1 hardly demand that the personal emotions of the actor shall be called upon in every scene. The critic who should say to the player, "It does not matter whether you feel these emotions, provided you can reproduce them by observing them," would not really contradict to the full the critic who should say, "You must not only observe; you must feel." For the gift of observation is too intimately connected with the gift of sentiment, and to really see a thing is to show that you can feel it. ON MUSIC. COVENT GARDEN THEATRE. VICTOR NESSLER'S "PIPER OF HAMELIN." On Monday evening last the Royal English Opera Company commenced a winter season with a work which has been produced with great success in many parts of Germany. It was played by this company at Manchester in 1882, and since then has been given in other Northern towns. The composer, an Alsatian, was born in the year 1841, and produced his first Opera, EDUCATIONAL WORKS. PHY. An Elementary Treatise, Translated and Extended by J. D. EVERETT, D.C.L., F.R.S., Professor of Natural Philosophy in Queen's College, Belfast. Illustrated by 760 Wood-engravings and Three Coloured Plates. Sixth Edition, thoroughly Revised and Ex. tended. Medium 8vo, cloth, 18s. Also, separately, in 4 parts, limp cloth, 4s. 6d. each. Part I. MECHANICS, HYDROSTATICS, PNEUMATICS. Part II. HEAT. Part III. ELECTRICITY and MAGNETISM. Part IV. young man for showing, so frankly, traces BLACKIE & SON'S SOUND and LIGHT. ELEMENTARY TEXT-BOOK of PHYSICS. By Professor EVERETT, Translator and Editor of Deschanel's "Natural Philosophy," &c. Illustrated by numerous Woodcuts. New and Revised Edition. Fcap. 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. cises in the Writing of Latin. With Vocabulary and Notes. By the Rev. ISLAY BURNS, D.D. Revised by the Author of "The Public School Latin Primer." Fifth Edition. Fcap. 8vo, cloth, 28.-KEY, to Teachers only, 3s. 6d. of Ancient Greece and Rome, for Schools and Private Students. By E. M. BERENS. Illustrated from Antique Sculptures. Cloth, 38. a plentiful use of chromatics, though not of PRAXIS PRIMARIA. Progressive Exer- "Fleurette," at Strassburg in 1864; this was Fought the dogs, and killed the cats, A HISTORY of the BRITISH EMPIRE. By EDGAR SANDERSON, M.A., late Scholar of Clare College, Cambridge. With numerous Pictorial Illustrations, Genealogical Tables, Maps, Plans, &c. Fcap. 8vo, pp. 444, cloth, 2s. Cd. Mdme. Rose Hersee took the part of the unhappy Gertrude, and by the cleverness of her acting made the most of a somewhat insipid rôle. The Regina was a Miss Catherine Devrient it was speaking of her we will wait a more fitting time. her first appearance on any stage, and before Mr. Charles Lyall was extremely funny as Ethelerus, the Town Clerk, and Mr. Albert M'Guckin was a good Burgomaster. most important role in the Opera is that of the OGILVIE'S SMALLER DICTIONARY. Piper. It was undertaken by Mr. J. Sauvage; and, though there were moments of weakness, it is only right to say that much of the success of the piece was due to the ability which he BAYNHAM'S ELOCUTION. Select Readdisplayed as singer and actor. And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles." According to the old story, the money was refused to him on the ground that he was a sorcerer. For dramatic purposes, however, this was not sufficient. Love rules the operatic stage; and Hunold wins the affection of Gertrude, a fisherman's daughter, much to the annoyance of her admirer, Wulff. But there are further complications; the Town Clerk, piqued by the indifference of Regina, the pretty daughter of the Burgomaster, incites Hunold to demand of the father a kiss from his daughter'ssion, lips. Then by magic art the Piper estranges the young lady from Heribert her betrothed, and so has on his hands and heart the love of two fair maidens. Gertrude throws herself into the river, Regina fades from our view; and Hunold, angry at the treatment he has received (although it would seem that he had only himself to blame for meddling with other people's quarrels), entices away the children of the town by the magic of his pipe. They cross a stream, a "wondrous portal opens wide," the Piper enters, the children follow, and the door in the mountain side shuts fast. All the personages named, and others, flit across the stage; the spectator takes little interest in them, nor is he sensible to the miseries of the maidens. Hunold himself, the central figure of the piece, is at best a mystery. One does not know exactly what to make of him. Does he bring with him "airs from heaven or blasts from hell"? There is no point in the story, and scarcely any dramatic interest. Has the composer any latent dramatic power? The question is not easy to answer. Every now and then, when the librettist gives