28 JANUARY 1911, Page 12

WHERE GHOSTS WALK.

Where Ghosts Walk. By Marion Harland. (G. P. Putnam's Sons. 9s. net.)—This is the second volume from Miss Harland's pen bearing this title, to be explained, we may say, by what follows, "Haunts of Familiar Characters in History and Litera- ture." First comes "Little Boy Blue," the poor lad who was the only one of Queen Anne's children to pass babyhood,—his "ghost" walks somewhere in Twickenham. The boy had water on the brain, and at five could not walk alone. He was lashed with a birch-red till he did. It would not do to have him compared un- favourably with the son of the exiled King. He died of scarlet fever and bleeding at eleven. Next we have "The Ladies of Llangollen," from whose diary some curious extracts have been made; then Charles L in Westminster Hall and on the Whitehall scaffold, Sir Philip Sidney at Penshurst, Amy Robsart at Cumnor Place, and, to pass over others, Mary Stuart at Amboise. What a ghastly scene is that pictured for us here ! A delegation of five hundred Huguenots was admitted into the castle, protected by a safe-conduct. Hundreds more were brought in by the Royal troops. All of these were first tortured and then done to death. Quantum relligio potuit suadere malorum ! What would Lucretius have said if he had read Church history? Three women, two most unwillingly, were there to witness the scene,—Catherine de' Medici; Mary, who was then Queen of France; and Anne d'Este, the wife of the Duo Francois de Guise. Anne protested, and was soundly rated by her husband for doing so. But what a beginning for the girl Queen ! There are excellent illustrations, some of them curiously placed more biblio- polarum. Llangollen Church faces us when we read about Queen Anne's boy, and Charles VILL's Tower in the Chateau of Amboise helps us to understand Stonehenge.