THE EDINBURGH REVIEW.
We think the best article in the new Edinburgh—except that on South Africa, dealt with elsewhere—is "Madame du Deffand and her Friends." That wonderful woman of the world was, perhaps, most interesting in her old age,—during the time of her blindness and of her friendship with Horace Walpole. We have seldom read anything more pathetic than the description she gives of the state of her own mind at this period. She compares it to a garden in which al most all the flowers have faded. She feels, she says, a great dearth of thought and of imagination, but she has more affection than ever. That is the only everlasting flower. "The Early History of Fox Hunting " is a most entertaining paper. Many will be surprised to see how modern a sport it is. It began in the eighteenth century, and although, says the reviewer, "we cannot pretend to trace any connection between them, the rise of fox-hunting and the great Whig revolution were almost contemporaneous." What strange ideas our great-grandfathers seem to have had of pleasure ! We are told in this paper that "in the days of Squire Forester at Willey Hall, in Shropshire, when there was a meet the guests would arrive the day before and sit down, booted and spurred, to dinner at four o'clock in the afternoon. They did not rise from table till it was time to mount their horses and ride to the covert-side." It is only fair to add that it was the custom in those days to "throw off as soon as it was light enough to distinguish a gate from a stile."
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