Golden String. Arranged by Susan, Countess of hialmesbury, and Violet
Brooke-Hunt. (John Murray. 5s. net.)—It is difficult to estimate the absolute value of a book of extracts. Many are published every year, and it is beyond the powers of any ordinary memory to review them by comparison. But certainly this "day- book for busy men and women" seems a very good one of its kind. It is serious throughout. That is essential, except there is the intention to be farcical. Irony, satire, and humour can be so exquisitely inappropriate when they are allotted to a fixed day. This volume, we imagine, is one that could be given to a friend without any apprehension that a trial of the sortes fili aurei might end in disaster. It may seem a c' range thing to attempt giving some notion of a book of extracts by quoting a single specimen. What follows is, however, so admirable that we venture to give it, all the more readily because it will probably be new to many of our readers :— "Oh, there are moments in man's mortal years When for an instant that which long has lain Beyond our reach is on a sudden found In things of smallest compass, and we hold The unbounded shut in one small minute's apace. And worlds within the hollow of our hand,— A world of music in one word of love, A world of love in one quick wordless look, A world of thought in one translucent phrase, A world of memory in one mournful chord, A world of sorrow in one little song. Such momenta are men's holiest,—the full-orbed And finite form of Love's infinity."
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