the position they afford for guns." How Lecourbe discovered for himself a sounder mode of action, and the extraordinary successes he reaped over equal or superior forces by its means, may be read with profit in General Shadwell's version; though the non-professional reader may possibly be more interested by that part of his volume which treats of the romantic but rather over-rated achievement of Suwarow in carrying his rude Muscovites out of the Italian plains across the Alps, in the vain attempt to join their Austrian allies, who had been forced off from their posts without being able to await his promised succour. teresting anonymous account of this strange miliA very intary adventure, by one of the Russian staff concerned, is added; and, with the Swiss commentary on it, will give the student a perfect view of the whole subject. Finally, the volume is, if not completed in the strictest sense (since the special subject of the 1799 operations is properly a distinct one), still enriched by the addition of a translation of an account of the famous "Campaign of the Duc de Rohan in the Valtelline in 1635," from the of General Dufour, which is not merely a memoir interesting in itself, but the more so here, as proving that a century and a half before Lecourbe's exploits another Frenchman of ability put into practice, in the same country, with like success, principles of acting boldly and with concentrated forces, which, indeed, are true for all time as far as mountain warfare is concerned. With the author we would hope that the many British officers who have before them the possi-riously are still rather divided on this very point. bility of some day sharing in a struggle for the mountain ranges that guard our Indian frontier, may make themselves acquainted with the theory of this part of their craft as illustrated by Lecourbe, and taught in this volume.

the same

pen

Minor Tactics. By Captain C. Clery, Professor of Tactics, Royal Military College, Sandhurst. (H. S. King & Co.) The object of this handbook is sufficiently explained by the motto on the titlepage, taken from the words of Sir Charles Napier. That great general and acute observer, in regretting that young men on joining their regiments have "all the temptations in the world to pleasure, none to study," adds the significant

lay out a thorough course of instruction, and the more creditable, therefore, to a professor who, like Captain Clery, has applied himself with diligence to bring into his college course of lectures not merely the whole theory of the subject confided to his teaching, but varied practical examples to illustrate that theory at every point. For such a course of lectures has formed the substantial delivered in the way of actual instruction to the octavo before us. Its chapters appear to have been young officers at the College; and they are now published avowedly for the benefit of others who miss the advantage of the teaching there given. There is much well-chosen reading in them for all military students, and indeed for all amateurs of military art; for the dry bones of theory, which of necessity form the groundwork of each, are well clothed by the instances already referred to as carefully brought together by way of illustration. Even that more difficult personage to reach, the general reader, may possibly be interested at finding how history repeats itself in the minutest incidents of war, as in great political events. Thus, to take one of many sets of examples, Captain Clery reminds us that the sacrifice of General Bredow's cavalry brigade at Mars-la-Tour, and later in the day that of the 1st Dragoons of the Prussian Guard, to save the 3rd and 10th Corps respectively from French attacks which the infantry were unable to meet, find their counterpart in Napoleon's desperate use of Bessières' horsemen on that bloody day of Essling (so Captain Clery calls it with the French, the victors Aspern) sixty years before, when the fine strategy of the Archduke Charles inflicted on Napoleon his first defeat. Of such affairs the author well remarks, as a general conclusion from these and various other examples

"In all these engagements the attacking cavalry checking the enemy, and never to seriously disorgansuffered great loss, and their success only amounted to ising the infantry opposed to them. But all attempts to replace infantry by cavalry must have similar results, as the true use of the latter is as an auxiliary,

and not as a substitute for the former."

specimen of the author's reasoning, but because it
We have quoted this summary not only as a fair

will show the reader that he has decided convic-
tions of his own to offer. The Prussians noto-

But we believe that Captain Clery speaks with
perfect truth on it; and we are only surprised
that he does not fortify his opinion by a reference
to the well-known fact that improvements in fire-
arms, and especially the general use of the breech-
loader, seem to have finally determined any sup-
posed equality entirely against the more brilliant
but less powerful arm.
This is not however, it
where the author, despite much display of pains-
must be plainly said, the only part of the work
taking industry, comes short of realising the full
practical weight of the lessons of the late war.
We doubt whether his artillery examples, drawn
from the battles of Frederick and Napoleon, can

have much serious teaching for the modern
student of the tactics of that arm.
In fact,
the whole book, though tolerably readable and
full of instructive matter, appears to us to fail
in its special object, and would form rather a
useful work of reference on detailed points in
military history, than a practical guide for in-
struction in tactics, viewing the subject as one
apart from the history of the different arms con-
cerned. With this exception as to its general
purpose we may fairly commend it as a conscien-
tious if not brilliant work.

