Tahiti : the Garden of the Pacific. By Dora Hort.
(Fisher Unwin.)—Mrs. Hort is not without skill in describing places and scenery, but her pages are overweighted with stories, many of them scandalous, of people whom she met with in Tahiti and elsewhere. In her passion for gossip, not even Prince Alfred is spared. Many of the persons on whom the writer passes judg- ment must be still living; and if Mr. Hort is pleased with the position he is made to occupy in these pages, he must be easily satisfied. The English reader would readily spare the idle talk with which the volume abounds, nor is he likely to be much edified by the writer's opinions. Her egotism is, however, amusing, and the rather malicious tone of some of her criticisms, while it does not do Mrs. Hort credit, prevents her chapters from being dull. A poetical quotation upon p. 17 is a little startling, since it unites in one stanza some lines from Campbell and from Wordsworth. The book is wholly without dates, a proof on the author's part either of carelessness or discretion.
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