sincerely grateful to Lord Ilchester for having permitted the publication of The Journal of Elizabeth Lady Holland (Longmans). That the despotic dinner-giver of the Whig party from 1792-1811 was popular with her guests may well be doubted, but that she had the qualities which are needed to manage a salon, and even to keep together a political party, must be frankly admitted. How she acquired her knowledge of men and books may be gathered from these journals, but whence she drew the power of attracting statesmen to her side, and to some degree that of turning them to her purpose, was a secret which Lord Ilchester, even in his impartial review of her life, fails to explain. She must have possessed other qualities besides masterfulness, but it is rarely that even to herself in her diary she lifts the veil which conceals the source of her influence.

Few more vivid and charming pictures of social life in the first half of the last century have been issued than that contained in A Family Chronicle (Murray) of three generations of the Grey family. The eldest Mrs. Wilmot, afterwards Lady Dacre, was a lady of more than average literary distinction, and her daughter, who married the Rev. F. Sullivan, was a not less accomplished letter-writer, at a time when letters were written with the object of entertaining or interesting their readers. Mrs. Sullivan's daughter Barbarina married Admiral Sir F. W. Grey, son of the first Earl Grey, and by her the present volume of notes and letters was originally compiled. Her niece Miss Lyster has now edited them in a way that enables the reader to appreciate the active part in literature and art which was taken by many who were supposed to have no interests but political or social, so that the friendly relations which they cultivated with the literary celebrities of their day come as an agreeable surprise.

The collection from various sources, some hitherto untouched, of the Letters of the Wordsworth Family (Ginn) has probably been a labour of love to Professor William Knight. Whether the most devoted admirers of Wordsworth's poetry will appreciate his letters extending over sixty years is a matter of doubt. There was in Wordsworth no symptom of any quality which makes letter-writing an art and the reading of his letters a delight. He was as devoid of all sense of humour as of insight into and sympathy with other men's minds. He seems to have laboured under a chronic difficulty of expressing his opinions frankly, except when delivering them didactically. That these letters throw light upon the poems may be readily admitted, but it is only by showing the grooves in which the poet's thoughts ran.

If the reputation of the author of "Jane Eyre" emerges from beneath the ponderous volumes which Mr. Clement Shorter has piled upon it, full justification will be given to The Brontës, Life and Letters (Hodder & Stoughton). In any case there can be no excuse (beyond that of want of time) for not knowing all that it is possible to know about the Brontë family, and for forming an opinion of the relative talents of its members. Mr. Shorter in many points comes to different conclusions from previous biographers with regard to individuals, but he endorses the general estimate, except perhaps with regard to Branwell Brontë. He has, however, obtained access to much cor

respondence unknown even to Mrs. Gaskell, whose life of Charlotte Brontë, written at the request of the latter's friends, will still be regarded as the authorised version of the family chronicle.

The circle of practical thinkers in which the Misses Winkworth lived deserves to be remembered; and the volume edited by Miss Shaen, Memorials of Two Sisters (Longmans), will be welcomed by many. The elder sister, Susanna, was less known to the public, but her correspondence with Maurice and Martineau reveals much of the intellectual and religious difficulties which surrounded the Broad Church party. Her letters to these and other leaders of the movement are deeply interesting to those who can recall the bitterness of the strife. Catherine, known as the translator of "Lyra Germanica," was cast in a more plastic mould, and her mind was more emotional. Her elder sister, who survived her, began the writing of these memorials, which were left unfinished. Happily a sufficient number of letters have been preserved to show that both sisters were in touch with the best literature of their day, and with many of the principal writers, of whom we obtain fresh knowledge and from whose letters we can gather fresh clues to their minds and aspirations.

The personal considerations which have stood in the way of any official rejoinder to Mr. Kinglake's "case" for Lord Raglan have been removed by time; and the publication of the Panmure Papers (Hodder & Stoughton) by Sir G. Douglas and Sir G. D. Ramsay will enable historians of the future to judge more accurately the parts played by politicians and generals in the disasters of the Crimean campaign. To apportion blame to the various actors would be as invidious as it would be difficult, but there was every reason for vindicating the character of the War Minister who at a critical moment devoted himself unremittingly to bringing order out of the chaos which reigned both in Pall Mall and before the walls of Sebastopol. The letters now given to the public-extending over the Indian Mutiny and the expedition to China -show that Lord Panmure's desire to improve the efficiency of the military staff and the administration of the army was not extinguished by the criticism and obloquy which his previous efforts had aroused. The bias of his mind was in favour of the influence of the Sovereign rather than that of Parliament being paramount in military matters.