him a chance, he seems as if he were going to fix our attention, but he soon lapses into what is commonplace, not to say trivial. Nessler's music is clever, spirited, and at times very pleasing. One meets with many familiar strains, and in one or two instances we must say he has borrowed very freely. We would not, however, be hard on a The Etymological, Pronouncing, and Explanatory. Abridged from the "Student's Dictionary" by the AUTHOR. Imperial 16mo, cloth, red odges, 2s. 6d. ; or half-roan, 3s. 6d. ings and Recitations, with Rules and Exercises on We forgot to mention that the English ver- 66 was and AGENCIES. Two Books, SOUTH KENSINGTON Is, each; or on Cards, in four packets, Is. 6d. each, Four Books, 6d. each. Books I., III., and IV. now ready. London Agents, Messrs. W. H. SMITH & SON, VERE FOSTER'S DRAWING BOOKS. T 1 LITERATURE. NEW EDITIONS OF SHAKSPERE. The Riverside Shakespeare. The Text newly It is unnecessary to say that Mr. Grant White's edition of Shakspere is the work of a skilled and acute scholar, who determines to look at things with his own eyes, and not through a succession of commentators' spectacles. Such work is always interesting, whether we agree or do not agree with the results arrived at. The edition, while it is the work of a scholar, aims at popular uses. If that incalculable person, "the general reader," find that it meets a want, Shakspere students may be well pleased. For his benefit it is right to describe what he will get in exchange for his six-and-thirty shillings. He will get three stout volumes of nine hundred or a thousand pages each; the text printed in a single column, and in a pleasant, readable type; in the first volume the Comedies arranged as in the First Folio; in the second, the Histories, to which the Poems are added; in the third, the Tragedies, real and so-called, including "Troilus and Cressida," "Cymbeline," and "Pericles." He will further get a general Preface chiefly occupied with setting forth some examples of Mr. Grant White's improvements, real or supposed, in the text; a brief Life of Shakspere; introductions to each play, averaging from half a page to a page in length; finally, foot-notes, in rare instances critical, more often glossarial, all being reduced to a minimum. Mr. Grant White has minimised his minimum with a vengeance. I am in favour of a text without notes, or a text with many notes; let us not puzzle at all, let us puzzle out every difficulty. It seems to me to be the pedantry of common-sense to think scorn of the services of those editors, annotators, commentators, critics, whom Mr. White dismisses as mere dullards and drivellers, but to each of whom we actually owe some grain, perhaps several grains, of fruitful fact or thought. One of them grubs among blacketter books, one has a genius for textual onjecture, one has a delicate ear for verse; ah and all have served us, and we owe them thanks, not scorn. An editor of Shakspere, :wever gifted, insults his reader when he nounces, as Mr. White does, that he has Lever taken the trouble to read Spalding's essay on The Two Noble Kinsmen ;" and retribution overtakes him when a few pages farther he cites a forged document as fixing the downward date of "The Tempest.' Pedantry may blind us; but self-complacent common-sense can sometimes throw a pinch of dust in our eyes. If Mr. White persuades himself that with the aid of his notes, useful as they are, an ordinary reader can understand what Shakspere wrote "as nearly as possible in the very way in which he would have understood and enjoyed it if he had lived in London in the reign of James I.," he simply is blinded by a liberal pinch of dust thrown in his eyes by common-sense. I am on the side of the pedants. To acquire an instinctive feeling for Elizabethan language, versification, style, you must, like Dyce, live in Elizabethan literature; you must so saturate yourself with it that it colours your bones as madder does the bones of a pig; and even then your instinct will not be infallible. Mr. White, "following eminent example, took the advice of his washerwoman" in determining what passages were sufficiently obscure to justify explanation. We are delighted to hear this; we have always admired the fine culture of the American democracy, but to discover that the bleachers of summer smocks are joint-editors of Shakspere comes as a surprise. I imagine Mr. White's collaborateur as charming as one of Mr. Abbey's milk-maids; I see the perplexed scholar strolling across the meadow, with proof-sheets in his hand, to where her fairer sheets are swaying in the wind, and there she enlightens him so prettily ("most busy less, when she does it ") on "ullorxa," and "esil," and "empirickqutick," and "cride game," and " runaway's eyes,' " her voice mingling with