are, few readers of literary taste would willingly spare any of the copious extracts which he gives from his father's diaries and corre spondence. Another biography which falls under the same class and should not be overlooked is the Rev. H. L. Thompson's picture of a great Oxford figure in the Memoir of H. G. Liddell, D.D. (Murray).

Our second division is that of autobiography. The Autobiography and Letters of Mrs. M. O. W. Oliphant (Blackwood), edited by Mrs. Harry Coghill, gives such portion as the novelist completed of her own life's story. There is a pathos about it, arising from her domestic afflictions, and also from the rather sombre view which she took of her lot in life. But it is an interesting self-revelation, and it contains glimpses of many well-known literary men-particularly of Tennyson. and Carlyle. The Memoirs of a Revolutionist (Smith, Elder) are by Prince Kropotkin, the Russian noble who after suffering imprisonment in Russia and France as a revolutionary found a refuge in England, where he could continue his studies in socialism and in those geographical and geological studies for which he has become famous. Personal reminiscences of Indian life fill the pages of two books written by well-known public men-in both cases forming further instalments of autobiography begun in previous volumes. These are Notes from a Diary (Murray) kept chiefly in Southern India, by Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, and Auld Lang Syne-second series-My Indian Friends (Longmans), by Professor Max Müller.

The two last but by no means the least entertaining books of reminiscences which call for notice are Recollections, 1832-1886 (Smith, Elder), by Sir Algernon West, and Reminiscences (Chatto & Windus), by Justin McCarthy, M.P. Both these writers have had advantages such as few compilers of autobiography can boast of. Sir Algernon West's birth and training, his position for some years as Mr. Gladstone's secretary, and his subsequent tenure of permanent office in the public service, have brought him into constant connection with eminent men. He describes with both wit and observation the social and club life of the early Victorian period, and provides an abundance of anecdote illustrative of the characters of well-known politicians. His "Recollections," too, like Mr. Justin McCarthy's Reminiscences," have the merit, which similar works do not always possess, that their good taste is unimpeachable. Mr. McCarthy, during his long career as journalist and politician, has gained the acquaintance or the friendship of almost every contemporary man of note in Parlia ment or in the literary world, and he utilises his store of material with the skill of a practised writer.

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The past year has been remarkable for the number of interesting collections of letters which have been published. Those which aroused the greatest interest and also the greatest controversy were The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett (Smith Elder). Mr. R. B. Browning, who edited them, had a very difficult problem presented to him in deciding whether to publish or to withhold them. If not published, they would have passed eventually into the hands of others who would have far less right to decide the question. If they were destroyed, an immense mass of most interesting literary matter and

of comments on the literature of the time by two of its most gifted minds would perish. But they are of the most intimate character, the unrestrained outpouring of two impassioned natures whose poetic and spiritual affection grew warmer as the obstacles to their union increased. Public opinion was much divided on the question whether or not they should ever have seen the light, but no one could deny the intense interest, both literary and personal, of the whole correspondence. The other chief book of the year of this class is The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson to His Family and Friends (Methuen), edited by Mr. Sidney Colvin. They are addressed to many well-known literary men— Mr. Henley, Mr. Gosse, Mr. Barrie, Mr. Colvin himself, and others, and are full of keen interest in the writer's own literary work, but equally full of comments, incisive and sympathetic, on the literary work of others; and these, often expressed with buoyant fancy and racy humour and always with the literary grace peculiar to Stevenson, make a most valuable addition to the series of his writings. Mr. Colvin, in an introduction, gives an admirable estimate of Stevenson's personal character. The third volume of The Works of Lord Byron (Murray}, edited by Mr. Rowland E. Prothero, contains a large number of hitherto unpublished letters written during the most critical period of the poet's life-that, namely, which covered his marriage to Miss Milbanke and his separation from her. Other collections of letters of more or less interest published for the first time, at any rate in book form, last year were Unpublished Letters of Swift (Unwin), addressed by the dean to his friend Knightley Chetwode in 1714-1731, and now edited by Dr. Birkbeck Hill, which do not add much to what is already known of Swift; Letters of Thomas Carlyle to His Youngest Sister (Chapman & Hall), edited by Mr. C. T. Copland, which show, more than anything else Carlyle wrote, the sympathetic and affectionate side of his character; John Hookham Frere and His Friends (Nisbet), edited by Miss Gabrielle Festing, containing intimate letters-many of them from George Canning-addressed to that diplomatist and scholar between the years 1799 and 1846, full of the social and political gossip of the time; George Selwyn, His Letters and His Life (Unwin), edited by G. S. Roscoe and Helen Clerque, giving much of the same kind of gossip about the generation previous to Frere's, and first brought to light through the labour of the Historical Manuscripts Commission; Letters of Walter Savage Landor (Duckworth), edited by Stephen Wheeler-mainly private letters written by Landor as an old man to the daughter of an old friend, Miss Rose Paynter, afterwards Lady GravesSawle; and The Early Married Life of Maria Josepha Lady Stanley (Longmans), edited by Miss Adeane. This last is a sequel to the "Girlhood of Maria Josepha Holroyd," by the same editor, and contains letters written by Lady Stanley up to 1820--she did not die until 1862 --some letters of her aunt Sarah Martha Holroyd, and parts of a diary kept by Sir John Stanley. The letters are full of acute and vivacious comments upon public men and events.

MISCELLANEOUS.

