12 JULY 1930, Page 28

The Tragic Empress (Skeffington, 21s.) gives us many pleas- ant,

if unconscious, glimpses of the author, the Cointesse des Garcia, rather than of its subject, the Empires Eugenie. The Empress was indubitably a woman of great beauty and personality, but the Comtes.se des Garcia tells us so much of her misfortunes and the tears she shed over them, that we begin to lose sympathy with her, which is fatal in a biography. The story of the death of the Prince Imperial is told once more, with a strong French bias ; and many of the other reminiscences are merely trivial. However, a book dealing at first hand with the close of the Second Empire cannot fail to have elements of interest. This one certainly has. The author charms us for herself, but fails to convey the glamour surround- ing her heroine.