the voice of the river. Mr. White and the whitster, not of Datchet-mead and Thames side, but of the trans-Atlantic Riverside, find Shakspere charmingly free from obscurity! In the " Merry Wives" there is no note on "buck" or "buckbasket," and that is easy to understand; but that "a 'oman which is in the manner of his nurse, or his dry-nurse, or his cook, or his laundry, his washer and his wringer" should find so many other things easy which have seemed difficult to Capell, Malone, and Dyce is matter of pleasant congratulation. Many washerwomen have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all! The truth is that an ordinary, off-hand reader of Shakspere finds few difficulties, because he is unaware of his own ignorance; and the explanation of half the useless commentatorship is that, when we look into it, Shakspere is in a thousand instances difficult or obscure, and in the dimness we lose our way, excusably enough, in wandering mazes lost. To glance here and there at a few points in detail. Among the notes on the Sonnets are two which show Mr. White at his best and worst. His emendation of the last line of sonnet cxiii. "My most true mind thus maketh mind untrue" seems to me to rank well among the conjectural emendations of the Quarto reading, "" My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue." On the lines in sonnet cxxvii.— "They [her eyes] mourners seem At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack, Sland'ring creation with a false esteem,” The Mr. White notes, "No beauty lack. sense seems to require all beauty lack;' and a negative assertion seems always to have disturbed S.'s coherence of thought." It is really W.'s, and not S.'s, coherence of thought which is disturbed. Those not born fair lack no beauty, because they wear false hair, and paint themselves beautiful for ever; hence my dark lady's eyes are in mourning. real example of Shakspere's well-known confusion in the use of negatives, especially frequent in the case of no less, unnoticed by Mr. White, and, so far as I know, by other critics, is the following:-In "As You Like It" (V. iv.), Duke Senior exclaims, in welcoming Celia "O my dear niece, welcome thou art to me! Even daughter welcome, in no less degree." A Theobald, Sidney Walker, and Dyce place a hyphen between "daughter" and "welcome, making this a compound noun, the Duke offering his niece a daughter-welcome. But is not Shakspere here at his old trick of blundering about no less, and does he not mean "Even a daughter is welcome in no higher degree than you, my niece"? Turning a few pages back to the puzzling Ducdame of Jaques's song, I find that Mr. White alters it to Ducadme, and adds the note "Ducadme bring to me (Lat.)." I have elsewhere thrown out the conjecture that Jaques's Ducdame is simply the French duc damné. Jaques is railing against the Duke and his followers-asses who have left wealth and ease, "a stubborn will to please." He has been all day avoiding the Duke, and he has just been told that the Duke is coming to drink under the tree which Jaques has appropriated. "Ducdame" is 66 a Greek invocation," because it is not Greek, but the French of Arden woods; "to call fools into a circle," for the Duke has gathered asses and fools around him. Jaques will go to sleep if he can; if he cannot, he will rail against all the first-born of Egypt. Why "first-born of Egypt"? Because Duke Senior, the elder brother, is the object of Jaques's spleen, and would that the plague of Egypt took him! In the same play (III. ii.) I am glad to see Mr. White retaining Rosalind's "O most gentle Jupiter," and refusing to admit the specious "gentle pulpiter" of Mr. Spedding. But why alter (IV. i.)" and the foolish chroniclers of that age found it was-Hero of Sestos" to foolish coroners"? the jest lies in an allusion to a coroner's inquest; but this is sufficiently indicated by the word "found," and the jurymen are, very properly, the chroniclers. Of course May I be bold to think these spirits?" asks Ferdinand in "The Tempest" (IV. i.), and Prospero answers, Fer. Spirits which by mine art I have from their confines call'd to enact Let me live here ever; Wife or wise? for, I believe, copies of the First Folio differ on this point. Mr. White reads wise, and perhaps he is right. But may not Ferdinand on this solitary island imagine himself, as it were, in Eden? He is Adam, and Miranda is his Eve, while, with all reverence, this wondered father who can call spirits from their confines is an earthly Pro vidence, like the great Father of all, who sent spirits gliding into Paradise. "The body," says Hamlet (IV. ii.), "is with the King, but the King is not with the body. The King is a thing-" Hamlet, says Mr. White, "keeps up his semblance of madness." True, but there is a method in his madness. Hamlet delights in private readings of his own speeches, and "the King" means two things with him. "The body is with the King"-how can "the King" want tidings of the body when it is already with the King? (i.e., as understood in the private sense, "with my dead father, the true King")—but (Hamlet remembering how lately he has seen his father's spirit) the King is not with the body (for the disembodied King stalks in his habit as he lived through this very palace). The King is a thing- Here Guildenstern's interruption reduces Hamlet to utter the mere reply churlish, "a thing" (not ensky'd and sainted, nor to be hereafter ensky'd, but a mere King Claudius), "a thing of nothing." 