CHRISTMAS BOOKS.—Murillo and the Spanish School of Art. By William
B. Scott. (Routledge.) It will certainly be a great mistake if anyone whose attention is caught by the excellent illustrations of this volume neglects to notice the very sensible and well-considered essay which fur- nishes what, in a somewhat derogatory expression, is styled the letterpress. The Spanish School of Art was of but short duration, produced but a small number of masters, and was very narrowly limited in its range of subjects. Not more than three of its names, it may be said, are well known out of Spain, at least among others than dealers and connoisseurs, these three being Murillo, Velasquez, and Zarbaran. Five and twenty years ago these three would have had to be reduced to one, Murillo. To most people, we fancy, Velasquez was nothing but a name till the addition to the National Gallery of that unlucky picture, the "Boar Hunt," which Mr. Lance had to repaint. Most readers, therefore, will have a good deal to learn from Mr. Scott, who traces the history of Spanish painting in a sketch whioh, though necessarily brief, is not inadequate. The illustrations—there are fifteen on steel and nineteen wood engravings — are excellent. The frontispiece, a portrait of Murillo, the " Eece Homo" of Morales from the picture in the Louvre, and two pictures of peasant children after Murillo, may be mentioned as peculiarly pleasing. —Gems of German Art. By William B. Scott. (Routledge.) This volume con- tains brief critical and biographical notices of the chief modern painters of Germany, including all who may be placed in the first and many of those who belong to the second rank of artistic excellence. Introductory to these notices is an account of the first German school, tracing down its history till the time of its utter extinction under the troubles of the seventeenth century. We have to repeat the praise which we gave to the predecessors of this volame, "Gems of Modern French Art" and "Gems of Belgian Art." The notices are judicious and interesting, and the illustrations, carbon-photographs, very good. We do not know that there is anything in the volume bettor than the picture, which was so striking an object in the Exhibition of 1862, "Nero after the Burning of Rome," the work of Carl Piloty.--The Picture Gallery of Sacred Art and A Picture Gallery of British Art (Sampson Low and Co.) are handsome volumes, in which we have photographs taken by the permanent Wood- bury process, and brief notices of the pictures reproduced. Each volume contains twenty illustrations. If we might venture a criticism on the selection, it would be that we should like to be made acquainted with some works loss commonly known. This might be done without any infringement of the excellent rule announced in the preface, that "none but the highest class of English art should be admitted into the Picture Gallery."—The Shores of Fife. By W. Ballingall. (Edmonston and Douglas.) Here we have a number of essays, antiquarian, topographical, &e., descriptive of the country. Principal Tulloch, for instance, gives us "An Historical and Descriptive Account of St. Andrew's ; " the author of the "Hotel du Petit St. Jean" the sketch of a tour "from St. An- drew's to Largo, round the East Nei* of Fife; " Mr. George Gilftllan "Notes on Falkland Palace, &e. ; " Professor Steddle a "Sketch of the Mineralogy of Fife ; " and Mr. Charles Howie "The Shores of Fife and Kinross." All these are copiously illustrated by full-page and letter- press illustrations, the work of various artiste, but all engraved, a vast labour which must excite the surprise and admiration of every reader. The "Shores of Fife" is a term which here receives a very liberal interpretation, being made to include not only the Bass Rook, which might be said to belong to it as the Channel Islands belong to England, but Perth, Stirling, Loch Leven, &c. Fife itself is rich in scenes of historical interest, as Dunfermline, SL Andrew's, Inolakolm, &c. The volume has much merit, both literary and artistio.—A peculiarly seasonable "Christmas book" is The Ivy, a Monograph, by Shirley Hibberd. (Groombridge.) Mr. Hibbard gives a chapter "of historical and literary memoranda," and others on the charac- teristics, use, cultivation, itc., of the plant, and a descriptive list of its garden varieties. It is a very complete little book. —Little Barefoot. By Berthold Auerbach, translated by H. W. Dulcken. (Routledge). It would not be easy to find a prettier or generally better book of the kind than this. Auerbach's story is a very charming one, with all the admir- able life-painting and quiet humour which characterise him, while the slow movement of the narrative, which sometimes has a tendency to weary one, does not make itself felt. "Little Barefoot" is an orphan girl, whose courage and patience, "by striving and trusting," win for her happiness and prosperity, and drag, by the way, out of a slough of helplessness a " ne'er-do-well " brother. The scene is laid in a German village, and the German country life with its quiet calm, sometimes degenerating into stolidity, and its frugality that sometimes becomes sordid, is admirably described. Seventy- five spirited illustrations by Mr. B. Vautier adorn the text.
