The Thackeray Country. By Lewis Melville. (A. and C. Black.
Os. net.)—Mr. Melville says very truly " There cannot be said to be a Thackeray Country in the sense that there is a Scott Country or a Burns Country." If there is such a "country," it is London. Still, we might have heard a little more about the locality which is more than any other connected with the Thackeray Monken Hadley. It would have been interesting, for instance, to be told that John Richard Thackeray, first-cousin to the novelist's father, was rector of that parish for twenty-seven years (1819- 1846) ; Thackeray himself was born in 1811 and died in 1863 For the most part, however, Mr. Melville, who, indeed, has already made the subject his own, is careful to observe all that can be observed. He has written an interesting book, which will please the reader the more the better he knows the author. When another edition is called for, would it not be possible to illustrate it with a map of London, in which the Thackeray localities—the Charterhouse, the Foundling Hospital, Pall Mall, Furnivall's Inn, and other places which are somehow identified with his life or his novels—might have some distinguishing mark?
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