25 FEBRUARY 1928, Page 28

THE OUTDOOR MONUMENTS . OF LONDON. By It is perhaps kinder

to say little about the 'artistic qualities of marly_of London's statriesi but they and other monuments are memorials of the just pride of the nation in its own sons and some ethers, and as such they well deserve the catalogue which -Mi. Cdciper's reference-book givei' tliem: We like to know where the great ambassador, Walter Hines Page, lived, and' it is interesting to have a detailed list of the different houses in London occupied by Dickens, whose full Christian- names, as many will learn for the first time, were Charles John Huffha m. Mr. Cooper catalogues four residences of Johrison17 Gough Square and 5, 6, and 7 Johnson's Court. But :what of the seventeen mentioned by Boswell, which (be it noted) do not include 5 and 6 Johnson's Court ? Misspellings like Le Soeur (on the frontispiece) for Le Sueur, Guildford SWeet (p. 27), Nemo me impune lecessit (p. 47), and SpalatrO .(p. 107) would be better away, and a little more care in the historical and biographical notes appended to the different' entries would be desirable. Both Charles II. and James Hare described as the second sons of Charles 1.; Pepys was not &an in 1683 but in 1632, as the Corporation's tablet testifies ; it is wresting history to say that John Lawrence " after a three months'-piege retook Delhi" ; and

the account of the death of Major M. f. Meiklejohn,

(p. 168), is entirely inaccurate. Major Meiklejohn deliberately . put his runaway- horse at the -railings -of-. Rotten. Row- in order to avoid a nurse and some children ; otherwise the concluding words of the memorial tablet=" He gave his life to save others "—on the wall of Knightsbridge Barracks have no point. But it is difficult in a work of so much detail to avoid occasional error, and on the whole Mr. Cooper's volume will be found a useful reference-hook.