CURRENT LITERATURE.
In the Garden of Peace. By Helen Willman (Mrs. Caldwell Crofton). Illustrated by Edmund H. New. (John Lane.)—We are glad to discover in Mrs. Caldwell Crofton's pretty little book, called In the Garden of Peace, reprints of a series of papers, chiefly about birds and flowers, many of which—we believe' more than half—have from time to time appeared in these columns. Mrs. Crofton combines very happily the habit of close observation of Nature and the instinct of sympathy with its moods. Her papers are very vivid and delicate pictures, and also very tender prose poems. They gain much by being strung together into something like a story of the garden of whose various aspects and inhabitants they are studies, and more by being very charmingly illustrated. It is said in the Envoi, that "there could be no record of the Garden of Peace without the pictures, for words might not carry the home beyond the little circle, or accurately show the nut-hatches carrying nuts and the tomtits' acrobatic feats. It was a subject to be treated tenderly, but then an artist can only treat scenes tenderly when Nature guides the pen. So the artist came and listened to the birds while he worked in the Garden of Peace, and he watched the giant poppies open and shut in the sun, and the white sweet.. peas, gentle blossoms." It is pleasant to know that the pictures were drawn on the spot. Certainly they are unusually true in spirit and in detail to the letterpress. Mr. New seems to have a special gift for drawing birds. It is only not easy to say which of his sketches one likes beat. Perhaps for character the meditative cockatoo on his perch—" The Stranger in the Garden should take the prize. But then how altogether fascinating is "The Mistress's Window," with the latticed balcony where the birds feed and build and lay their eggs and hatch their young, and the garden-path below, bordered with flowers and shrubs, distinct and delicate and recognisable as the identical flowers described in the papers. The acrobatic tomtita are very nice, too; so are the hollyhocks and poppies in " Gardeu Coutragto,4
and the admirable group of Madonna lilies introducing the Envoi. The book is pleasantly printed and altogether prettily and daintily got-up with the lavish use of fly-leaves, mottoes, and margins which denote the seasonable gift-book.
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