A garden, said Bacon, is "the purest of Humane Pleasures." This feeling is reflected in many books recently published, which by their freshness of observation, their kindliness and their true culture form one of the pleasantest bypaths in current literature. Such a book is Wood and Garden (Longmans) by Gertrude Jekyll. It is illustrated by happily chosen photographs, and besides containing much helpful advice for the amateur gardener, treats the whole subject of flowers and their culture with an agreeable literary touch. Two other ladies, who had already published successful books of the same kind, gave us last year further instalments. One is The Solitary Summer (Macmillan), by the author of "Elizabeth and Her German Garden," who shows as much in her second book as in her first a sense of humour, and an enthusiasm for, and power of observing, nature. The other is from Mrs. C. W. Earle, who wrote More Potpourri from a Surrey Garden (Smith, Elder), giving, as before, in an agreeable manner many sound maxims, not only as to gardens, but generally as to the ordering of life in a country house.

TRAVEL.

The most prominent names in the record of travel and adventure are those of ladies. Mrs. Bishop had another journey to record, as full as any she had undertaken of danger and excitement, and told with her usual literary skill, in The Yangtsze Valley and Beyond (Murray). Miss Kingsley, who has taught us so much about West Africa, published an instructive book, written in a fresh and vigorous style, called West African Studies (Macmillan), laying great stress on the importance of encouraging the development of trade in West Africa, and of governing our dependencies there with greater consideration for the ideas, customs and religion of the natives.

In the literature of mountaineering, a high place must be assigned to The Highest Andes (Methuen) by E. A. Fitzgerald. Mr. Fitzgerald and Sir Martin Conway are the only mountaineers who have attempted the ascent of Aconcagua, and Mr. Fitzgerald failed, through mountain sickness, actually to reach the summit, though his guide succeeded in doing so. But his expedition in the Andes was a well-organised one, and his book, in which it is recounted in a manner both careful and picturesque, adds much to our geographical knowledge.

A writer who has achieved great popularity for the graphic and masterly description of his experiences in sailing ships, whalers and the mercantile marine is Mr. F. T. Bullen, who published last year The Cruise of the Cachalot (Smith, Elder), Idylls of the Sea (Grant Richards) and The Log of a Sea Waif (Smith, Elder).

SPORT.

The output of books on sport is not quite up to the average. Mr. Baillie Grohman's Sport and Life in Western America (H. Cox) deserves a place by itself in one department of sport-the pursuit of big game in foreign lands. Mr. Baillie-Grohman is no mere touristsportsman; he settled in the country and explored it as trader,

pioneer and hunter, and his book is full not only of vivid recollections but of much information of value on natural history and on the fauna of the Pacific slope.

Turning to less distant and adventurous forms of sport, we find some attention paid to fishing, and must mention particularly the volume which Sir Edward Grey contributed to the "Haddon Hall Library," under the title Fly Fishing (Dent). Sir Edward Grey is known in political life as an effective orator, and in the world of sport as a master in the art of angling. In this book he shows also a distinct literary gift, not only in his lucid statements of the precepts of fishing, especially with the dry fly, but in his agreeable descriptions of country

scenes.

ᎪᎡᎢ,

Books on art-on the history of art as distinct from its techniquecontinue to pour from the press in great numbers, dealing with schools of art and still more often with single artists, and illustrated with finely reproduced examples of their work. Of the latter class Messrs. Bell are publishing a series of handsome volumes, from which we may select for special mention the Velasquez of Mr. R. A. M. Stevenson, containing much sound and fresh criticism. Dr. G. C. Williamson's Bernardino Luini, from the same publishers, is a careful study of the works of an artist whose fine qualities were first revealed to Englishmen by Mr. Ruskin. Another monograph of great value to the student of Renaissance art is Giovanni Bellini (Unicorn Press) by Mr. Roger E. Fry.

Other books of merit deal with schools or periods of art. French Painters of the Eighteenth Century (Bell), by Lady Dilke, brings before the English public a number of closely related French masters, of whom, with the possible exceptions of Watteau and Fragonard, they know very little. Her treatment of them is that of a careful and appreciative student, and displays moreover no small literary skill. The entire range of French art is covered by Miss Rose Kingsley in A History of French Art (Longmans). In a little over 500 pages she investigates the racial factors which have manifested themselves in French architecture, sculpture and painting, and reviews the development of these arts during the last 800 years. Considering the vastness of the theme and the limits of space at her disposal, Miss Kingsley has produced a very useful book. Two books dealing with the art of modern times in two special continental countries are Dutch Painters of the Nineteenth Century (Sampson Low), by Max Rooses, the second volume of a work of which the first was published about a year ago; and the History of Modern Italian Art (Longmans) by Ashton Rollins Willard.

Of modern English artistic movements nothing has of late years attracted more attention than pre-Raphaelitism. Last year we had, from Mr. W. M. Rossetti, Pre-Raphaelite Diaries and Letters (Hurst & Blackett), which is full of material for the history of the movement. It contains some early letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, parts of a diary of no very great interest kept by Ford Madox Brown, and extracts more

worth preserving from the journal of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Side by side with this, Mr. Percy H. Bate has published The English Pre-Raphaelite Painters (Bell), which treats not only of the brotherhood itself, but of the numerous painters who, though possessing a distinct individuality of their own, have been more or less influenced by its principles, and also of the younger artists of to-day in whose work traces of the tradition may still be seen.