Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/530

 440 NOTES AND QUERIES. [io-s. iv. NOV. 25. •and eleven (of which one is in colours) to Richard Wilson, the subject of an important essay by Sir James D. Linton, with which begins what promises to be a series of English landscape painters. Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower writes on Gainsborough's drawings in the British Museum. THE paper which will first attract the notice of many of our readers in The Edinburgh Jierietc for October is the one on Greek teaching at -our older universities. It, unlike much of the literature on this highly controversial subject, is written with exemplary moderation, but its drift cannot be mistaken. The author would assuredly retain Greek, but not let it continue to be compulsory. We trust that those who agitate for its abolition on the ground that it is useless will give attention to what occurs here, .and call to mind that there are reasons—not of the •directly utilitarian order, it is true—which ought to have some influence on the training of the higher minds of the country. ' The Novels of Miss Yonge' js a pleasing paper. Her merits oa a novelist have often been exaggerated, even to the boundaries of the grotesque ; put the tide of thought has now for •some years run in a contrary direction, and there has been developed an amount of depreciation which it is not easy to excuse. It has been main- tained, with some truth, that Miss Yonge was far too consciously didactic. This is, in a limited sense, true ; but it is only fair to bear in mind that her life was a comparatively narrow one, so that •she had not the means of acquiring certain kinds of knowledge which are open to nearly every one to- •dav Her own happy, though restricted experience •did not supply the means of estimating certain forms of selfishness, and even cruelty, practised by good people, from which in early and middle life so many have suffered through little or no fault of their own 'The Preservation of Big Game in Africa' is •a strenuous article in favour of wild creatures. Some things, as the writer is careful to point out, have been done in a right direction, but not nearly all that is needed. Many sportsmen, we are happy to say are also students of zoology; but the majority of those who go to Africa for the purpose •of killing things are sportsmen only, and have no more idea of the interest inseparable from the wild creatures they so recklessly slaughter than they had in their childhood for the gateways of know- ledge opened to them by the wild bees, ants, and wasps which they encountered in their daily walks. The review of Sir. G. M. Trevelyan's ' England under the Stuarts' will be useful to those who have not read the book, and something little short of iaseinating to those who have. We do not sym- pathize with some of the writers opinions, but have been charmed by his sturdy determination to think for himself, unswayed by traditional opinion. 'There is much that is instructive in ' The Battle of the Japan Sea,' and also in ' The Garden City and •Garden Suburb.' The latter is the more interest- ing because it not only tells of what is happening now. but forms an index to the social progress of the future. A Quick Calculator, by R. Klein, issued by Messrs. Routledge & Sons, is well printed and arranged, and is likely to be of great and general utility. To Bell's " Miniature Series of Gr,eat Writers " Mr Walter Jerrold has added a workmanlike and very notable biography of Charles Lamb, and to the same publishers' " Miniature Series of Musi- cians" Mr. John !•'. Runciman sends a capital memoir and estimate of Wagner. Both volumes have well-executed portraits and other illustration*. WITH a double number of The Qtieen is supplied a Rembrandt gravure, 30 in. by 22 in., of the fine painting by J. W. West exhibited, under the title ' A Long Story,' in last year's Royal Academy. The work is superbly executed and produced on proof paper, and merits all that is claimed for it, viz., that it is a real work of art, and worth many times the price charged. AN Oxford edition of 'The Poetical Works of William Blake' is about to be issued in two forms from the University Press. It gives a verbatim text from the manuscript, engraved, and letterpress originals, with variorum readings and notes and prefaces by John Sampson, Librarian in the Univer- sity of Liverpool. MR. JAMES SYKES, who died at his residence, 38, Harrington Street, N.W., on 30 October, aged eighty-four, was an occasional contributor to ' N. & ','.,' the latest article of his that we can trace being at 7th S. v. 495. He came from Halifax, in the West Riding, but spent most of his life in London. He had a great knowledge of biographical and genealogical matters, on which he sometimes wrote in The Gentleman'* Magazine, The fffrald and Oenealogixt, and the like, using at times the signature Q. F. V. F., the initials of the motto of one branch of the Sykes family. IJoticta ia Centspmibfnts. We mn-il call special attention to the foUoieny noticet:— ON all communications must be written the name and address of the sender, not necessarily for pub- lication, but as a guarantee of good faith. V E cannot undertake to answer queries privately. To secure insertion of communications corre- spondents must observe the following rules. Let each note, query, or reply be written on a separate slip of paper, with the signature of the writer and such address as he wishes to appear. When answer- ing queries, or making notes with regard to previous entries in the paper, contributors are requested to put in parentheses, immediately after the exact heading, the series, volume, and page or pages to which they refer. Correspondents who repeat queries are requested to head the second com- munication " Duplicate." G. C. WYNNE ("When danger's rife").—ThisU a variant of God and the doctor we alike adore. See 3"' S. iv. 499; v. 62, 489, 527; 7* S. i. 300; 8"1 S. vi. 139. C. R. BUKR, Portland, Me. — Forwarded to W. I. R. V. NOTICE. Editorial communications should be addressed to "The Editor of 'Notes and Queries"'—Adver- tisements and Business Letters to "The Pub- lisher"—at the Office, Bream's Buildings, Chancery Lane, E.G. We beg leave to state that we decline to return communications which, for any reason, we do not print; and to this role we can make no exception.