The Lake Country. By E. Lynn Linton, with one hundred
illustra- tions by W. J. Linton. (Smith, Elder, and Co.)—Apparently a
companion volume to Mr. Wise's New Forest, also illustrated by Mr. W.
J. Linton, which the same publishers gave us two years ago. Mr. Linton's sketches are very beautiful. He seems to have spent a
summer among the lakes and to have filled his sketch-book with pretty " bits " of water and cloud and mountain which will delight the lover of beautiful drawing, and then Mrs. Linton seems to have written a description of the country so as to bind them together into a volume.
The result we must in truth say is a very beautiful piece of book- making. In these gift-books either the text or the illustrations ought to be subservient to the other. If Mrs. Linton had described her husband's sketches, then we should have welcomed a charming set of drawings. If Mr. Linton had illustrated his wife's description of the Lake country, doubtless we should have had a most valuable, and at the same time artistic, book. As it is there is a little incongruity, for tho drawings give not a representation of the Lake country, but bits of scenery which wore in fact selected there. Perhaps this may seem a little over critical. At all events we are glad to say that taken separately both text and drawings deserve high praise, the only fault we have to find with the formor being a little grandiloquence in some of the descriptions. Binding, paper, and printing are alike sumptuous.
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