ROMANCE OF THE FRENCH ABBEYS.
Romance of the French. Abbeys. By Elizabeth W. Champney. Illustrated. (G. P. Putnam's Sons. 15s. net.)—This is a new volume of the series which Mrs. Champney has devoted to the inexhaustible romance of France. From chateaux she turns to abbeys, more or less famous, and treats them in the same pictur- esque style. The book is attractive and readable, handsome in appearance, and full of interesting illustrations. The author writes in a lively style, and has a real turn for story-telling. The merest suggestion of mystery, legend, or tradition sets her imagination at work, and she weaves many a marvellous tale round the old walls and arches to which she has made pilgrimage. Sometimes these tales have a real foundation of historical truth ; sometimes, like the story of the last tragic meeting of the Abbe de Rance, the famous founder of La Trappe, with the Duchesse de Montbazon—a romance, indeed, "unparalleled in fiction "—they are rooted in local or contemporary tradition. But on the whole we prefer, as stories, those stirring ones which owe their existence— shall we say their growth, at least P—to the author's own powers of romantic invention.
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