66 "Where Spain?" asks Antipholus of Dromio ("Errors," III. ii.), who is comparing the globular kitchen-wench's parts to various countries. "Faith, I saw it not; but I felt it hot in her breath." Why saw it not," and why only "felt it"? Mr. White and other commentators appear not to have noticed Dromio's jest, the clown reading his master's geographical question "Where Spain?" as Where's pain?" and pain is, of course, not seen, but felt. 66 "World, world, O world!" cries Edgar ("Lear," IV. i.)—— "But that thy strange mutations make us hate thee The following suggestion I offer, timidly hoping to glean a rare approval for it. Lady Macbeth speaks: "Lord, how mine eyes throw gazes to the east." But the five stanzas certainly make a single poem, and so they are printed in the original Quarto. My last word concerning Mr. White's edition must be a word of sincere welcome, with a trust that the readers for whom it is designed may find it so good and useful that they will soon require something still better. Bishop Wordsworth's second and third good rest," as a separate poem from the three Horn, and abolish the bugbear that for cen- The Story of Chinese Gordon. By A. Egmont "the artillery refused to fall in, and threatened to blow the officers to pieces, both European mutiny was conveyed to Gordon in a written proclamation. Convinced that the non-commissioned officers were at the bottom of the affair, he called them up and asked who wrote the proclamation, and why the men would not fall in. and Chinese. The intimation of this serious They had not the courage to tell the truth, and professed ignorance on both points. them that one in every five would be shot, an With quiet determination, Gordon then told announcement which they received with groans. During this manifestation the commander, with great shrewdness, determined, in his own mind, that the man whose groans were the most emphatic and prolonged was the ringleader. This man was a corporal; Gordon approached him, dragged him out of the rank with his own hand, and ordered two of the infantry to shoot him on the spot. The order was instantly obeyed.” for VERY rarely does it happen that two great questions of the hour recall to public notice the same man; yet the present crisis in China and the confusion throughout the Soudan, wide apart and wholly disconnected as the two fields of action are, irresistibly suggest memories of the achievements of Chinese Gordon. No Englishman ever impressed the Chinese with a sense of the nobility of the European character in anything approaching the way that he did; and yet, if we consider the difficulties of his position in the Soudan, it will be allowed that what he accomplished there was a still more remarkable triumph of human character than even his long succession of victories against the rebels of Kiangsu. The story of Chinese Gordon could not, therefore, be told at a more appropriate moment than the present; and Mr. Egmont Hake, approaching his subject in the right mood of appreciative admiration, has produced a volume which should find a wide circle of readers if only for the sake of its hero. Gen. Gordon is one of those simple-minded heroes who blush to hear their own deeds told; and he has acquired a habit, when the world has nothing particular for him to do, of burying himself in out-ofMr. White gives no note, and perhaps the-way places where he feels safe from the accepts a common interpretation, that Mac-importunities of the notoriety-makers of the The most brilliant of all Gordon's brilliant beth would have the crown ("that which age. The world is not so rich in men of this exploits was the capture of Soochow, which cries 'Thus,' &c.") and the crime (that which character that it can see with indifference an entailed the collapse of the Taiping movement he fears to do). But the logic of the whole administrator of unique power of organisation in Kiangsu. The victory was the more creditpassage requires a different meaning: Macbeth, and of influencing men for good without suit-able inasmuch as it was won against a more says his