The Fountain of Youth. Translated from the Danish of Frederick
Paludan Muller. By H. A. Freeland, late M.P. for Chichester. With illustrations designed by Walter Allan, engraved on wood by J. D. Cooper. (Mactuillan.)—No one can look at this graceful volume with- out feeling a strong prepossession in its favour. The perfect taste of the green binding first takes one captive, the luxurious type and paper 'confirm the cenquest, and one's subjugation is completed by the prettiness and finish of the illustrations before one has read a word of the stab,. This, however, is pleasant enough, if rather alight; and the perusal of it may have the effect, which Mr. Freeland in his love for all that is Danish desires, of exciting a wish for a further acquaintance with Danish literature. Don Diego, a restless old cavalier of the times of, Isabella the Good, hears of a fountain of youth in the New World,.and suct- coeds in reaching it. After his bath be finds that he has got an old mind in a young body, and-that be is in consequence fit company neither for the old nor the young. The difficulties that he encounters in his novel position are described with humour and with pathos too ; and the. necessity that he finds himself under at last of retiring from the world and getting old again points a useful moral, whilst his patient ac- quiescence in it regains for him our sympathies. To any discontented old gentleman we could, not suggest a wiser course than to present the ladies of his household with this pretty ornament for the drawing-room table, and by its assistance get himself laughed out of his vain longings in a not unkindly way.
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