Queens of the Renaissance. By M. Beresford Ryley. (Methuen and
Co. 10s. 6d. net.)—The "twenty-four illustrations" with which this volume is furnished are decidedly good, and perform the function which their kind does not always perform, of illustrating. We cannot say much more in praise of the book. The best thing in it is, perhaps, the Life with which it opens, "Catherine of Siena." But what is she doing dans cette galere? The author is conscious that there is a chronological difficulty. "Catherine of Siena lived before the Renaissance surged into being." But her conception of life was as far apart from that of the movement as the East is from the West. However, the picture of her helps, according to our author, to "some co-ordinated notion of the Renaissance spirit,"—whatever that may mean. Fine phrases, certainly, are never wanting. When a man is dying, he is drawing nearer to the "purlieus of finality." A story which shows the revengeful spirit of Anne of Brittany is said to leave her" nakedly crude, fiercely elemental." The subject necessarily brings the writer and reader into situations which require tact to be properly dealt with. Here, again, we find little to commend.
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