CURRENT LITERATURE.
GIFT-BOOKS.
Tudor Queens and Princesses. By Sarah Tytler. (Nisbet and Co.)—There is more than a suspicion of book-making about this volume. It is quite unreasonable, excepting, of course, the reason for filling up a certain amount of space, to include among "Tudor" Queens the six wives of Henry VIII. To take the women of the Tudor race, tell the story of their lives, and trace in them what can undoubtedly be found, a common element of character, would have been a task both interesting and useful. But the introduction of six quite incongruous persons, some of them painful subjects for the writer of such a volume as this to deal with, is quite indefensible. The biographies are sufficiently well written, as indeed we should expect when we see the writer's name, and adequate pains seem to have been bestowed on the collection and comparison of materials. But it is scarcely fair to couple the name of Gardiner with Queen Mary and Cardinal Pole as especially guilty of the cruelties of the Marian persecution. Gardiner died before Mary's reign was half-completed. His diocese was not distinguished by the number of victims, who, indeed, were chiefly to be found in Canterbury, London, and Chichester. Miss Yonge, in her "Cameos," goes so far as to say that Gardiner's death (November 12th, 1555) "took away one obstacle to the persecution."
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