15 JULY 1905, Page 24

The Diary of a Girl in France in 1821. By

Mary Browne. Edited by the Hon. H. N. Shore, RN. (John Murray. 9s. net.)—In 1821 Mary Browne, a girl of fourteen, went to France with her father and mother and five brothers and sisters. She met with the disappointments that older people do not escape. She found that there are east winds on the other side of the Channel, and that La Belle France must be looked for elsewhere than in the Pas de Calais. Probably these things were not, on the whole, dis- agreeable. She left England with a strong suspicion that France and French people were very much inferior, and came back to it with the suspicion changed to a conviction. It is not exactly easy to say why the book has been published, but it may come under the general head of materiel pour servir. Here we see the temper which twenty years of war had brought about, and six years of peace had done but little to change.