wife, would fain have a good con-able employment. There is much still for numerous enemy, occupying a position of science and also murder Duncan. He would Chinese Gordon to do; but the opportunity great natural and artificial strength. Perhaps has again had to be provided by a foreign the most striking incident in connexion with the attack on Soochow was the extraordinary moral restraint which Gordon imposed upon his own followers in respect of looting. He asked Li Hung Chang for two months' extra pay for them, which was refused; but, sooner than risk the consequences of keeping his disappointed men near the fallen town, he removed them to Quinsan. Mention of Soochow naturally recalls the murder of the Wangs, or Taiping leaders, in breach of the understanding conveyed by "Thou'ldst have, great Glamis, That which cries, "Thus thou must do if thou have it,' And that which rather thou dost fear to do have "That which cries, Thus thou must do, if thou Government. have it,' 999 that is, a good conscience which says, "thus must thou act if thou art to retain a conscience at all;" and he would also have his crime and its fruits. One more note: Mr. White, with all recent editors, except the editor of the Parchment Shakspere, treats the two stanzas in "The Passionate Pilgrim" beginning "Good night, Mr. Hake gives an interesting sketch of that branch of the Gordon family from which the present Gen. Gordon sprang, and those who believe in character being inherited will find much to strengthen their faith in what he tells about Gordon's ancestors. On his mother's side he was an Enderby, a family of merchant whalers, who "were the first to frequent the Pacific round the dreadful le the Chinese generals in response to Gordon's appeals for lenience. Not merely did this breach of faith disgust Gordon, but it involved him in the most imminent personal danger. Hastening to the residence of one of the principal Wangs, to see what he could do, he was at once surrounded by some thousands of armed Taipings, who shut the gates on him as he went in, and declined to allow him to send out his interpreter with a message to his troops. Fortunately, it happened that the Taipings no more knew than Gordon himself that their chiefs had been put to death. Had they done so they would have held Gordon responsible, and might have put him to torture. As it was, they held him as a hostage for the good treatment of their leaders. He was kept powerless in the palace from the afternoon of the 6th till the morning of the next day, surrounded by Taipings.... Few men have looked upon death under circumstances so intricate and so threatening." Gordon was honoured by the Chinese Government with the rank of Titu, and received presents of the yellow riding-dress and peacock's feather that are the highest dignities it can bestow; but he emphatically refused all pecuniary reward. During his service with the Chinese he had learnt to appreciate their virtues and to make allowances for their faults. Even the treachery at Soochow, which had at the time filled him with such wrath that he contemplated exacting a personal revenge for it, came to be regarded with a more lenient and discriminating eye as a natural incident of Chinese history. We cannot refrain from closing the record of his Chinese career with the following very wise words on the subject of the ruling and the chalk on the fences. A favourite legend was office for some weeks before he retired for a reason not stated in this volume, but one which did infinite credit to his sense of justice; that he then commanded the Engineers in the Mauritius; and that, lastly, he learnt at the Cape the fact that weak Governments, whether Chinese or colonial, have very similar methods of dealing with rebels. But these are unworthy of being remembered in connexion with Chinese Gordon. His visit to China in 1880, and the very practical advice which he gave to his old colleague, Li Hung Chang, at the time of the dispute with Russia, were more in consonance with his character and dignity. But each and all of these circumAnd what shall we say on the subject of stances become in Mr. Hake's skilful hands his work in Egypt? Appointed in 1874 to the means of arriving at a more perfect knowsucceed Sir Samuel Baker and to carry on the ledge of the character of this remarkable man. work of putting an end to the slave trade, he Chinese Gordon is a name to conjure with threw himself into his new task with all the among two races to whom the blessings of energy that had characterised his campaign in pure justice and wise government have been China. His first act was significant, and long denied. As a general, his operations showed that he did not approach the subject among the creeks of Kiangsu proved him to with ideas of