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The publisher, it may be added, has reproduced one of the pictures by heliogravure as frontispiece.

The death of "Kicky" gives peculiar interest to another art-work of much less solidity. We refer to "In Bohemia with Du Maurier," by the well-known artist Mr. Felix Moscheles, the son of Ignatz Moscheles, the composer, and the namesake and god-son of Mendelssohn.

In Bohemia with
Du Maurier.

This is one of a series of reminiscences entitled, "I well remember." The author takes us to the Antwerp Academy, where he first met Du Maurier; amongst their fellow-students were Tadema, Mario, and others since become famous. Character sketches of these are interspersed with lively descriptions of life in Bohemia, and with many quotations in prose and in verse from Du Maurier's letters, whilst the text is accompanied by some of his drawings. One feels the atmosphere of "Trilby" throughout these recollections. There was Moscheles, who was no mean hypnotist, and Octavie L., dite Carry, who might have served for the blanchisseuse de fin. We are shown the three friends, Rag, Tag, and Bobtail, and learn vho are the originals of Sir Lewis Cornellys, Glorioli, and others. "Tumblings with Whistler" are mentioned, and learn how Sir Arthur Sullivan wrote the part of Box

IOS. 6d.

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in Burnand's travesty of "Box and Cox" for Du Maurier's voice. The volume puts us in personal

touch with the artists and makes us feel quite at home in Bohemia.

Mr. Cole's work on the "Old Italian Masters" was, according to the Daily Telegraph, a series of "lovely productions of an eye and hand rarely-if ever-equalled at such reproduction, and ... won, we are informed, the warmest praise from such authorities as Sir E. Burne-Jones and Mr. G. F. Watts." The Daily Chronicle, through the mouth, if we mistake not, of one of our most famous book-illustrators, declared it to be "the greatest series of wood-engravings in ancient or modern times."

"Old Dutch Masters" is a companion volume to "Old Italian Masters," and is a collection of the superb wood-engravings which have been appearing in periodical form for the past three years, accompanied with explanatory text by Professor John C. Van Dyke, with comments on the pictures by the engraver.

Modern

Freach Masters. £2 28.

In "Modern French Masters," Mr. Timothy Cole has assisted in producing a third great series, in which masterpieces of Corot, Géroine, Meissonier, Diaz, Monet, Millet, Manet, BastienLepage, &c., are translated into the language of tone and line. Herein, as in his previous works, he displays, together with Messrs. Henry Wolf, Elbridge Kingsley, W. B. Closson, and others associated with him, for the satisfaction of any intelligent eye, the superiority of the engraving over the photograph; and his words anent the ideal he pursued in rendering the Dutch masterpieces still apply: "Since my aim was to suggest colour by the manipulations of my surfaces, I could not, therefore, from the nature of my procedure, have been aiming to give to my work the quality of a photograph, because the photographic surface is of one uniform texture throughout, and in this respect it fails in suggesting the force and variety of the surface of a painting. The best photographs, as every artist knows, when confronted with the

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originals, always show, more or less, defects of values, besides which, being unsparing of everything, they give even the superficies of the canvas, and often a surprising amount of detail in the darkest masses, which, crowded into a reduction, weakens and overlays the effect in the original. It will not do for him to put in all that he sees. Herein he leaves the photograph away behind."

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But we must leave Mr. Cole: the sound of the tocsin hurries us away from his studious company.

The Life

of General
Gordon.

21S.

It is not of "far-off, unhappy things and battles long ago" that we are to be pat in mind, but of the "glory and shame of England," the life and death of General Gordon. Mr. Demetrius C. Boulger, the author of the latest "Life," is also the learned author of "The History of China" and "England and Russia in Central Asia." He was a personal friend of Gordon, and Miss Dunlop, a niece of the General, and his literary executrix, has enabled him to give his work almost an official character, by assisting him "to attain complete accuracy in the facts." These include several unpublished documents anent the private secretaryship under Lord Ripon, the mission to Peking in 1880, and the inception of the Khartoum mission. Some evidence, also, as to the incidents accompanying the execution of the Taeping Wangs at Soochow in 1863 is published for the first time. Well aware of the religious character of former "lives," he has preferred to paint his subject in his capacity of soldier and statesman, and has left the Christianity of "Chinese Gordon' in the background.

THE HOUSE IN WHICH GORDON WAS BORN, ON
WOOLWICH COMMON.
(From "The Life of Gordon," facing page 16, Vol. I.)

The reception of this biography was an extraordinary one. On the day of publication the Times, Daily News, Daily Chronicle, Morning Post, and other papers, came out with long and exhaustive reviews. At the time of writing there is a paper war raging, in which the biographer uses his ammunition with unerring skill and effect. Such is the startling result of Mr. Boulger's answer to the question : Who killed Gordon?

"Two Campaigns," the spirited record of the Franco-Malagasy and Anglo-Ashantee hostilities, comes from the pen of Mr. Bennet Burleigh, the well-known correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. It was reserved for Mr. Burleigh, a draughtsman of no mean skill, to draw what is perhaps the last portrait of Prince Henry of Battenberg, for whose conduct under rather trying circumstances he has nothing but praise. This portrait we reproduce, and the following graphic description may serve to show some of the advantages accruing to humanity at large by a campaign which was solely prompted by national egoism and self-interest :

Two Campaigns. 16s.

"Monday's decisive line of action removed-swept away-the power that persisted in the continuance of human sacrifices and the public celebration of barbarous rites. Bantama, .he great fetish village, and home of the sanguinary priests and butchers, was burned and razed to the ground. The awful and polluted sacrificial groves of Coomassie were destroyed, and the sacred trees were everywhere hewn down, whilst the mighty cottonwood, the central figure of the Golgotha grove, was blown into the air with gun-cotton. As the three-hundred-feet-high fetish tree rose in the air and came tumbling to the earth, bearing down lesser trees in its fall, it shook the ground like an earthquake. The natives gazed in awe at the spectacle, and the manifestation of the power of the British 'fetish' ended their implicit trust in Ashantee charms. The previous day's situation was aptly hit off by a shrewd native, who said to me: 'It will never do in this country to behave as you have done in the past. If you don't take Prempeh away, the common people won't believe he has lost any power, and the wickedness and murder will go on very soon as bad as ever.' Nay, it had even been openly stated that within a few hours of the arrival of the Expedition in the capital human blood was poured out to appease the fetish priests and the evil spirits. This much to the credit of the fetish priests. As a rule, they did their killing kindly, and not in a cruel fashion. The object of

immolation having been struck or marked, had his vertebræ first severed with a small knife before they attacked his throat, so that he was as quickly as possible made unconscious of pain before other horrible indignities were inflicted upon him. The head was severed, the blood was caught and partly drank, and portions of the body were occasionally eaten."

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It is easy and, indeed, satisfactory to turn from the conquest of nations to the conquest of mountains. Mr. Harper speaks modestly and to the point, as thus:

Pioneer Work in the Alps of New

"In the years 1889, 1890, 1891, 1892, I made holiday expeditions to the Tasman District of the Southern Alps, and in 1893, 1894, 1895 was employed by the New Zealand Government to explore the valleys and glaciers of the West Coast of the South Island. I do not pretend to have made many high ascents, but base my claim to be considered an authority on the Alps of New Zealand on the fact that I have shared in the first exploration of nearly every glacier in the central position of these mountains. It is not right, in my opinion, for one who has special knowledge on a subject of general interest to keep that knowledge to himself; and for this reason-as well as with the object of recording our work, and helping others by our experiences-I have ventured to write the following pages."

Zealand.

21s. net.

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