Page:Selected letters of Mendelssohn 1894.djvu/14

viii as they did in 1861, when I first made their acquaintance on the deck of the Austrian-Lloyd steamer between Jaffa and Alexandria. Not only had Mendelssohn the keenest insight into the scenes, events, and persons that came before him, but few writers have ever had a happier knack of expression; in this even Dean Stanley, the prince of letter-writers, hardly exceeds him.

To convey such happy expressions—free and gay, but never tinctured with slang—into equivalent English is a very difficult task. The reader must judge for himself how far Mr. Alexander has succeeded. It appears to me that he has been unusually fortunate. G. GROVE.
 * Christmas, 1893.