LADY JANE GREY.* Miss TAYLOR is well known as a
fair and conscientious writer, and this new book will justly add to her reputation. It was inevitable, perhaps, that the tragedy of the tan days' Queen should hang over these pages like a pall of grey cloud ; and the only fault to be found, we think, if indeed it be a fault, is that the author has allowed herself to be almost too much possessed by her subject. Thus the impression of the whole story is one of gloom, too little relieved by the humours of a time so really picturesque, in spite of all its sordid ambitions, religious quarrels, and treacherous cruelty.
Before all things an honest writer, Miss Taylor makes little use of what one may call historical imagination. Actually, of course, there is not much to say about poor Lady Jane as a real living girl, and what there is can hardly be called attractive. Brought up by a father both worldly and weak, and a mother, the granddaughter of Henry VIL, the essence of frivolous stupidity; transferred to the care, such as it was, of the ambitious, unprincipled Lord Admiral Seymour, the fourth husband of Catherine Parr, and afterwards falling into the hands of the still bolder adventurer, Northumberland,— thus treated as a mere political chattel, a toy of uncertain but great possible value, tossed from speculative hand to hand, but hardly conscious, all through, of her own position, and living always in the curious, cold, rather rigid atmosphere which belonged to young and learned Protestants of that day, it would require a peculiar art in portraiture to rouse any deep personal interest in Lady Jane. At the same time, the story of this "little white saint of the iconoclasts" has a dignity and a deep pathos of its own, for never was cruel fate more pitifully undeserved or more bravely met. The tragedy is deepened when we reflect that the innocent lives of Jane and her boy-husband would have been spared but for Mary's fatal resolve to marry the Prince of Spain. The flame lighted up by Northumberland with the object of making these two children King and Queen had quickly flickered and died down: Mary had come to her own with almost universal consent. The popular indignation which brought about Wyatt's rebellion was the death-warrant of those who would certainly have been made, with or without their own consent, the figurehead of future disturbances. Miss Taylor's fair-mindedness gives real value to her portraits of Mary and Elizabeth. She also draws a lifelike picture of Edward, certainly one of the most touching figures in the England of that day. We think she is a little severe in finding fault with the coldness of his journal ; Princes in • Lady Jane Grey and her Times. By I. A. Taylor. With 17 mustrations, London : Hutchinson and Co. [16e. net. J those days, we fancy, were not given to writing- down their real feelings, and at no time is this a habit of boys under sixteen. To sum up, we have enjoyed the book, and would only venture to recommend to the author a little more fearless certainty of touch and confidence in her own intuitions. The spirit and the colour of the time break out too seldom. When they are allowed to have their way, the effect is con- vincing.
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