Chantrey Land. By Harold Armitage. (Sampson Low, Marston, and Co.
10s. 6d. net.)—" An Account of the North Derbyshire Village of Norton," says the sub-title; and the biographical dictionaries tell us that Francis Chantrey was born there in 1781. "It is not pretended," says the author, "that this is a complete and formal history of Norton." As it runs to more than four hundred pages, one wonders much what such a history would be, and still more what a history of all English parishes would come to. The "Norton" alone would furnish something of a library,—there are between forty and fifty of them, either pure and simple, or with some affix. Chantrey's Norton is to the north of Sheffield, and is now a favourite resort of the Sheffield people. Mr. .Armitage has much to tell us about the place and its inhabitants. There is Chantrey himself, whose family was of some antiquity, though it had fallen into narrow circumstances, if not into poverty. There is much to be said about other families of more or less distinction, the Fanshawes, for instance, who have won no little distinction in Church and State, the Blythes, the Kirkes, the Parkers, and others. And there are some curious stories con- nected with the place. Such is the "Offiey Mystery," so called from the strange will by which Edmund Offiey left his estate away from his two young sisters to the Rev. Dr. Carr, in whose house he died. The strange thing is that Carr bore the highest character, while his face is of a quite saintly type. In the end, though the allowance of space seems large for an irregular history, we are not conscious of any feeling that the book should have been shorter.
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