We may mention together two volumes, both compiled with elaborate
care, which have each a special interest of their own. These are A Catalogue of Maps, Plans, and Views of London, Westminster, and Southwark. Collected and arranged by Frederick Grace. Edited by his son, John Gregory Crace. (Published at 30 Wigmore Street.) Mr. Crace devoted the leisure of fifty years of his life, and we may well imagine, no inconsiderable sum of money, to the collection which is here catalogued. The " Maps and Plans" occupy nineteen portfolios, and the "Views" as many more. It would probably be near the mark were we to guess the whole at 5,000. The editor tells us that his father's desire was that his collection should be placed in some public institution, and expresses a hope, in which we cordially concur, that the publication of this volume may contribute to that end. So unique a collection ought not to be lost to the nation.—British Mezzotint° Portraits. By John Chaloner Smith, B.A. Part I. Engravers.—Adams to Faber. (Henry Sotheran.) This is a "Descriptive Catalogue of the Engravings, from the Introduction of the Art to the Beginning of the Present Century." It is also "accompanied by biographical notes" of the personages whose portraits are included in the list. An appendix gives extracts from price-catalogues, and contains some curious details about variations in value. One mezzotint by Dickinson, of Mrs Pelham, after Reynolds, fetched .£1 115. in 1786, and £168 in 1873, when it became the property of the nation. It had been sold six times in the interval, having sunk in price once from five guineas in 1819 to .£5 in 1824 (1820-30 is said to have been a decade of low prices).
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