A further contribution to the political history of the middle Victorian period is to be found in Mr. Bernard Mallet's memoir of Thomas George, Earl of Northbrook (Longmans) whose official life began under Lord Palmerston. His apprenticeship was a varied one, passing from the Admiralty to the India, the War and the Home Offices in succession. As Mr. Cardwell's assistant he vigorously supported his chief in his Army Reform. His faithful service to his party after fifteen years was rewarded by his appointment as Viceroy of India. To his career in that country and to the reforms which he introduced, Mr. Mallet devotes considerable space, and with reason, as Lord Northbrook's reputation will rest on his work in India rather than on his stay at the Admiralty; although his administration of the navy during a critical period resulted in the policy which has since been developed by his successors. Mr. Mallet has written the story of an active and

laborious life with a fulness which will render it valuable to a wide class of readers.

The obvious moral of Mr. Francis Galton's Memories of My Life (Methuen) is that to enjoy life thoroughly and at its best it is necessary to have a many-sided mind-eager as well as able to profit by what is within its reach. A further and higher step is for the individual to apply for the benefit of the race what he has himself enjoyed. Mr. Galton, after an early training in mathematics and medicine, found himself in a position to indulge his love of travel. He was one of the earliest European visitors to Khartoum, and quite the earliest to Damaraland. He returned after visiting various countries full of impressions, recollections, and intelligent observations, and began to give the public the results. He reduced the "art of travel" to a science; he set up his Anthropometric Laboratory, started the ideas of Composite Portraits which through a study of the Human Faculty brought him to the theories of Heredity with which his name will be not less associated than with the theory of Finger-prints and the study of Eugenics-of which branch of science Dr. Galton may be regarded as the founder in this country. The memories of such a richly endowed life-bringing happiness to its possessor-reach far higher than the gossip of many such books.

The title of Sir H. Drummond Wolff's Rambling Recollections (Macmillan) is altogether suitable, and in no sense misleading. Upwards of fifty years spent in diplomatic and parliamentary life afford a man, endowed with wit and talent, a store of reminiscences on which he can draw copiously to the profit of his readers. His experiences in many countries were often as much outside the beaten paths of diplomatic routine as his parliamentary career was opposed to party discipline. The qualities which threw doubt upon his seriousness as a politician are those which render him delightful as a raconteur. His connection with the "Fourth Party" temporarily brought him into prominence, and from the account he gives, it is possible to understand better Mr. Balfour's attitude to Lord Salisbury and the bargain virtually resulting therefrom. Sir H. Drummond Wolff's ultimate reward, the embassy at Madrid, was a congenial, if scarcely adequate, recompense for his services to the group of which he was a member.

Few men have been better equipped for throwing light upon many obscure incidents, political and social, of the Victorian period than Sir Algernon West. He was private secretary to more than one Cabinet Minister, and later on a distinguished official; he was always in the Court circle, by turns confiding and discreet. With such qualifications he could not fail to produce a readable book, and One City and Many Men (Murray) will hold a deservedly high place among those which record recollections for the use of posterity. Sir Algernon West, moreover, is careful to find something fresh to tell about the habits and sayings of the most interesting people of his time-and in not a few cases he is able to furnish a clue to the conduct of public men whose real motives were misunderstood or misjudged at the time.

If it be true that a Scotchman is never at home but when he is "awa'," Mr. Archibald Colquhoun is but the highest expression of the

national " geist." Into his entertaining volume Dan to Beersheba (Heinemann) he has compressed the wanderings of a life which began in a violent storm off the Cape of Good Hope. It was, however, in the Indian Police, which he entered in 1869, that his personal story starts, and ten years later he was sent from Burmah to Siam on his first mission. The French war in Tongking gave him further opportunities, and thence, after a stay in Baluchistan, he found himself associated with Cecil Rhodes and made first administrator of Mashonaland. Restlessness next took him to Panama and Central America, and thence back to China and round the world again by different routes, always observant and acquisitive of knowledge, and able to get his information, if not from fountain-heads, at least through channels comparatively free from contamination. No wonder, therefore, that he can write a book as instructive as it is readable.

BIOGRAPHY.

