A Book of North Wales. By S. Baring-Gould. (Methuen and
Co. 6s.)—Mr. Baring-Gould's book shows the characteristic qualities which never fail to attract, if they sometimes provoke. It is intended to prepare a visitor with some intelligent know- ledge of the people and the country. Just a little caution would not be out of place, but a better preliminary to a visit there could hardly be. Mr. Baring-Gould has a keen sense of the picturesque, both in history and in Nature, and it must be a dull intelligence which will not be touched by it. We see that he gives us a very different account of the marriage of Queen Katherine of Valois to Owen Tudor than we find in the painstaking narrative of Miss Strickland. The story of how the Queen sent commissioners to investigate the circumstances of her lover's family may be true, but we can scarcely say so much for the statement that "the King's Council was satisfied" before the marriage took place. There is everything to make us think that the affair was a secret, known doubtless to a good many, but not a matter of public knowledge. Katherine was left a widow in 1422, and after the first three years of her son's reign almost disappears from view. A more important matter is the unfavourable estimate of Edward I., whose character is really a possession of the English people.
Previous page
