MEMORIES OF VICTORIAN LONDON.
Memories of Victorian London. By Mrs. L. B. Walford. (Edward Arnold. 12s. 6d. net.)-In this age of reminiscence, when the fireside seems to afford our grandmothers too little room for turning out the rag-bags of memory, we should none the less have little to complain of were the resulting patchwork always as charming as Mrs. Walford's. Like evocations of du Manner, her glimpses of a bygone day, just distant enough now for us to feel the glamour and the pathos of its gaiety-the dashing, senti- mental 'seventies, the magic 'eighties-are altogether delightful, not by reason chiefly of the usual anecdotes of drawing-room celebrities engaged in their immemorial chicanery of trying to pass pinchbeck for gold, but thanks rather to a delicate, almost Horatian fragrance of unobtrusive regret. Mrs. Walford is not one of those who pour scorn upon the present because its absurdities differ superficially from those of yesterday; she rather notes the sameness in disparity and is indulgent to both. This it is that gives distinction to her memories and an appeal that is independent of their matter, excellent as most of it is.
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