In her concluding volume on The Later Years of Catherine di Medici (Constable) Miss Edith Sichel fails to find in her heroine the development of Catherine's better qualities, of which in her earlier work she seems to have discerned the germ. Catherine's life in a foreign land, where she succeeded in making many enemies and few friends, was not happy in its surroundings. Her husband was devoid of all these qualities which sometimes redeem a cruel nature; her three sons were weak and vicious, and the Bourbons and the Guises were bold and unscrupulous. It is not surprising, therefore, that she resorted to intrigue to preserve even the semblance of authority. How she strove and how she failed form a thrilling story which Miss Sichel tells with dramatic power-largely from sources hitherto unknown or unappreciated, so that she has been able to throw fresh light upon many obscure points in Catherine di Medici's luckless life.

The history of "La Fronde" is so perplexing but at the same time so important a turning-point in French culture that one can accept Mr. Noel Williams' contribution to its history, A Princess of Intrigue (Hutchinson), with feelings akin to gratitude. Madame de Longueville played an important, brilliant but ineffectual part in the making of history in the latter half of the seventeenth century. For a while at Court, in the salon, and in society, the daughter of the great Condé was the most powerful woman in France, sharing with Madame de Chevreuse and Madame de Sablé the doubtful joys of faction and intrigue. It is needless to say that such a life was crowded with events and personages notable and noteworthy; and Mr. Williams has taken full advantage of the occasion to bring into focus the most brilliant period of social and literary activity in France.

The thirteen years which Mary Stuart passed in France, turbulent as they were politically, must have been the happiest of her chequered life. Miss Stoddart in recounting the chief features of the Girlhood of Mary Queen of Scots (Hodder & Stoughton) has a field hitherto neglected by historians. The interest of Miss Stoddart's book lies chiefly in the clues it affords to Mary's possible motives of action in the later years of her life. The Court of Henry II. was perhaps as corrupt as can well

be imagined, but Miss Stoddart is of opinion that its influence was rather for good than for evil on Mary's mind.

Few among the great names of the Elizabethan age better deserve recognition by statesmen and students of the present day than the Great Ralegh (Methuen) on whom Mr. H. de Selincourt has composed a biographical essay which deserves attention. Ralegh's claims to fame are so various, and his position so unique, that it is surprising that hitherto no adequate biography has been attempted. In a period of stress and strain Ralegh's nature was "to turn necessity to glorious gain." At a time when the ambition of the greatest was to be a "courtier," he attained that position without patronage, and used it with dignity and unselfishly. "He was the most romantic figure in the most romantic age of English history."

It might have been as well to have left the memory of Sir Richard Granville, The King's General in the West (John Lane), in the obscurity to which he had been relegated. His descendant, the Rev. Roger Granville, however, has come to an opposite conclusion, and has compiled from various sources a fairly impartial review of the episodes of his ancestor's career. His character differed essentially from that of his chivalrous brother, Sir Bevill Granville, whose little-known equestrian statue, erected on the field where he met his death, is a better specimen of the sculptor's art than the majority of such memorials. Sir Richard Granville tried his hand in various lines, but apparently with equally little success. As a politician he betrayed the party to which he had given his allegiance, and after the Restoration he plotted against his leader Clarendon. As a commander his temper was such that he quarrelled with every one whom he thought a possible rival-and as a husband he was brutal. However it is to his wife's "penance" that North Devon owes one of its most gruesome ghost stories.

There is no lack of material for the making of readable books in the memorials and letters of Frenchmen and women of the eighteenth century. The salons and the encyclopédie were alike fields for the display of their wit and their philosophy. The Star of the Salons: Julie de l'Espinasse (Methuen) has had of late more than her fair share of attention in biography and fiction, but there remains enough to be said about her to interest those attracted by the most brilliant period of French social life. Miss Camilla Jebb has placed before her readers one of the most complex characters evolved by the times and society in which her heroine lived-and by a vivid description of her surroundings and her temptations presents Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse for the judgment of the twentieth century.

Miss Lilian Rea is to be congratulated for having withstood the methods of modern biography, and to have given her readers an opportunity of forming their own judgment as to the character of Marie Madeleine, Comtesse de la Fayette (Methuen). A greater patience on the part of the writer, however, might have enabled us to draw a truer estimate of Madame de la Fayette's character. She lived in the midst of Court life and of salon life, and was scarcely distinguishable amongst her brilliant contemporaries. It was as one of the founders of the modern novel that she will be best remembered, and although