self-advantage. The Khedive be well able to plan out a campaign which had fixed his salary at £10,000 a year; he masters in the military art admit to have been refused to accept more than £2,000, the rate the best under the circumstances, and to bring of pay he was then receiving as British Com-it to a victorious conclusion. As an adminismissioner on the Danube. In the Soudan trator, his work among the blacks in the Soudan Gordon's vigour and capacity were conspicuous must be regarded as quite the most remarkable in the simplest incidents of his administration piece of civil organisation performed by any among peoples accustomed to misgovernment single Englishman since the day of Warren for generations, and practically ignorant of the Hastings. And, lastly, as a man, the record meaning of such phrases as justice and mercy. of his daily life, of his most trivial deeds, preHis sympathy with the unfortunate and served in the hearts of those who treasure his down-trodden blacks, who were made the friendship as well as in the pages of Mr. victims of greed by their stronger neighbours, Hake's admirable biography, prove him to be was intense. He spared neither himself nor one of those whose actions will " serve as a his subordinates in endeavouring to place a beacon to others." DEMETRIUS BOULGER. term to their misery. His success, considerCairo, was quite extraordinary. He did put ing the very meagre support received from an end to the slave trade for the time being, he was the means of assigning a date for the emancipation of the slaves, he overthrew the powerful robber confederacy of Zebehr and his son Suleiman, and he averted war with Abyssinia. The merit of his success was enhanced by the paucity of his means. Acting in the name of a half-hearted and impecunious Government, he was not only expected to meet the deficit of an embarrassed province, but to send sums of money to contribute to the luxury of Cairo. The few soldiers he could array were neither very efficient nor very courageous. Their want of courage he had frequently to supply by his own personal intrepidity. More than once it happened that he relieved garrisons of several thousand men with his own body-guard of less than as many hundreds. On one occasion he even relieved a panic-stricken garrison by himself alone! Nor was his visit to the camp almshouse in turn-more like the abode or court of the truculent King of Abyssinia 3 missionary than of a Colonel of Engineers. The troubles of all interested him alike. The less full of peril or less indicative of the proud **r, the sick, the unfortunate, were ever wel-resolve of the man to see and do everything e, and never did suppliant knock vainly at a door. He always took a great delight in iren, but especially in boys employed on river or the sea. . . . .. One day a friend asked - why there were so many pins stuck into map of the world over his mantelpiece; he told that they marked and followed the are of the boys on their voyages, that they By moved from point to point as his youngsters nced, and that he prayed for them as they * day by day. The light in which he was by these lads was shown by inscriptions in ruled in China: "It is absurd to talk about Manchoos and Chinese; the former are extinct, and the latter are in every part. And it is equally absurd to Tak of the Mandarins as a class distinct from the people of the country; they are not so, but merely the officials who hold offices which are obtainable by every Chinese without respect birth-I will not say money, as certainly there is some amount of corruption in the sale offices; but Russia is equally corrupt, for that matter, in her distant provinces, and it is at so very long ago that we were also somewhat tainted in the same way." Perhaps the most beautiful passage of all in the life of Chinese Gordon is that which is the least known-his residence at firavesend in the interval between China and Egypt. We must tell it in Mr. Hake's own words: His life at Gravesend was a life of self-supsion and self-denial; to himself it was one appiness and pure peace; he lived wholly others. His house was school and hospital for himself. There is no room to doubt that With his return in 1879 from Egypt, The Royal Lineage of our Noble and Gentle PEOPLE who are not genealogists will hear The first writer on this subject was Mr. Long, who published in 1845 what he intended to be an exhaustive list of all those persons who are entitled by the laws of heraldry to quarter the royal arms of England. But he attempted no pedigrees, and his list is strictly confined to heirs and co-heirs of royal cadets. This book was quickly followed by The Royal Families of England, Scotland, and Wales, in two volumes, which were the joint production of Sir Bernard Burke and his father. They