Young People and Old Pictures. By Theodore Child. (Griffith, Ferran,
and Co.)—Mr. Child seeks by the aid of copious illustra- tions to reproduce the life of children in the past. He uses the works of painters, more or less famous, in which they have taken children for their subjects, fills in details, explains and illustrates, till by the joint work of pen and pencil he gives us a very fair idea of how the little folk lived in the days that are gone, and what they looked like. He divides his volume into six portions, according to the countries in which his "old pictures" have been produced. " Italy " is the title of the first division. We begin by having " Boys and Girls from Old Florence," and this is followed by a section entitled "Some High-Born Young People." "Don Garcia de' Medici," a chubby little fellow of six or seven; Eleanore of Mantua, one of the House of Gonzague, and afterwards wife to Ferdinand II. of Germany ; and Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, whose round, child-face is a curious contrast to what we know of the man, are among the " young people " here portrayed. " Spain " is the second division. For this, Zurbaran and Vales- quez have been laid under contribution; but we have none of Murillo's children. France supplies plenty of material which admits of being historically arranged, " French Girls in the Seventeenth Century " being one of the sub-sections, and " French Boys in the Eighteenth Century" another. The account of
Madame Viges-Lebrun, who, born in 1755, died less than fifty years ago, is remarkably interesting. But the best section is perhaps " The Netherlands." Rubens, Vandyck, Gerbier, Netscher, and Cuyp supply very characteristic specimens. England is represented, we are sorry to say, by some eight pages only, and the name of Sir Joshua Reynolds is conspicuous by its absence.
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