RICHARD cm:a DE LION.*
THIS large and handsome volume is divided into two parts. In the first and longer division, the author tells with consider- able spirit the story of the great Plantagenet who has effectu- ally touched her imagination and aroused that enthusiasm which has a good deal to do with the attractiveness of such a book as this. In the second division the author describes her own travels or pilgrimages to the regions most connected with Richard in his lifetime, and leads us, with a good deal of picturesque description, first through Normandy, Touraine, Anjou, Poitou, Aquitaine, then to the sea-coast of Palestine and, finally, to the scene of Richard's captivity in the castles and towns on the Danube and the Rhine.
Among these objects of pilgrimage one of the most interesting must always be the Abbey of Fontevrault, where the four Plantagenet effigies, that of Richard being the most striking, were so long ill-used and neglected, but have of late years been treated with the care and honour due to them. To judge from Mrs. Holbach's account of the state of the church and its monu- ments and relics, her visit was made before the recent works of restoration had brought to light the four Plantagenet coffins, the situation of which had been unknown since the sixteenth century, when they appear to have been buried more deeply during the alterations under the .A.bbess Louise de Bourbon.
From what has been already said it will be gathered that in
• In the Footstep, of Riot ant Caw de Lion. By Maude M. Holbach. With photogravure frontispiece and other illustrations. London: Stanley Paul and Co. [16s. net.]
her historical sketch of Richard's life and reign Mrs. Holbach studies him from the point of view of a hero-worshipper. The single-hearted crusader, inspired by "a lofty idea," "a really noble purpose"—the great captain, the generous brother and enemy—these aspects of the Lion-heart hold the stage here as they did in the books of our childhood, and comparatively little is said of the defects in mind and action of an undoubtedly fine character. Like many other heroes and heroines of a past, age, Richard had a personal charm which captivated his contemporaries, and that curious quality, as in other cases, clings to his name throughout the centuries. Some scientific historians have in modern days thrown off its influence, so that we often hear more of Richard's "craft and unscrupulousness," of the Angevin fury which possessed him, of his cunning as a statesman, his scorn of treaties, his cruelty and greed, than of the generous qualities, the splendid courage, which earned him his name. But Mrs. Holbaah quotes an old chronicler, a contemporary witness, "His was the valour of Hector, the magnanimity of Achilles," and thus sets the tune for her interesting book.
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