Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/577

 io- s. iv. DEC. 9,1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 479 of writer" on the subject. At the close of his new and profoundly interesting work, & great portion of which is occupied with disputing the conclusions of others, we fail fully to grasp the secret of the totem. On questions of exogamous marriage; on the Phratries, Pirraru, and Piraungaru ; on orgiastic revels; on the value of myths ; and on the practices of initiation, we hear him with pleasure and admira- tion, and we accept with respect the conjecture he supplies. Conjecture, as he confesses, however, it all remains. We claim no such special knowledge an constitutes us judges or enables us to balance the probability of conflicting theories, and we can but thank Mr. Lang for a stimulating and suggestive work, which forms a worthy companion to his is curious and even illuminatory. On p. 41 Mr. Lang is responsible for a rather sad misquotation ' from Milton s '11 Penseroso.' Madame Geoffrin: her Salon and her Times, 1750- 1777. By Janet Aldis. (Methuen & Co.) OF the galminieres—to employ an ugly word, which saves a periphrasis and commends itself warmly in use to our author—of the eighteenth century Marie Thcrose Rodet, known after her marriage as Madame Geoffrin, is in all respects the most interesting, and in some respects the most considerable. Her career ia like a fairy tale. Of humble extraction—her father was " valet de chambre to the late Dauphin " —possessor of no special beauty or talent, married when fourteen years of age to a bourgeois of forty- eight, Madame Geoffrin began her public life at an age when the femme dn moncle ia not seldom sub- siding into1 eHe devote. • In the twenty-seven years which followed the death of her husband, who left her a considerable fortune, she became a woman of European reputation; the chosen associate of monarchs : the friend and patron of whatever was most brilliant in French letters ; a woman against whom malice could find nothing just to breathe; whose home was the chosen resort of Fontenelle, Montesquieu, Diderot, D'Alembert, Condorcet, Marmontel, and the Encyclopaedists generally ; the friend or hostess of Hume, Gibbon, and Horace Walpole; a woman whom the last King of Poland called affectionately mother, addressed in the most endearing language, and entertained in Warsaw in a house he had built expressly for her, so as to be indistinguishable from that she occupied in the Rue St. Honor6: with whom the Empress Cathe- rine corresponded for years: and who was received with distinction by the Court of Vienna. To students of French history and life these things are well known. They are told afresh with much vivacity in the present volume, the work of a lady
 * (Social Origins.' The handsome cover of the volume
 * who, though her French is not impeccable, is

superior in nearly all respects to most English writers on eighteenth-century France. Her most serious mistake occurs on p. 234. where Horace Wal- pole is quoted as writing, "Madame du Deffand says I have lefou mpcqntr," a wholly unintelligible phrase, which a reference to Walpole's correspond- ence proves should be /• feu moquewr. A slip like this is, of course, unique, and errors of any kind are infrequent. One or two of the worst appear, however, early in the book A French picture can scarcely have been called " L'Ecole d'Athens" (tic), and a phrase on p. 11, renderi ng into English a well- known locution, conveys, we fancy, exactly the con- trary of what is meant. We will not dwell upon slips such as blonde et blanc, and the like. Some curious matters are noted. Madame Geoffrin was in tin habit, it appears, of taking for her health two large tumblers of not water every morning and every even- ing. This remedial or protective measure has sprung again into fashion. Among the numerous illustra- tions, some of them quaint, is one which might almost pass for a powdering closet, with which our columns have been occupied. The work is interest- ing, and conveys a bright idea of French life in the- midst of the eighteenth century. Many matters- concerning which uncertain or erroneous ideas pre- vail are pleasantly and exactly explained. The Nelson Centenary: Lest We Forget, is the title of a publication by Mr. Thomas Foley, issued from Norwich by the East of England Newspaper Company. It has a few illustrations, and gives a ren- dering of a poem by Campbell widely different from anything we recall. Punch's Amanack appears in a brilliant cover. The illustrations, both plain and coloured, are- comic, but Punch himself has changed remarkably in physiognomy. The Burlington Magazine has as frontispiece a reproduction of Richard Wilson's ' Aqn:e Albulce.' Other plates of the same great artist, of George Morland, and J. Crome follow. Prof. G. Baldwin Brown supplies the first of two attractive articles on ' How Greek Women Dressed,' accom- panied by illustrative plates. In classical times the female dress of the Greeks was only distin- guishable from male by minor additions, such as veils. Lina Eckenstein shows the purpose and value of ancient Egyptian art. Views of the Nativity, in a sadly impaired condition, and of the Trinity from, the Santo Spirito at Florence, accompany an account of II Graffione. A view of the lovely interior of the Cathedral Church of Amiens 1s- also among the designs reproduced. IN almost all the reviews the custom of signing: articles seems in course of being abandoned, and the- contributions concerning which it is of most interest to know what is the value and what are the oppor- tunities of obtaining correct information of the writer are pseudonymous or unsigned. With the- alarmist views of such we may not concern ourselves. Messrs. Thomas Seccombe and L. M. Brandin are jointly responsible for an essay in The Fortnightly upon' Jose-Maria de Heredia.' No very extravagant eulogy upon the sonneteer is pro- nounced by our critic*, who declare Heredia not to be one of the dii majorea of poetry. Included in a just and thoughtful article is an account of the origin in France of the sonnet. A not less interest- ing contribution is that of M. Andr£ Turquet upon Rene Bazin, between whom and Wordsworth an interesting comparison is drawn. Mr. Stephen- Paget writes on ' The Revival of Phrenology." Rather less alarming than its title is this, which- deals with recent books of Dr. Bernard Hollander on 'The Mental Functions of the Brain.' Sir Oliver Lodge replies to Mr. Mallock on ' Religion and Belief.' ' Sister Benvenuta and the Christ Child,' by Vernon Lee, is quaint and beautiful.—In The Nineteenth Century Prince Kropotkin takes naturally a sanguine view of ' The Revolution in Russia.' In the paper by the Gresham Lecturer on 'The Sun and the Recent Total Eclipse,' it embarrasses somewhat the ignorant to be told that the ninety-three millions of miles which the sun is distant from the earth is in some senses an