Cabinet Portrait Sketches of Statesmen. By T. Wemyss Reid. (H.
S. King.)—There is nothing very striking about these "portraits," but they are worth looking at, rather as sufficiently clear and well-drawn sketches of personalities more or less famous, than for any very sagacious appreciation of statesmanship that they display. Mr. Reid says in his preface that he has "endeavoured to be thoroughly impartial." We do not doubt it in the least ; as a matter of fact, however, "he has given the Whig dogs the worst of it." Perhaps it would be even more correct to say that he has given the Tories the best of it. The sketch of the Duke of Richmond, for instance, is, we will not say flattering, but very favourable. Mr. Reid apparently would have us believe that the Duke, if he had not been a Duke, would still have been fit to be a leader, and that is certainly more than the public is disposed to give his Grace credit for. The article on Mr. Gladstone, however, is quite sufficient to prove Mr. Reicl's general fairness. That statesman's name generally rouses in the Conservative heart a white, almost inarticulate rage ; our author, on the contrary, is quite enough master of himself to do justice. Generally he leans to favourable views of his subjects. Curiously enough, his hardest hits are at Lord Hartington.
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