SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading we notice such Books of the week as have not been reserved for review in other forms.]
The May-Book. Compiled by Mrs. Aria. (Macmillan and Co 10s. net.)—One prefers to describe rather than to criticise a volume of this kind. A number of well-known "authors and artists "—we scrupulously follow Mrs. Aria's order of precedence —have combined to furnish the contents of a volume which is t) be sold for the benefit of Charing Cross Hospital. Mrs. Aria appeals to the public "to buy this book in its thousands," and we gladly do what we can to help her. The public certainly might spend its money to less advantage. The sum would scarcely purchase a bottle of good champagne at a fashionable restaurant, and in that case the apres would be less pleasing. Here is a little piece which, taken by itself, should go a long way to remunerate even the costly sacrifice of half-a-sovereign for a book. It is by Mr. Austin Dobson, and entitled "Angel Court" :-
"In Angel Court the sunless air Grows faint and sick ; to left and right The cowering houses shrink from sight, Huddling and hopeless, eyeless, bare.
Misnamed, you my. For surely rare Must be the angel shapes that light In Angel Court I
Nay the eternities are there,
Death by the doorway stands to smite;
Life in its garrets leaps to light; And Love has climbed that crumbling stair In Angel Court!"
This is me-rum sal, such, indeed, as Mr. Austin Dobson is wont to give us. Several of the drawings are interesting, notably one by Prince Purachatra of Siam of "My Father's Palace," not in- appropriately faced by the opening lines of Coleridge's famous dream-poem, "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan."
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