MEMOIRS OF A VANISHED GENERATION.* THERE are signs of ths
arrival of a long series of books on the social and family hintOry of the nineteenth century. As Lady St. Helier remarks in her attractive though slightly confused introduction to this volume, the materials for such books exist in masses in the great houses of England; and it is not likely that their owners will allow them to remain for ever unexamined and unpublished. Such collections of family papers must be full of curious interest, for the changes in European life in the last sixty or seventy years have been swifter and vaster than it is at all easy to realise without a careful study of lives so near our own.
A welcome pioneer bus reached us in Mrs. Warrenne Blake's Memoirs of her grandfather, Admiral the Hon. Edmond Knox, and his family. The singular, unaffected charm of the book, which is chiefly made up of letters from him, his wife (Miss Hope Vere), his daughters, and only son, is owing to his own delightful and excellent character, the graoeful ease with which he and his belongings accepted the troubles of a life not altogether smooth, and the light Irish humour which meant happiness for them all. There is an atmosphere of old-fashioned goodness and kindness, high morality, warm affection, all kept fresh, gay, and healthy by a keen sense of the absurd, which makes the book a charming contrast indeed to some family chronicles, French and English, one could name.
The interest of these Memoirs is far from being confined to the domestic affairs of Admiral Knox, his children and other relations, though in the letters, written of course without any idea of publication, all sorts of amusing particulars of everyday life are to be found. Like BO many of our country. people in those clays, Admiral Knox lived abroad for years, chiefly in Paris, where his father, Lord Ranfurly, bad a beautiful apartment in the Place VenclOme. The family, including brothers, sisters-in-law, cousins, went a good deal into society, and were deeply interested in the inner politics of the Monarchy of July. We often come on remarks or allusions which show how insecure was Louis Philippe on his throne, long before 1848. In that year, though London had become their usual residence, Admiral and Mrs. Knox were living for the winter in the Faubourg St. Honore, and his daughters, while recovering from the measles, looked ' down from their window on mobs and barricades.
Some of the most charming letters are written by Elizabeth Knox, who married a cousin of the name, and died only too soon, to her brother, Captain (afterwards General) Thomas Knox, an officer on active service, and the father of the editor of the book.
* Memoirs of a Vanished Generation, 18134855. Edited by Mrs. Warrenne Plaice. With an Introduction by the Lady Eh Helier. London John Lane. Ws. net.]
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