12 JUNE 1886, Page 23

Memoirs of the Empress Marie Louise. Translated from the French

of Jonbert de Saint-Arnaud. (Remington and Co.)—We cannot think that there is room in the world for such a book as this, particularly as this volume, a large octavo of more than four hundred pages, is one only out of five which are to be devoted to the same subject. Surely Marie Louise was not important enough to justify a book about twice as long as the Bible being written about her. She is a figure in history because she had to do with an important phase of European politics, but in herself she was a quite ordinary person, not certainly heroic, but scarcely deserving the hard words which have been sometimes used about her. But if her story was to be told at this preposterous length, M. Saint-Arnaud has done, and will probably continue to do, the work as it should be done.