Fairy Tales Told Again. By the Author of "Little Red Shoes." Unstated by Gustave Dore. (Cassell and Co.) M. Dore is as happy as usual in his favourite effects, and is not quite free from his usual faults. His landscapes and castles are fine ; the chateau of the Marquis of Carabaa, for instance, and the two woodland scenes in "Hop o' my Thumb,"—one in which the little creature is filing his pocket with white pebbles, and the other where the peasant and his children are filing up the dim forest path. Fine, too, is the scene in which the ogre's wife stands on the castle stairs, with the light streaming from her lantern on the group of little figures below. Little Red Riding-Hood, again, is a charming little creature, too charming for the story. The only distinct failure in the book is "Cinderella." Surely the prince ought to be a handsome young man. Here he is something between a clown and a wicked marquis of the old regime. All the figures indeed are caricatures, and Cinderella herself is nothing of a beauty.— &a- Gull Rock. Translated from the French of M. Jules Sandeaa by Robert Black. (Sampson Low and Co.) This is a story of how a little boy, the sole surviving son of a Parisian family, is taken by hia mother to a village on the coast, as the last hope of saving his life, how;he grows robust and withal somewhat mischievous, and finally joins with a party of boys in making off with a boat, which finally lands them on the "Sea-Gull Rock." There they while-away the time by telling stories to each other. What sort of stories French boys may tell to each other we cannot say, but that they tell stories to each other of this kind, stories which read like the caricatures of the Charivari translated into words, we do not in the least believe. Anything more thoroughly "grown up" could not be. But the reader will find them amusing enough ; not the less amusing, perhaps, because they are not like what boys would tell. The little narrative into which these stories are egrafted is very charming. — The Adventures of Prior Claims. (Whittaker and Co.) This is a sort of continuation of "Robinson Crime." The author has studied Defoe's style with care, and has achieved what may be called a half-success. He has got something of the great novelist's knack of filling in details which seem trifling in them- selves, but produce by their combination a distinct effect, but his language is not the language of Defoe. On the whole, the story is fairly interest- ing.—Geoffrey's Great Fault. By Emilia M. Morris. (Griffith and Ferran.) Geoffrey is one of those very dangerous characters—a good boy with a "great fault.' It is his lot to point a moral, and we know at once that the most dreadful calamities and miseries are in store for him. So, indeed, it turns out. After one or two such little trifles as leaving the garden gate open—the "great fault," it should be said, is carelessness—and letting the pigs in to spoil the beds, Geoffrey begins his career in earnest. He sets fire to his schoolmaster's house by leaving a candle alight (we do not believe, by the way, that a house ever was set on fire in this way). Well, some of our young readers will perhaps think that was an endurable calamity, especially as Geoffrey got a glorious opportunity of saving the master's daughter. Bat then he ahoots his father, runs away, joins a travelling circus (not such bad fan, if he had not been frightened away by the police), falls desperately ill, and at last—but our readers must find out the end for themselves.—The Path She Chose, by F. M. S. (Routledge), is a story intended for the edification of young ladies who marry without their parents' leave, and of parents who fail to make their daughters love and trust them. The wilful young person is made very miserable ; the dutiful one comes into a large fortune, and marries a parson six feet three inches in height. What superhuman felicity ! We must not, however, forget to say that the tale is well told and the characters drawn with force..-.--The Mes- sage, and other Stories. By P. M. P. (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.) These are very pretty little stories. Tom," a tale of a dog, which has not much of a moral, we perhaps prefer to the rest ; but they are all worth reading.—Noi Forsaken. By Agues Giberne. (Seeleys.)—The life of the very poor in London is described with much force and pathos. Old Job Kippis is especially good. But why this melodramatic ending ? Surely the effect of the story is spoilt ? And why this finding of a lost child an incident certainly so uncommon as to have a look of unreality &boa it 2—People who say that Christmas Day is the most melancholy day in the year should keep Routledge's Christmas Annual (Routledge) as an appropriate piece of reading for that occasion. Mr. C. H. Ross tells a particularly dismal story, not less dismal for its admixture of the comic, which he calls "Hot and Cold; the Story of a Life-and-Death Search." It is clever in its way, but certainly not pleasing. —A. Tale of the Crusades, by Miss Crompton (W. W. Gardner), is "The Talisman," suited to young readers.—The Modern Sphinx (Griffith and Ferran) is "a collection "—we cannot describe the book better than by quoting the title-page —" of enigmas, charades, rebuses, double acrostics, triple acrostics, anagram; logogriphs (sic), metagrams, square words, verbal puzzles, conundrums, Fee., original and selected." This is not all There are " arithmorems," "palindromes," "cryptographs," 41o. What is an "arithmorem ?" The reader shall see one
"51 and tub Ha (a kind of fish).
100 „ A. Gore (a sprightly motion in music).
5 „ be R(s part of speech).
5.51 „ as U Ana (a Spanish province).
201 „ ran to (a stupefying drug).
102 „ R. N. 7' (an acid).
250 „ U. O. a pa (a Mexican town)."
The initials andfinals, read downwards, will name, the former a town in the West Indies, the latter what it is noted for." The answer to the first line is Halibut; and we get the word by combining the letters in italics with the letters for which the Arabia figures stand in the Roman system of numeration. "5" gives you "v" and "1" " i "; so we get "halibut." The initials make Havanna and the finals tobacco. What ought to be done to the man who invented such a monstrosity ? Nothing could be too bad, especially if be also invented the name which, as the Sphinx says, knowing more, it would seam, of Egyptian than of the classical tongues, "comes from aritlunos, Greek for number, and remanere,. Latin for back again." In the midst of the tales with which they are so plentifully provided, our young friends should find time for two books of sterling value, The Great Battles of the British Navy, by Lieutenant R. Low (Routledge), and, from the same publishers, Memoirs of Great Commanders, by G. P. R. James, a reprint adorned with illustra- tions printed in colours.—For the young children we have to mention Aunt Louisa's Bible Picture Book (Warne and Co.), where what we may call "high art" is applied with varying 811008116 to Scripture subjects ; Aunt Louisa's Holiday Guest, which, with its more familiar style, perhaps pleases us better. "Aunt Louisa" toile in verse the stories of "Dame Trot and her Cat," "Good Children," "Bruin the Bear," and "Home for the Holidays." We must be permitted to remark, in the interest of natural history, that Polar bears are white. We have also before us the Children's Treasure and the Infants' Delight (the Graphotyping Company).
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