contain some 250 pedigrees of persons of royal descent, who were evidently selected on no other principle except that they were subscribers to the book. Mr. Foster's selection was probably governed by similar considerations; but, however this may be, he has produced a book of much greater interest and value. His tabular pedigrees are supplemented by a genealogical narrative, with dates and details of every generation, for the fullness and accuracy of which he deserves great praise. He gives in many cases the paternal ancestry of families, as well as their royal lineage; and he assures us in his Preface that every pedigree has been tested, and no descent has been inserted without sufficient proof. The result is that his pedigrees of Brackenbury and Woodford are shorn of several generations of unproved ancestors who were accepted without question by Sir Bernard Burke. It is a marked feature in Mr. Foster's genealogies that they show the true rank and occupation of ancestors who are usually passed off in printed pedigrees as so many Esquires, so that his readers are enabled to estimate the social position of each generation, and to trace the varying fortunes of the family as they gradually rose or fell. Robert Hardinge married at Highgate Chapel, on April 29, 1652, Anne Sprignell; and their son, Gideon, the ancestor of Viscount Hardinge, got his Christian name from his maternal grandfather, Gideon de Laune, the famous apothecary. Gideon Hardinge was Vicar of Kingston-on-Thames by the presentation of his uncle Nicholas, who purchased in 1691 the manor of Canbury, to which this vicarage is appendent. Gideon's wife, Mary Westbrooke, was baptized at Kingston, March 4, 1669-70, and was buried there July 18, 1705. She was the daughter of Caleb Westbrooke, Gent., from whom her son, Caleb Hardinge, the Queen's physician, derived his name. Some stress is laid on the origin of these names, because it has always been a puzzle to the family how it came to pass that the son and grandson of a Cavalier knight were christened by such Puritan names Gideon and Caleb. as Mr. Foster is less successful in ancient genealogy than in modern, for it seems that he has still to learn the origin of the Nevills. His pedigree begins with Geoffrey de Nevill, the husband of Emma de Bulmer; whereas the founder of the family in England was Geoffrey's grandfather, Gilbert de Nevill, who succeeded before 1114 to the five manors in Lincolnshire which Ranulf de St. Valeri held under the Bishop of Lincoln in Domesday. EDMOND CHESTER WATERS. The Myth of Kirke; including the Visit of Odysseus to the Shades. By Robert Brown, jun. (Longmans.) The account of the Tennyson family will supply an interesting example. Lady Anne Leke, a co-heir of the barony of Deincourt and a lineal descendant of Edward III., married Henry Hildyard, M.P., of Winestead, a Yorkshire squire of family and fortune. Their son and heir, Henry Hildyard, turned Roman Catholic, and was compelled to sell his patrimony after the Revolution in 1688. MR. BROWn's previously published researches His son and heir, Christopher, was a profligate into the sources of Greek mythology have and a spendthrift, who deserted his wife, and shown that the divine and heroic legends of left four daughters and co-heirs slenderly pro- Hellas contain, intimately interwoven with vided for, who were glad to marry husbands the original Aryan fabric, a large proportion of a lower degree. The second daughter, of elements derived, through Phoenician and Dorothy, married in 1719 George Clayton, a other channels, from the ancient religion of Baltic merchant at Great Grimsby, by whom Babylonia. In the present volume he enshe had several children. After his death deavours to ascertain the extent to which she married again; and her second husband this foreign material is present in the stories was Ralph Tennyson, an attorney in part- narrated in the tenth and eleventh books of nership with his brother at Grimsby. Her the Odyssey, and to discover the meanings daughter, Elizabeth Clayton, married the originally underlying both the native and the younger brother of her stepfather, Michael foreign portions of these myths. Mr. Brown's Tennyson, an apothecary at Hedon-in-Holder- new volume displays the same ingenuity and Their son, George Tennyson, was bred comprehensive learning as are found in its to the law, and was partner with his uncles, predecessors. Even those who reject the who both died when he was only twenty-author's interpretation of the myths must He continued and extended their business, and further improved his fortunes by marrying an heiress. He acquired by purchase a considerable estate in Lincolnshire, on which he built the mansion known as Bayon's Manor. He had two sons: but his eldest son, who was Rector of