G-IFT-BOOKS.
LONDON FOR CHILDREN.*
IT has been often said, and with much truth, that there is no city in the world which less moves the emotion of local pride in its inhabitants than does London. There are many reasons for this, one perhaps being the tradition, foolishly handed down, that it is mean and squalid. There are mean regions in it, which seem almost interminable as one traverses them, but it has more magnificence about it than any other city in the world. A more potent cause is its vastness, with its great chasms of distance, social and physical. The East- Enders and West-Enders scarcely ever see each other. And then there is the constant flux of its population. It is said that one seldom sees a Londoner of the third generation. It is not true ; the writer of this review traces back London ancestry of two centuries and a half. But the movement in and out is prodigiously large. We are specially glad, there- fore, that Mr. Mitten has done something to make London children feel that they are "citizens of no mean city." He has every right to take up the task. He has shared Sir Walter Besant's work in giving the great city its due, as we have several times had the pleasure of acknowledging. We welcome, therefore, the more heartily this effort to extend the "fascination of London" to the children.
The Children's Book of London is in three parts,—" London as It Is," "Historical Stories," and "The Sights of London." The first and third subjects in a way overlap. The "London Markets," for instance, are eminently among "London Sights," if any one will take the trouble to see them at their best or busiest. But this is not an entertainment that can be prudently prescribed for children, and the distinction is, on the whole, clear enough. In "London as It Is" young readers can see something of how Londoners live, how, for instance, they are fed, how they move about both in the great ebb and flow of suburb into City and City into suburb, and the cross- currents and eddies of the business region, and not a few other matters scarcely less interesting. (One curious littlefact is that there is one school—the Cathedral School of London—where • 4r.) The Children's Book of London. By G. E. Hittoi. London : A. and C. Bkok. [6s.]—(2) T7lo Magic Ctty. By Netta Syrett. London : Lawrence and nUen. [33. GEL]
the playground is the roof.) The " Sights " are, drawn, the familiar delights of the Zoological Gardens, the Tower, the two great churches, and the two great museums (Bloomsbury and Kensington). The only fault that we have to find with Mr, Mitten's descriptions and narratives is that they have a certain air of being "written down" to suit in- ferior capacity of understanding. That is a thing which children are apt to resent. It is better to run the risk of writing over their heads. The subjects of the "Historical Stories "—a somewhat awkward phrase, by the way—are sufficiently well chosen, and, but for the too elaborately simple style, well told. We have to suggest that the picture of the "Princes in the Tower" is probably incorrect in its costume. The two boys were not clad, one has reason to believe, in the elegant nightdresses which the artist has represented. It is a more serious mistake to say of Elizabeth that "she was a prisoner for several years." As a matter of fact, she was committed to the Tower in February, 1554, not without some appearance of reason, as Wyatt's Rebellion had been just crushed, and released in May. After that she was kept in ward at Woodstock, Hatfield, and elsewhere. Mary is held in such ill repute that it is a pity to burden her with unmerited blame. Many rulers would have put out of the way so dangerous a relative—Elizabeth herself may be said to have done so with another Mary—but "Bloody Mary" had a conscience. She might have been more happily remembered if it had been less active. The twelve illustrations are gaily and attractively coloured.
The early stories in Miss Netta Syrett's pretty little book of fairy-stories should supplement the volume noticed above, for the "Magic City" is nothing more or less than London. Rosaleen comes to London, and thinks it at first an odiously ugly place. Then she sees the river and begins to change her mind—who with any eye for beauty can resist the river ?—and when her fancy is moved, her conversion is complete. Lavender Hill, really a somewhat dismal place, becomes a province of Fairyland. So do Child's Hill and Paternoster Row and Tokenhouse Yard. All this is very well told. And what Rosaleen saw in London other children saw in other places, in seaside towns, and forests, and country villages; so, at least, this chronicler tells us. The pictures are of unequal merit. If they had been as good as that which illustrates Paternoster Row, we could have given them very high praise.
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