Sixty Years a Queen: the Story of Victoria's Reign. Told
by Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart., M.P. (Harmsworth Brothers.)—Sir Herbert Maxwell has done his work very well. It was a thing easy to do in a way, so abundant is the material and so readily made intelligible. But it was not at all easy to do with any kind of distinction. There is the matter of detail, for instance. Not much is possible, for has not the story of sixty years—years of an Empire, let it be remembered, that covers a quarter of the world —to be told in four times as many pages ? Yet details are abso- lutely essential if the picture is to be living and effective. Here skilful choice, the fixing on just the right thing, comes in. Then tact and taste were wanted ; the writer had to steer between a colourless neutrality and a too vivid partisanship. A chronicle was not wanted, nor an essay. In short, it is much easier to say what such a book should not have been than what it should. Anyhow the writer has achieved a considerable practical success. In this he has been much helped by the abundance of excellent illustrations. In this respect the facilities given him have been great. The book has, we are told. been "illustrated chiefly from the Royal collections." It is impossible to speak too highly of the value and interest of the pictures thus brought together. Of all the Jubilee productions there is none that for completeness can quite match this.
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