24 FEBRUARY 1883, Page 24

Messer Agnolo's Household. By Leader Scott. (Longmans.)— This tale deals

with the domestic life of Florence in the time of Lorenzo dei Medici, and a most graphic and pleasing picture it gives of respectable citizen interiors in the cinquecento period. One feels in a glow of warm interest, from the introduction to the lions and their keepers at the beginning of the story, till the satisfactory, yet naturally told, reconciliation with which it ends. Only, any one who can write so well should not allow the faulty possessive on p. 14, or " conventional " for " conventual " to remain on p. 2. It is long since we have seen either fact or fiction which has given so well, so sunnily, the innocent side of Italian life; yet there is no milk-and- water innocence, but plenty of shade, as well as sun.