THE LAST DAYS OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY.
The Last Days of the French Monarchy. By Sophia H. Mac- Lehose. With Portraits. (MacLehose and Sons, Glasgow. 6s. net.) —Miss MacLehose has bestowed a great deal of what one may justly call loving care on the story of the unfortunate Louis and Marie Antoinette. We have a really remarkable picture of the life of the Court—even down to the arrangements of the Royal kitchens and the various gaieties—and the attitude of the nobility towards Royalty, so strangely and fatally shown over the affair of the necklace. The necklace story is as well told as it has ever been. If ever a nobility deserved ruin for lack of loyalty, the haute noblesse," the nobility of the sword," of France deserved it
Miss MacLehose uses a very sober pen, permits herself no extravagances, but knows how to put in vivid touch a striking incident to drive a point home. Her sketches of the various statesmen, Turgot, Neoker, Calonne, and oth ere, are historical studies ; indeed, Miss MacLehose shows a most comprehensive grasp of French life, French government, and generally the social and political, as well as the urban and rural, organisation of the eighteenth century. We do not want for the ordinary reader a more readable and a more thorough guide to the decay of the Monarch than this lucid and carefully digested sketch of the most interesting period of the eighteenth-century history. It is more than a sketch, it is a history.
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