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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io- s. v. JAN. e, UKH.

modern achievement such as no other country can claim. The chief honours chronicled are those bestowed on H.R.H. the Duchess of Fife and her

Sincely descendants. Another daughter of His ajesty has with her husband ascended the throne of Norway; while a daughter of the Duke of Con- naught is married to the eventual heir of the sister kingdom of Sweden. Another matter to which special attention is called as an outcome of the past few days is the assignment to the Prime Minister hitherto without any precedence of a place immediately following the Archbishops and the Lord Chancellor when a peer, and before the entire peerage of whatever degree. Among the most recent accessions it is sufficient to mention that of the popular Hon. John Walter Edward Douglas Scott-Montagu as second Baron Montagu of Beau- lieu. No more has to be added than that the supremacy of ' Burke ' is worthily maintained.

ONE of the most interesting features and, from a certain historical standpoint, one of the most important also in the immortal diary of Pepys is the record of his visits to the theatre. From this we obtain almost all the exact information we possess as to the dates at which certain dramas of Restoration times first saw the light. Under the title * Pepys and Shakespeare ' Mr. Sidney Lee has sent to The Fortnightly a valuable and interesting paper showing the intellectual limitations of Pepys in tho censures he passes upon plays. The whole ends with a eulogy of Betterton, who seems, indeed, to have been the foremost actor of all times in Shakespeare. Mr. Slingsby Roberts has much to say concerning Nero in ' Modern Drama,' the word " modern" including Tudor times. Send- ing the first part of a series of papers to be called ' The End of the Age,' Tolstoy finds a good deal that is cheering in the victory of Japan over Russia and in the present revolutionary outbreak. M. Maurice Maeterlinck says much that is true, and a little that has been said before by Voltaire among others about ' Our Anxious Morality.' Mrs. John Lane writes very amusingly about ' The London 'Bus,' which she regards as " the true republic." Si it may be, but we have seldom seen elsewhere more comic affectations of social superiority.

ARTICLES on any but political and economic topics are scarce in The Nineteenth Century. Mr. Michael MacDonagh supplies a contribution on 'The Making of Parliament,' which in appearance is timely, and is in no sense controversial. Octroi is familiar enough to those who have made any- thing in the nature of a residence in any of the 1,500 or more French towns where it prevails, but does not come much in the way of the traveller. The octroi on alcohol alone yields in Paris over a million pounds sterling. Prof. Ridgeway's recently published work on 'The Thoroughbred Horse' furnishes Mr. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt with text for a good page. In an anti-Malthusian article Mr. Barclay draws sanguine conclusions concerning the diminishing birth-rate. Lady Burghclere's contri- bution on 'Stratford as a Letter- Writer' is the most literary in the number. An Anglo- Japanese lady : sends a romantic account of a Japanese tragedy. * Lafcadio Hearn,' by Mrs. Arthur Ken- nard, also deals with Japan. 'The Chancellor's Robe,' by Col. Spencer Childers, lets in light upon a curious custom.

QUEEN,' by far the most interesting article in The
 * SPARKS FROM THE ANVIL ; OR, THOUGHTS OF A

National Review, consists of utterances by Carmen Sylva, which for acute observation and for anti- thesis may compare with the gnomes of the best French writers. If we were to begin to quote, we know not when we should leave off. For " pru- dent doubt," which in ' Colloquies in a Suburban Garden ' is said to be " the beacon of the wise," sub- stitute modest doubt, which is what Shakespeare said. Amusing and interesting are ' The Humours of Parish Visiting.' Many unsuspected matters lurk under a rather vague title. Lord Rathmore's ' Devolution ' opens out the Irish Question ; ' The Pattern Englishman and his Record' resolves itself into an arraignment of Sir Henry Campbell-Banner- man ; and the ' Colloquies ' noticed above end in a disapproval of Irving's entombment in Westminster Abbey.

SIR ALGERNON WEST in The Comhill writes with much sprightliness about Mayfair and Thackeray. Viscount St. Cyres gives many instances which might, however, be indefinitely extended of * Judges' " Wut." ' Mr. W. A. Shen- stone has a scientific contribution on 'Matter^ Motion, and Molecules.' Jn 'A Memory' Miss Katharine Tynan describes a mild and sympathetic Irish barrister, whom she does not name, but whose identity could doubtless be made out. Part IV. of ' Reminiscences of a Diplomatist' con- tinues its interesting account of St. Petersburg before the outbreak of war in the Crimea. ' From a College Window,' Part IX., is rather saddening.

THE famous 'Venus and Cupid' of Velasquez serves as frontispiece to The Burlington, and is the subject of a reproachful article, the effect of which will be nil. Sir Richard Holmes sends the first part of an essay on Nicholas Hilliard as an English miniature painter. The illustrations include two likenesses of Queen Elizabeth from Welbeck Abbey and Windsor Castle, one of Lady Jane Grey, and others of Henry VII. and VIIL, Edward VL, and James I. Prof. Baldwin Brown's 'How Greek Women Dressed' is concluded, as is Mr. Beck's ' Ecclesiastical Dress in Art.'

A FIFTEENTH - CENTURY LUMIN-ARIST,' Piero- della Francesca, by Mr. Laurence Housman, which opens No. 2 of The Magazine o/ Fine Arts, has. a finely coloured reproduction of the ' Nativity r from the National Gallery, and many other well- executed plates. 'The Landscapes of Rubens' is another finely illustrated paper. A coloured plate of Diana and Endymion, a tinted reproduc- tion of Cleopatra, and a dozen other plates accompany Sir J. D. Linton's 'Art of Williara Etty, R.A.' These may serve to bring back into favour an artist whose flesh tints were once held remarkable, but who is now sadly and unjustly out of favour.

THE frontispiece to The Pull Mall consists of ' Mile. Dore,' a reproduction of a picture vaguely described as of the French School, but with a possible suggestion of Greuze. 'The Second City of the Empire' depicts Liverpool by pen and pencil. In ' Eton Schooldays ' the Earl of Durham is presented. Sir Harry H. Johnston deals with ' The Cave Dwellers in the Tunisian Sahara.' Mr.

harles Morley's ' London at Prayer ' presents the Poor Brothers at the Charterhouse, one face in- which seems recognizable.

IN The Idler Mr. Robert Barr quotes Campbell'

from memory," and certainly does not improve: