CURRENT LITERATURE.
Illustrious Irishwomen. By E. Owens Blackburne. 2 vols. (Tinsley Brothers.)—" Illustrious" is too splendid an epithet to be applied to the greater part of the ladies who are commemorated in these volumes, "Noted," which we also find on the title-page, where we read " Memoirs of the Most Noted Irishwomen," is a more appropriate word. Occasionally we might say even "notorious." The book is divided into an Early Irish Period," where we have, among others, Saint Bridget, and Eva, Princess of Leinster ; a "Mediaeval Period," with the "Old Countess of Desmond," about whose 140 years—proved now, we believe, to be a fable—the author seems to entertain no doubt ; 4' Famous Actresses," " Literary Women," and a Miscellaneous Section." We are inclined to think that the dramatic chapters are the best, though some of the heroines may be considered to have been " notorious " rather than "illustrious." The life of "Blue-eyed Bellamy," for instance, is very intetesting, and if the reader will draw the right moral from it, not unedifying. "Peg Woffington " makes the subject for another chapter of considerable interest. Among the other actresses are "Perdita," Mrs. Jordan, Kitty Clive, and Elizabeth Ferrer). Among the "literary women," Mrs. Tighe, a poetess who is too good for the oblivion into which she has fallen, Maria Edgeworth, Mrs. Hemans, Lady Blessington, and Lady Stirling-Maxwell, better known as the Hon. Mrs. Norton, are the most conspicuous. Here, too, there is plenty of in- teresting reading, though the author's critical judgments are not of any particular value. How, for instance, is it possible to reconcile the re- mark on p. 87 (vol. ii.), that "there is little in Maria Edgeworth's standard of moral duty to which any one of common discretion and average goodness of disposition does not naturally conform, and scarcely anything in the motives she proposes has a nobler sense than a regard for social and worldly interests," with the mention on p. 104 of a "high moral tone consistently maintained," in the enumeration of her good qualities as a writer ? On the whole, the book may be safely recommended.
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