RECOLLECTIONS OF A SPINSTER AUNT.
Recollections qf a Spinster Aunt. Edited by S. Sophia Beale. (W. Heinemann. 8s. Od. net.)—Mies Beale in introducing to the reading public these "Recollections" has done them a good service. She has given them an opportunity of enjoying many shrewd observations and well-considered judgments, of seeing how a well-informed and intelligent person deals with many subjects, political, social, literary, and artistic. And she has also furnished such readers as have a liking for the Higher Criticism with an occasion for exercising it. Such will soon begin to ask : Is the "Spinster Aunt" a real person P We have some of her early letters, appropriately misspelt. The misspelling looks a little odd. So we have "good alto to every boddy," and in the text line "one night I walked down stairs in my nite goun." Then the spelling improves somewhat suddenly. Traces of the old ways remain. But is " diktionary " a probable example ? For we know that the young lady has such a book at hand, because she looks for "phantasma" in it, and cannot find it. Was the word "telegraphy" in use in the
'I sixties" P Then some of the observations seem to have
a suspicion of anachronism about them. Was it a matter of common knowledge that very highly placed personages disliked the Garibaldi enthusiasm ? We know it now from the Publication of the Duke of Cambridge's Life. Was any one likely in 1871 to say of the then Prince of Wales that there was a "talent in which he reigned suprerne,—that of always saying the right thing in the right place" 11 His Royal Highness at thirty—date "Feb. 27, 1871 "—had hardly had the chance of making such a reputation. Then the "Spinster Aunt" see with surprising clearness as early as July, 1870, what was tho Emperor's real position in France, and what was going to be the result of the war. There is an instance of lamentably bad taste in the extract from a sermon by the "Rev. Jeremiah Johoshophat Jones, of Salem Chapel, Clapham." It would be dubious, to say the least, in a professed caricature. Given as a genuine quotation, it is distinctly offensive.
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