24 JANUARY 1880, Page 23

The Lives of the Greek Heroines. By Louisa Menzies. (Bell

and Sons.)—Miss Menzies has found—not, indeed, a new subject, for this is impossible, in so well-known a region—but a new combination of subjects, and has made good use of her discovery. Her style is pleasant, but yet admits of improvement. It does not keep steadily, so to speak, to the same note. A frigid or prosaic expression now and then jars upon the ears, and the sentences are sometimes cumbrous and iuordinately long. In the story of " Antigone," for instance, we have one of more than a page in length. Miss Menzies gives such proof of her classical culture, tgat wo are all the more sur- prised at occasional incongruities. How strange to write " Elektra " and " Odysseus," and then talk of Jove and Juno !