Our Sovereign Lady Queen Victoria : Her Life and Jubilee.
By Thomas Archer. Vol. I. (Blackie and Son.)—Mr. Archer is well known as a writer of contemporary history, a task for which the enormous mass of materials, on the one hand, and the difficulties of keeping the due proportion of events, and of being neither unsympathetic nor partisan, on the other, require an industry and a discretion that are not the gifts of every man. Mr. Archer possesses them in no common degree, and he has at command a facile and picturesque style. This first volume takes the reader as far as the Queen's marriage. The first chapter gives a brief sketch of the English Sovereigns from 1688, a propos of Kensing- ton Palace ; the second contains the life of the Princess Victoria during the reign of William IV., the circumstances attending her succession to the Throne, and the Queen's early public life; the third chapter is mainly devoted to the story of her marriage. Mr. Archer is far from being a mere Court chronicler. He tells his story with freedom and independence, and at the same time with perfectly good taste. The illustrations are scarcely equal to the letterpress.
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