In the reprints of "A Song of Italy" and of the
"Ode on the Proclamation of the French Republic,"
which form the bulk of Mr. Swinburne's recently
issued Songs of Two Nations (Chatto & Windus),
we have not detected any material alterations. Of
the merit of these poems this is not the time to
speak, else much were to be said, especially of the
tainly Italomania and eleutheromania have never
rhythmical structure of the "Song of Italy." Cer-
in the opportunity of separating the manner of de-
yet had the godsend of such musica! utterance, and
liverance from the matter delivered, one enjoys a
real critical luxury. Whether these remarks ex-
tend to the sonnets entitled "Dirae," which com-
and
plete the volume, is a more doubtful question,
Mr. Swinburne himself seems to have
recognised this by appending an "Apologia"
to prove that he does well to be angry. For
ourselves, we boast the possession of a quite
infinite tolerance for any sentiments whatso-
ever, if they be poetically expressed.
But we
cannot help remembering that, even in the good
to grub up the corpses of political foes for the
old days when it was thought comely and decorous
benefit of the gibbet and the dunghill, the
execution of this savoury office was usually
by great poets. Mr. Swinburne has himself very
left to the hangman, and was not undertaken
happily and justly censured a contemporary poet
for playing the Athanasius of democracy; is it
role of its Ernulphus? Yet after all it is hard
not a pity that he should take up the companion-
to quarrel with any motive which gives us such
verses as these (the introduction to this volume):-
"I saw the double-featured statue stand

Of Memnon or of Janus, half with night
Veiled and fast-bound with iron; half with light
Crowned, holding all men's future in his hand.
"And all the old westward face of time grown grey
Was writ with cursing and inscribed for death,
But on the face that met the morning's breath
Fear died of hope as darkness dies of day."

Fairy Tales, Legends, and Romances illustrating Shakespeare and other Early English Writers. To which are prefixed two preliminary Dissertations (1) on Pigmies; (2) on Fairies. By Joseph Ritson.

glad to have a reprint of Ritson's Fairy Tales,
(F. and W. Kerslake.) We are very
a very scarce book, and one which contains
what was, at the period of its publication, a sin-
gularly valuable amount of information; and we
are grateful to Mr. W. C. Hazlitt for having, to
all appearance, reprinted it exactly as he found it,
without adding any remarks of his own.
We are
the more thankful for this mercy because he states
in his preface that "the present republication
forms a union of the two [works of Ritson and
Halliwell] with certain additions and corrections."
The work by Mr. Halliwell incorporated into the
present volume is his Illustrations of the Fairy
Mythology of a Midsummer Night's Dream, pub-
lished some thirty years ago by a learned society,
and therefore inaccessible to most readers. It
also we are glad to have in a handy shape, though
the price of the volume (128.) seems high for a
Of what science has done, since
mere reprint.
Ritson's and Halliwell's books first appeared, to
Hazlitt takes absolutely no notice.
elucidate the subjects with which they deal Mr.

Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Tales of England. Collected by James Orchard Halliwell. (F. Warne and Co.) Mr. Halliwell's collections of Nursery

Rhymes and Nursery Tales are too well known to require any special comment on their joint appearance in the reprint now before us. It will be welcomed by many students who have found a difficulty in procuring the previous editions. It has two grave faults, being published without a date of imprint and without the presence of an index, except an "Index of First Lines to Nursery Rhymes." As to the results of modern research, they are never once mentioned from the title-page to the closing line. But the stories and songs are in themselves of high value, and may be profitably

studied without reference to the old-fashioned comments by which they are attended.

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MR. WILLIAM MORRIS and Mr. Eiríkr Magnusson have a volume of translations from the Icelandic in the press, comprising, among other things, versions of the Gunnlaugs Saga Ormstungu, the Friðþjófssaga, and the very curious Hróa þáttr heimska or Story of Hróa the Fool. A new volume of poems may also be expected before very long from Mr. Morris.

