Fashion Then and Now. By Lord William Pitt Lennox. 2
vols. (Chapman and Hall.)—A veteran writer who remembers the "0. P." riots, and was apparently able to form an opinion about the behaviour of the audience, if the word "audience "may be used in such a case, has a right to be garrulous. Accordingly he discourses, to quote the words of the title- page, about "Dregs, Elections, Duelling, Amateur Theatricals, Racing, Hunting, Shooting, Fishing, Skating, Golfing, Curling, Deep-sea Fishing, Yachting." Some of these subjects we feel to be quite beyond us, and who can pretend to be conversant with all ? The writer does not, indeed, go very deeply into any of them, and probably experts in these various arts would not own themselves to be much indebted to him. The best part of his volumes is to be found in his personal re- miniscences. He has seen something of men whom future generations will probably be anxious to hoar about. These two volumes will doubt- less form part of the very copious material which the historians of the next century will have to deal with. They will not be the loss valuable because his facts are more to be depended upon than his judgments. He retains, for instance, a belief in the merits of the late Duke of York. There is, indeed, very tangible proof to be seen somewhere south of Pall Mall that many people held it some fifty years ago. But at the present day it has a very odd look. After this, the most noticeable thing in the book is the astounding quality of Lord William Lennox's Latin. He quotes it, indeed, with considerable intrepidity. Even our old friend " Emollit mores," &c., "suffers a sea-change into something rich and strange."
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