CURRENT LITERATURE.
ILLUSTR ATED AND OTHER GIFT-BOOKS.—v.
A pathetic interest attaches to a course of six lectures on Art and the Forinati9a of Taste (Macmillan), Miss Lucy Crane, the authoress, an accomplished member of a gifted family, having died of heart disease in the spring of this year, after having delivered them with much acceptance in the North of England and elsewhere. There is nothing ambitious in these lectures, and indeed they were intended mainly to awaken in the minds of ordinarjapeople the sense of art which exists everywhere, though it may he dormant, Miss Crane holding and acting up to the sound opinion that art " is not merely a costly exotic, only cultivated by the wealthy few, and intended to please a narrow circle of highly refined people ; not this, but a blossoming of the universal nature of man, a natural outcome of every age, every stage of civilisation, every condition in life." Yet people who are familiar with the works of Mr. Ruskin, Mr. Symonds, Mr. Pater, and Mr. Poynter may learn not a little, while plain and unitiated folks are sure to learn a great deal, from this excellent volume. Miss Crane is a very good counsellor as to the domestically and socially important departments of art, house decoration, and dress. We can recommend her remarks under these heads, which begin (p. 113) thus sensibly, "Tho principles which will be found safe guides, both in house decoration and dress, may be arranged under five heads, analogy, contrast, variety, delicacy, repeti- tion." Miss Crane has further no exaggerated enthusiasms, unless it be considered one of such to represent Mr. Burno Jones as "a painter who really treads in the same glorious path as the great masters." The illustrations of this volume, by Thomas and Walter Crane, are very tasteful.—Although there is a good deal of sentimentalism and literary :'fatty matter," more suitable for a magazine than for a book in Every-day Art (13. T. Batsford), by Lewis Foreman Day, there are other and more solid things in it. There are in particular nuggets of good sense and good taste in the chapters which bear the titles, " House and Home," " Pictures in the House," and " To Ladies and Amateurs."—It is a very happy idea of Messrs. Chatto and Windus to publish an English edition of Davies' Art Annual, founded in 1879, and iu effect an illustrated record of all the art exhibitions of the present year. Here we have 250 copies of the best works ex- hibited in England, the Continent, and America, followed by critical notices of all the great exhibitions, signed by well-known critics. One volume, of moderate dimensions, is too small to contain the best of a year's art—it would not be difficult to name a hundred high- class English works of the year that have no place in this volume— and so the publishers intend in 1883 to issue two volumes, appearing respectively on Juno 1st and December 1st. This enterprise will probably be a successful one. This volume, crowded though it is, is very fascinating, and arranged on a good plan.
It would be difficult to name a handsomer gift-book than the "artist's edition" of Mr. J. R. Wise's The New Fond, its History and its Scenery (Henry Sotberan and Co.), with its handsome and, in this case, peculiarly appropriate wooden boards, its exquisite paper and type, and its illustrations by Mr. Heywood Seymour and Mr. Walter Crane. It is twenty years since the first edition of this delightful book was published. The charm of the original, is, it is unnecessary to say, enhanced by the fresh illustrations which bare been added. It should be taken to the Now Forest itself, and there have its history, its science, and its topographical descriptions "well shaken" in the presence of Nature. We like Mr. Wise not least for his old fashioned moralisings, such . as this in connection with the whitewashing of Sopley Church :—" I know not why we, in these days, should think that God delights in ugliness. Our forefathers, at least, thought not so. It would be well if for a moment we would consider how He adorns His own house, leads the green arabesque of ivy over its walls, and brightens the roof with the silver rays of mosses, and crowns each buttress with the aureole of lichen." These twenty years have not made Mr. Wise a pessimist. On the contrary, he holds that the love of natural scenery has spread during that time, attributing it "more especially to the direct interest in nature which the doctrine of evolution has aroused, and especially also to our new school of political economists, who, above all men, have preached the too often forgotten truth that men cannot live by bread alone." Is Mr. Ruskin, then, the political economist referred to P—The first volume of Picturesque Europe (Cassell and Co.) is beautifully printed and richly illustrated, and will be the none the less appreciated that it is devoted exclusively to the British Isles. The method of the work may be inferred from the titles of some of the chapters, " Windsor," " North Wales:" " The Dales of Derbyshire," "Edinburgh and the South Low- lands," "Ireland," and "English Abbeys and Churches." All things considered, however, insufficient justice has boon done to Scottish and Irish scenery, and room might have been made for more of the specialities of both by condensation. Thus Windsor and Eton, interesting as they are, might have been included in one chapter. The descriptive letter-press, the bulk of which is from the pen of Mr. T. G. Bonney, is all that could ho desired.--A handsome and pro- fusely illustrated edition of Mr. W. M. Thamson'e The Land and the Book (NelsOn and Sons) would be a very appropriate gift for any One engaged in Sunday-school work or the like. The exoellonoos of this guide to Central Palestine and Phcenicia, are too well known to need mentioning in detail at this time of day.—The Palls of Niagara, and other Famous Cataracts, by George W. Holley (Hodder and Stoughton), is a full account of the greatest of the world's cataracts ; indeed, the proportion of Mr. Holley's description of Niagara to that of the "other famous cataracts " suggests that of Falstaff's sack to his bread. Mr. Holley's style is peculiar, being a curious combina- tion of Baedeker and "The Stones of Venice." Here is one of its blossoms,—" The rapids are beautiful, the falls are grand ; those are exhilarating, these are inspiring ; those are noisy, turbulent, fickle ; these are calm, resistless, inexorable." It should bo added, however, that this is a carefully prepared and very full description of Niagara in all its aspects, historical, Scientific, and popular. By the way, how comes it that the groat cataract has not inspired one grout, and hardly even one mediocre, line of poetry P
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