MR. FLEAY writes to us to point out that the theory with regard to Shakspere's Sonnets pro

AGRICULTURISTS will feel bitterly disappointed when they discover that the new edition of Morton's Cyclopedia of Agriculture is only a cheaper reprint of the old edition, issued origi-pounded by Dr. Goedke, and noticed by us in our issue of March 27, is almost identical with that published by Mr. Samuel Neil in 1861. Yet the later critic has not so much as mentioned his predecessor.

nally a quarter of a century ago. The last twentyfive years have worked such changes in our agricultural system that the book is now quite out of date and useless. The opening essay by Mr. Wren-Hoskyns gives a curious picture of the farming of a quarter of a century ago, and is well worth reading.

THE Annual Register for 1874 (Rivingtons), which has lately reached us, is in no respect inferior to its predecessors in the care and accuracy employed upon its compilation. The nature of its contents is too well known to require further notice here, so we need only recommend the volume as a work of reference the value of which increases every year after its issue. EDITOR.

NOTES AND NEWS.

IT is well known that Lord Braybrooke's edition of Pepys's Diary does not contain anything like a complete transcript of the original MS. in Magdalene College, Cambridge, although large additions were made to the different issues. Pepys's numerous admirers will therefore be glad to learn that they may expect soon to have in their hands a complete edition of the Diary. Mr. Mynors Bright, the Bursar of the college, has been engaged for about eight years in deciphering the MS., and having completed his work he is now about to publish it. We have examined one of the volumes, and find that there is about onethird of additional matter not printed in the last edition, and much of this is of more interest than what is printed. Moreover, in this one volume about 140 errors have been corrected in the printed text, and many of these are glaring mistakes, the correction of which is of importance to the sense of the passages in which they occur. We understand that this new edition is very shortly to be issued by Messrs. Bickers and Son in a handsome library form, with numerous portraits. Probably several of the entries will have to be left out as too indecent for publication, but we hope that in all cases stars will be introduced to show where any passage has been omitted.

DR. HÜBNER, of Berlin, who has so ably edited the Roman Inscriptions of Britain, a work reviewed some time ago in the ACADEMY by Mr. Wordsworth, is to publish shortly the PostRoman Inscriptions of Wales and Cornwall. He is to be assisted by Mr. Rhys, who has made them a special study, and personally examined nearly all of them.

MESSRS. LONGMANS announce for publication in April Dr. Forbes's Two Years in Fiji, Watts's

of York, dated April 21, 1698, wherein he says
that the Pretender's Court "is now as much
despised, and as openly, as you and I knew it
admired, but there is a spirit of open impiety and
unnatural lust raging there without any reserve,"
21. 48. Two letters of Robert Burns, 51.; Caro-
line, Queen of Naples, to Lord Nelson, referring
to the loss of her sister Marie Antoinette, 17. 14s.;
Isaac Casaubon, dated March, 1608, 138.; Charles
Cats, the Dutch theologian, written from London
June 25, 1650, alluding to the return of Crom-
well from Ireland, &c., 21.; Charles I. to Prince
Rupert, dated Ruperry, July 26, 1645, 77.; several
letters of Charles II., from 17. 118. to 27. 68.
each; Christina Queen of Sweden, "A mon
Cousin Monsieur le Duc de Crequy," from Rome,
Nov. 10, 1652, 1. 138. ; two letters of S. T.
Coleridge, 11. 68. and 11. 18.; George Crabbe,
21. 10s.; a scientific letter of René Descartes,
dated Utrecht, April 1635, 31. 10s.; Dr. Philip
Doddridge, 15s.; Lords Eldon and Elgin, ll.
each; two Privy Council Orders signed by Eliza-
beth, Howard Earl of Nottingham, Lord Chancel-
lor Egerton, Lord Buckhurst, Robert Dudley, and
others, 27. 188.; Flaxman, the sculptor, to Dawson
Turner, November, 1824, 21. 2s.; a characteristic
letter from Sam. Foote to Garrick, August, 1760,
wherein he says,
แ My dear Sir, You and I are a
couple of Buckets, whilst you are raising the repu-
tation of Shakespear, I am indeavouring to sink it,
and for this purpose, I shall give next Monday the
Tragedy of Hamlet," asking the loan of the Ghost's
armour, 57.; a letter of Garrick to George Colman,
31. 88.; another specimen, 17. 78. ; a long letter of
the Poet Gray to Brown, President of Pembroke
Hall, Cambridge, in October 1761, in which he
gives a list of his furniture, papers, etc., forwarded
to the college, and adds, "We are all much out of
countenance about this pension, I dare not see
Delaval any more, and expect to hear Mason has
taken laudanum, 51.”