Somersby, and the father of the Poet Laureate, died before him: and, when he died in 1835, he made his second son, Charles, his testamentary heir on condition of his assuming the name and arms of d'Eyncourt. Mr. Tennyson d'Eyncourt sat in ten successive Parliaments, and was sworn a member of the Privy Council. He died in 1864, and his son, Admiral d'Eyncourt, is the present owner of Bayon's Manor. ness. seven. Mr. Foster has worked out the genealogy of the Hardinge family more thoroughly than it has ever hitherto been printed, but he has missed some few details which he will now be able to add in his next edition. Sir acknowledge the value of the book as an exhaustive summary of the facts which any true interpretation must be able to explain. As the readers of the ACADEMY are aware, Mr. Brown is a decided adherent of the theory which regards mythology as having in the main originated in the attribution to personal agencies of the recurrent changes of the physical world. This theory, which was originally based on the study of the Aryan mythology, has received powerful support from the phenomena of the Accado-Semitic mythology revealed to us by the cuneiform inscriptions. These two systems are to some extent known to us in their historical development, and we can trace them back to a time when the believers in the myths were still conscious of some sort of connexion between mythical incidents and the phenomena of day and night, summer and winter, cloud, wind, and sea. The "natural phenomena theory" may have suffered discredit through the want of scientific caution exhibited by some of its advocates, and it may require to be modified and supplemented as the field of comparative mythology is widened. But the evidence yielded by historically known mythologies cannot reasonably be set aside in favour of presumptions based on a miscellaneous study of savage myths, for the most part imperfectly reported, and at best only known to us in a single stage of their development. Mr. Brown does not, however, regard the "natural phenomena theory" as supplying the sole and sufficient key to the interpretation of the Odyssey. On the contrary, he is quite aware of the danger of misapplying this theory in the explanation of incidents which can be accounted for by the poet's conception of geographical facts, or by the manners and customs of the Homeric age. He is even careful to note that the historical existence of Odysseus is not disproved by the arguments which resolve his recorded wanderings into a series of nature-myths. Still, Mr. Brown is as firmly convinced as Sir G. W. Cox that the true hero of most of the adventures ascribed to Odysseus is no other than the sun, and that the superhuman personages with whom he meets are simply the actors in the daily presented spectacle of nature. The soundness of this view must be judged by the completeness with which it will account for those features in the poem which otherwise appear motiveless and arbitrary. In several instances Mr. Brown's new applications of this principle of interpretation appear remarkably successful. Every reader of the Odyssey has been struck with the close general resemblance, along with some important differences, between the characters of Circe and Calypso. The points both of likeness and of diversity find a clear explanation in Mr. Brown's hypothesis of the nature of the two personages. He considers that Circe is strictly the moongoddess, of Babylonian origin, though with an Aryan name (meaning, according to Mr. Brown, the "Round" moon), while Calypso is a more purely Aryan conception, representing the night sky with moon and stars. Mr. Brown points out that the relations between the Babylonian lunar goddess Istar and the solar hero "Izdubar" closely resemble those between Circe and Odysseus; and in the legend of the "Descent of Istar" he finds a parallel to Circe's acquaintance with the under-world. A strong case is thus made out, not only for the naturalistic interpretation of the myth, but for its derivation from a foreign source. In support of the latter conclusion Mr. Brown adduces, among many other arguments, the correspondence between the peculiar orientation of the Babylonian temples and the distortion of the points of the compass observable in the Homeric geography. Another indication of Babylonian influence is found in the southward voyage of Odysseus towards Erebus, which Mr. Brown compares with the Accadian belief that the spirits of the dead sailed down the Euphrates to their final home I cannot share Mr. Brown's confidence in hi Accadian derivations of certain Homeric prope names. Coincidence of sound, unsupporte by historical evidence, is a very unsafe guid in etymology. The suggestion of ai (moon as the etymon of the name of Circe's islan |