Lady Trevelyan's Literary and Artistic Remains. Edited by D. Wooster.
(Longmans.)—This volume will disappoint the general reader, though it may prove not without attractions for the circle of Lady Trevelyan's intimate friends. The reprints here given of old magazine articles do not commend themselves to the reading public of to-day. For instance, the " Story of Modern Rome," reproduced from Chambers's Journal of 1841, hardly retains sufficient freshness of incident or style to secure attention in 1880. If, too, the verses are adequately well turned, we look in them vainly for evidences of sustained poetic power, or even for an occasional flash of inspiration. The art critiques on pictures in various exhibitions are not destitute of a fair measure of discernment, but it is a question, whether they were worth reprinting. A few examples of Lady Trevelyan's own drawings are here reproduced ; let us hope, however, that full justice is not done to the originals. For we cannot speak of these produc- tions in terms of praise ; the chalk of her cliffs could not be recog- nised as chalk ; her water-flags are ill-defined ; and which is beech and which oak, of the pair of queerly-shaped tree-stems in plate iv. ? Perhaps of all the contents of this somewhat disappointing volume of memorials of Lady Trevelyan, the least tedious are a number of letters from Dr. Whewell.
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