Netley Abbey. Written by Thomas Ingoldsby. Pictures by Ernest M.
Jessop. (Eyre and Spottiswoode.)—There is some- thing, we cannot but think, in the Ingoldsby humour that does not quite suit the present day. Its quality of fun is undoubted, but it seems wanting in taste. Netley Abbey is not a particularly happy specimen of it. Who were the " delicate ladies in bom- bazeen gowns, and long white veils," whom the artist has pictured as walking in procession with monks and two mitred abbots,— surely an unusual complement to one abbey. Were they nuns ? Why, then, the veils worn behind, not to speak of the remarkable spectacle of monks and nuns walking in procession together ? Then why was the young lady who is represented on p. vi. shut up to starve ? She seems to be in secular dress. But the whole thing is sadly out of taste,—as much so as the author found the tea- drinking and dancing in the actual ruins to be. Mr. Jessop's undoubted cleverness as a draughtsman and caricaturist is thrown away on the subject. The errors, as we take them to be, that we have pointed out are really more the author's than his.—We may notice at the same time the " fifth " edition of another similar edition from the same pen, The Jackdaw of Rheims.
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