The Annual Register, 1887. (Rivingtons.)—" English History" fills up, as
usual, more than half of the first part of this volume, and more than a third of the whole. On the Irish Question the writer is certainly not unfair to the Nationalists. But is he fair to the police when he accuses them of acting in "a most reckless" manner ? As for the verdict of the Coroner's jury, the implied blame of the authorities for not acting upon it is surely unjust. A grosser travesty of a judicial process was never played. From "English History" we pass to "Foreign and Colonial History," and find a summary of events which cannot fail to be useful. In Part II. we find the usual " Thronicle of Events," "Retrospect of Literature," "Science and Art," and "Obituary of Eminent Persons."
Messrs. Henry Sotheran and Co. send us their Catalogue of Books. There is always an interest about a catalogue, even to those who do not think either of buying or selling,—a melancholy interest, for the most part, for those who are concerned with literary matters. How few books are worth, ten years after their publication, even half their price ! And when they are, how strange the reason that has kept up or increased their value !
In the "Library of St. Francis de Sales," translated by the Rev. Henry Benedict Mackery, 0.S.B., under the direction of the Right Rev. John Cuthbert Hedley (Burns and Oates), we have the fourth volume, Letters to Persons in Religion. There is, we need not say, much beauty and devotion in these letters, but also what is surely a curious phraseology, as when, in a letter to a Religious Sister, "the Saint tells her what nosegay she can give to her guardian angel, her heavenly Valentine or Cavalier."
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