THE great majority of the papers in Dr. Rus-
sell and Mr. Prendergast's Calendar of State
Papers relating to Ireland, James I., 1608-1610,
published this week, are concerned with the pro-
vince of Ulster. The transactions which followed
the flight of the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell;
the new relations of the native population of the
northern counties to the Crown of England in-
volved in that momentous event; the consequent
resolve of the Government to take advantage of
the occasion for the purpose of effecting a new
settlement of the province; the legal procedures
instituted with this view; and the preparatory
enquiries, investigations of tenure and title, mea-
surements, surveys, and other preliminaries of the
settlement-may all be studied in the very full
abstracts given in this volume of the original re-
cords of those memorable years. These records
are more than ordinarily complete, and exhibit
fewer notable deficiencies than those of the pre-
vious years of the reign of James I. The artful
precautions adopted for the transmission of secret
intelligence from Rome to Robert Cecil, Earl of
Salisbury, regarding the proceedings of Tyrone,
are very curiously illustrated.
Among other
documents of such a nature calendared is one en-
titled "Advertisements from Rome," the main
subject of which is an account of the ceremonial
of a canonisation there, written with all the en-
thusiasm of a devout Catholic, conveying news
regarding the various religious orders, enclosing a
packet of "Agnus Deis," and apologising for not
forwarding a greater number, and sending the com-
mendation of Father Parsons. And yet this letter,
with all its parade of Catholic piety and all its
details of Catholic gossip, is but a skilfully de-
vised report of Salisbury's agent, giving inci-
dentally an account of the doings of Tyrone and
his friends at Rome. Salisbury's own endorse-
ment of the letter describes it as "written with
some clauses to disguise the affection of the in-
telligencer."

AMONG the autographs disposed of during a
three days' sale, terminating on the 2nd inst., by
Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge, were two
portfolios containing specimens of 120 distin-
guished characters connected with the United
States, which realised 317. Two pages from a
note-book of Lord Chancellor Bacon, headed
Elegancies, Miscellany, Apr. 22, 1605,
All art, not hart,

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After separation reparation,""
sold for sixteen shillings. A letter of Richard

Ar the annual public sitting of the French Association for the encouragement of Greek studies, the ordinary prize was divided between M. Sathas Byzantine History, and M. Petit de Julleville, for his publication of the text of Michael Psellus author of a History of Greece under the Roman Domination. The Zographos prize was likewise divided between M. Miliarakis, for his book on the Cyclades, and M. Margaritis for his works on the history of Macedonia.

SEVERAL interesting papers were read at the late annual meeting in Paris of delegates of the learned societies. M. Capmas, of Dijon, announced that he had discovered at a sale of old furniture in a remote part of Burgundy, a MS. containing & complete copy of the Letters of Mdme. de Sévigné, of which the Gros-Bois MS. used by MM. Regnier and Monmerqué seems to be only a very imperfect reproduction. This discovery will, it is believed, necessitate a new edition of the Letters. M. Combes, of Bordeaux, read a study on two unpublished letters of our Queen Elizabeth to Henry IV. of France, in which the Queen endeavours to Catholic faith; and M. Baguenault announced dissuade the King of Navarre from embracing the the discovery in the Orleans library, of a MS. containing the despatches of Mazarin to the Marquis de Fontenay, French Ambassador at Naples in 1647-8. These despatches, which will be edited by MM. Loiseleur and Baguenault, throw new light on the policy of Mazarin with regard to the expedition of the Duc de Guise against Naples. AMONG the books to be published in Paris in

Sniodlan, Malleson's The Native States of India, Baxter referring to a controversy with Lawson, the course of the present month are the fifth

Vol. VI., and Irving's Short Manual of Heat. The new volume of Mill's Dissertations will appear in May.

MR. RUSKIN has just published the first part of "Mornings in Florence: being simple studies of Christian Art for English travellers," on Santa

Croce; and the first part of " Proserpina: Studies of Wayside Flowers, while the air was yet pure

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of Napoleon L published Memoirs of Odilon Barrot. and the first volume of the posthumous and un

OUR esteemed correspondent in Paris, M. Gabriel Monod, will publish on January 1, 1876, appear quarterly, and will consist of from 1,000 the first part of an Historical Review. It is to to 1,300 pages a year, containing original documents and correspondence from all countries,

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