17 MAY 1902, Page 22

Saints of Italy : Legends. Retold by Ella Noyes. Illustrated

from Fre Angelico and other Old Masters by Dora Noyes. (Dent and Co. 4s. 6d.)—Though it is quite right to translate and retell old legends, and so give them to children in a pleasant and simple form, it is a different thing to redraw the old masters, and we wish that this book had been illustrated by photographs of the pictures instead of by woodcuts " after" Fra Angelico, &c. The stories are told a little too seriously perhaps, and we wish that Miss Ella Noyes had gone into greater detail in describing the occupations of the Hermits of the Desert,—those good men who trained bears to beg, and made crocodiles into ferry-boats.