Chronicles of an Old Inn. By Andrea Hope. (Chapman and
Hall.) —Oar objection to Andree Hope's book is, that it is not businesslike enough. The author moralises in the most provoking and inappro- priate way. "Why linger in the old courts when the soft west wind is murmuring so invitingly amongst the branches of the tall elms ?" "What hours of anxious study, what fevered days and terrible nights, must the unsuccessful, struggling man endure Poor, feeble mortals that we are ! How many of us live but to exist ; and often, indeed, that existence is but the puerile flatter of a day." (What in the world is a "puerile flutter" ?) There are pages and pages of this kind of thing, filling, we do not doubt, the room of what one might care to read. A writer on such a topic as Gray's Inn can hardly fail to have something worthy of attention to tell us. Lord Bacon and Archbishop Laud are among its worthies. But it would have been well to tell us more about the more obscure, and spare us the details about the well known. Absolutely a fifth of the whole volume is devoted to Bishop Gardiner; and we can trace no kind of connection with Gray's Inn. The book, in fact, is a mistake. In these overcrowded days it is necessary to say this plainly when it has to be said.
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