30 OCTOBER 1886, Page 21

The Royal Jubilees of England. By William Ellis. (Sampson Low

and Co.)—After a preliminary account of Mosaic and Papal jubilees, and a few pages devoted to Egbert, as the first of English Xing', we get to the proper subject of the book, or, it should be said, we ought to get. More than sixty pages are given to the reign of Henry III.; bat the nearest approach to what we are looking for is that the reign lasted fifty-six years, and that there might have been a jubilee, but that there was not. Edward III. did have a jubilee, in fact, two jubilees, for he celebrated his fiftieth birthday as well as the fiftieth year of his reign ; but at least nine-tenths of the fifty- three pages of this chapter are superfluous. Even in the ease of George III., the irrelevant matter greatly exceeds the relevant. The truth is that there is not enough material for a book, though a volume might have been compiled, at the oost of a good deal of labour, out of the local records of the jubilee doings of 1810. This book is naught.