ii s. iv. OCT. i4 t 1011.1 NOTES AND QUERIES.
319
Mr. Francis Gribble, as hardly answering to the
title of a suitor. Another article particularly
worth reading is that on ' Nelson as seen in his
Letters ' (Sir Harris Nicolas's ' Nelson's Dispatches
and Letters').
- Anna Karenina : an Appreciation,' is also
a depreciation, by Mr. Low, of Merejkowsky's volume on Tolstoy. As we account the apprecia- tion of the book we have read as too laudatory, we conceive that the depreciation of what we have not read may be too denunciatory. Over- emphasis also somewhat mars Mr. Walter Sichel's ' English Aristophanes,' an attempt to liken Sir William Gilbert to the Greek comic poet. Maeter- linck's essay on ' Death ' is largely an argument for a common-sense view which would lead natur- ally to the elimination of fear in those in health of mind and body, though many generations will doubtless pass away before such reasonableness will become sufficiently fixed to stand the test of ill-health of mind or body.
MB. W. S. LILLY'S article in The Nineteenth Century on ' The Philosophy of Strikes ' is un- doubtedly one of the few really helpful contribu- tions to the study of the question which have been made as the outcome of the recent industrial disturbances. We make, we believe, the only possible criticism when we say that he is almost virulent in the case of the ignorant extravagances of the toilers, and tenderly denunciatory of the cultivated extravagances of the rich. The same distinction is apparent in dealing with the force majeure of the manual worker, i.e., the strike, and the counter of the capitalist, which consists in masterly inactivity while he maintains himself on his amassed wealth. Alongside of this appa- rent disposition towards feudalism is the severest criticism we have seen of the present Government and the party system generally.
A careful article by Mrs. Pinsent examines and discusses the results of the Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic Children) Act of 1899. Her plea for continuity of control for a large percentage of the feeble-minded is supported by facts which emphasize the folly of continued shelving of this question. The prevalent haziness of expression on the subject of the epileptic as distinct from the defective is not touched on.
Mr. Frederic Harrison as an old traveller of sixty-six years' experience gives ' My Reisebilder Old and New.' He writes as one to whom the cities of Europe are more familiar than to most men is their own capital, and, in a style at once discursive and provocative, distributes praise or blame for this, that, or the other vanished or captured beauty.
General Maunsell's article on ' The Siege of Delhi,' while in no way traversing the best narra- tives of that event, testifies to certain misconcep- tions in historians of the siege. Another Indian study- is ' Why India Lags Behind,' in which the author, Saint Nihal Singh, draws attention to the spirit of suspicion which, he avers, is having a prejudicial effect upon the legitimate aspirations of his people. * Glorious Robert Browning ' is an appreciation of the poet by Emily Hickey, which would have lost nothing by diminished exuberance of expression. Other subjects treated are ' The Revival of Boxing ' and ' Our Moslem Sisters.'
The Burlington opens with an appreciation by
Mr. Charles S. Read of the distinguished collector
to whom the nation is so greatly indebted for the
share he had in the formation of the National
Art-Collections Fund Mr. Max Rosenheim. The
frontispiece is a beautiful reproduction of one of
those careful copies of English Primitives which Mr.
Tristram has for several years been making. This
is a painted roundel from the Bishop's Chapel at
Chichester, about 2 ft. 6 in. in diameter, painted
in fine tempera heightened with gilding. Num-
bers of these paintings by national artists, executed
between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries,
are to be found up and down the country,
and deserve serious consideration by students of
painting.
The newly discovered miniature of Thomas Cromwell which Mr. Lionel Cust attributes to Hans Holbein, unfortunately lost to the National Por- trait Gallery, finds place amongst other notable miniatures in Mr. Pierpont Morgan's collection. He is to be congratulated on the possession of a Holbein Which, though damaged, shows unmis- takably the master's hand in its skilful drawing of the somewhat vulgar physiognomy of Henry's plebeian adviser.
' Chinese Stone Sculpture at Boston ' is the subject of an article by Mr. Frederick W. Coburn,. in which he claims for some of the pre-Buddhistic exhibits rank amongst the world's masterpieces. The art of stone sculpture, which grew up in China in the second and first centuries B.C., flourished for nearly a millennium, and then disappeared, is being rediscovered to-day with surprise. Incidentally the author has something to say on the acquisitive faculty of the Japanese.
Mr. G. F. Hill writes on the Italian medals in the Salting Collection, praising their quality as extraordinarily high. Mr. Goulding has an article on Nicholas Dixon the limner, and Mr. Alfred Jones one on ' Old Chinese Porcelain made from English Silver Models.' Most of these copies were made between 1722 and 1795, when an extensive trade between China and Europe was established, though one example in the Victoria and Albert Museum Mr. Jones assigns to an earlier period.
MB. MAUBICE Low on ' American Affairs ' in The National Review has some caustic comments on America's methods of setting about the prelimin- aries of treaty-making. His reproduction of the- pro and con newspaper comments on President Taft's tariff policy will be the cause of sympathy between those Englishmen and their transatlantic cousins who regret the want of the judicial spirit in the world's press. Mr. Low quotes The New York Herald on the subject of America's " Heads I win, tails you lose " position in the case of war- between England and Germany.
After reading Mr Low's article, our readers will probably centre their attention on ' Garrick's " Grand Tour," ' by Mr. Austin Dobson, and ' Voltaire and his Age,' by Prof. Pelham Edgar. The former suffers from discursiveness, but in the latter we realize Voltaire as the man of his age. Certainly the spirit of the present day is adverse to his principle that " You must be economical in your youth, and you find yourself in your old age in possession of a capital that surprises you ; and that is the time of life when fortune is most necessary to us."
