Lives of the Queens of England. By Agnes Strickland. Abridged
edition. (Bell and Daldy.)—The six volumes of Miss Strickland's favourite work have been condensed into one for the use of schools and families, and without comparing the two editions we think the process of abridgment has not been gone through in vain. Miss Strickland, with that keen sense of the weakness of human nature which the sale of several editions of her work has awakened in her, says in her pre- face that " the interest with which intelligent children invariably seize on these royal biographies, affords a very cogent reason for the prepa- ration of an abridged edition expressly for the use of that very numer- ous and interesting class of readers, to whom some of the more delicate facts of history require to be presented in a modified form." We may carp at the intelligence of such children and at the tautology of this sentence, of which an abridged edition is also necessary. But Miss Strickland's Lives were too long in their former shape, and they gain by being told briefly.
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