9* s. xii. NOV. 7, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
379
the completed work will possess a thoroughly
representative collection of all pictures of all
schools from the days of the full Renascence to the
close of the eighteenth century. Dr. Bode, the
Director of the Berlin Gallery, one of the greatest
authorities on art, praises also the depth of tone
and the velvety appearance of the reproductions,
and commends the selection of real masterpieces.
The four plates now given consist of Jan Steen's
marvellously jovial portrait of himself, a master-
piece of ripe, humour, fit to occupy the place of
honour in the collection of Gargantua, but, in
fact, from that of Lord Northbrook ; Sir Joshua's
' Mrs. Carnac,' from the Wallace Gallery, a pure
and exquisite fantasy in paint of a great lady
"playing the nymph"; Van Dyck's ' William II.,
Prince of Orange - Nassau,' from the Hermitage
Gallery of St. Petersburg, a superbly executed
portrait of a no less superbly handsome boy ; and
' The Ash-Tree Avenue ' of Jan Hackaert, from the
Rijks Museum, Amsterdam. Hackaert is a com-
paratively unknown Dutch landscape painter of the
seventeenth century. We can well believe what is
said, that this is one of his best works. The foliage
is exquisite, and the effects of light are, in another
and quite different way, as captivating as anything
in De Hooghe. The complete work will be a fine
possession, and each of the separate plates is
worthy of preservation as, in its way, a gem.
The Historical Geography of Europe. By Edward A. Freeman, D.C.L. Third Edition. Edited by J. B. Bury, M.A. Atlas to the Above. 2 vols. (Longmans & Co.)
FIRST published in 1881, Freeman's ' Historical Geography,' though it was followed after a brief interval by a second edition, has had to wait more than a score years for a third. Now, even, its editor, Prof. Bury, adopts in speaking of it what might conceivably be construed into something like an apologetic tone. To the scholar, however, it is equally attractive and valuable. There is just suffi- cient repetition, perhaps almost inevitable in a work of the sort, to make one wish that Prof. Bury had had the courage to take a little more seriously his functions as editor, and reshape a few crude sen- tences. To have altered, as he would have liked, to " Aryan speech " the use in many passages of the word "Aryan" would have been a bolder, but still pardonable, step, which in some future edition a later editor will probably take. These things are of minor importance. What we welcome is a new and authoritative reprint of a work which is one of the most helpful the student can possess. The book is not a novelty, and in a period of so active literary production as the present cannot be treated as such. To those unfamiliar with its scope and purpose we may say that it is, with its maps, a serviceable companion to all histories, from Tacitus to Gibbon and onwards. With history itself in this work Freeman does not directly concern himself. By means of maps and text, however, he shows us the geographical distribution of states from the days of Homeric record to the Europe of to-day, with the changes made on the face of it by the results of the Franco - Prussian war. To take an instance with which all must needs be familiar, one may trace by its aid the growth of the Roman Empire in the West and the East, the different influence it exercised in Greece, where it encountered a civili- zation equal or superior to its own, and among the Franks and Teutons to employ convenient
expressions on whom it imposed its own civiliza-
tion, leaving behind it ineffaceable traces of its
power and its decay. Those interested and
who is not? in European development may see,
almost at a glance, the link, in many cases slight
as it could be, between the Roman Empire, pro-
perly so styled, and the empire of Charlemagne,
which claimed to succeed and, indeed, did so in a
fashion and disappeared only in the last century
amidst the general disintegration caused by the
conquests of Napoleon, making room for that
German empire the ultimate outcome of which
will be one of the most interesting of problems
for our descendants. The growth of European
states as now recognized, the effect of Saracenic
invasion, the disappearance of kingdoms such as
Aquitaine or Anjou, the recession of Burgundy, the
disappearance of Poland, the formation of Austro-
Hungary these and hundreds of other things may
be studied here with unparalleled ease and comfort.
Fresh from the work, we pronounce its perusal
a pleasure, to resume which other labours were
hurried or put on one side. For purposes of refer-
ence, meanwhile, it is of the utmost importance,
being encyclopaedic in the information it conveys.
Every public library must needs place it on its
shelves if it is not, as presumably it is, already
there. The scholar who knows it not will find
himself, if he takes it on our recommendation,
under an obligation not easily to be acknowledged
or forgotten.
The Stage Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet ; Ham- let ; Coriolanus ; Julius Ccesar ; As You Like It ; Merchant of Venice. Edited by Austin Brereton. (Collins & Sons.)
WE have here the first six volumes of a cheap, con- venient, and fully illustrated edition of Shake- speare, intended for the stage and the closet. Each volume has a coloured title-page and from five to twenty-four illustrations, single or double page. These are mostly, but not altogether, taken from the actors of the day Sir Henry Irving, Miss Terry, Mr. Tree, Mr. Forbes Robertson, &c. and are generally well executed. A prefatory intro- duction, modelled to some extent upon that in the " Henry Irving Shakespeare," extra notes, and a glossary are supplied to each volume. The edition, when complete, will be one of the cheapest and most attractive accessible to the general public.
Battlefield Church, Salop, and the Battle of Shrews- bury. By the Rev. W. G. D. Fletcher, M.A. (Shrewsbury, Adnitt & Naunton.) MR. FLETCHER has issued a second edition, with seven illustrations from photographs by Mrs. A. E. Perkins, of his ' Battlefield Churcn.' It constitutes an admirable guide to an interesting edifice, and is a not unimportant contribution to history as well as archaeology.
Master Humphrey's Clock and Edwin Drood ; Our Mutual Friend ; The Uncommercial Traveller ; Christmas Stories. By Charles Dickens. (Chap- man & Hall and Frowde.)
FOUR more volumes of the "Fireside" edition of Dickens, due to the association of Messrs. Chapman & Hall and Mr. Henry Frowde, complete the set. There is nothing to add to what has been said concerning these books, which keep up the attrac- tions of the series. For less than a couple of pounds the reader gets, in legible type and with the original
