GIFT-BOOKS.
PRINCES AND PRINCESSES.* MR. LANG in a charming preface—surely no one ever wrote better prefaces and introductions !—acknowledges, more in sorrow than in anger, that .children would sooner read about things and persons that never existed than about the events and characters of history, and that they have the example of older people to encourage them. How, then, about these "Princes and Princesses," all of them once real boys and girls ? One device, simplicity itself, but not, we can imagine, ineffective, is to have nothing to do with historical order. The book begins with Napoleon, though he was certainly not a "Prince" when he was a boy, and goes on to Napoleon's son, who perhaps made up for the defect in his father's rank by starting as a King,—a most melancholy story this, even though the whole of it is not told. Then we come, and find ourselves, we must confess, more at home in coming, to a Princess, Jeanne de Navarre, daughter of Marguerite d'Angoulen;te, who appears here with more of a halo than we should be inclined to put about her head. Jeanne herself stands out with a striking individuality of character. It was not often that a girl of those times asserted herself so vigorously. The story of her betrothal to the Duke of Cleves, whom she snubbed in a way that must have not a little astonished him, is most entertaining. Jeanne is followed by Hacon the King, known in history as "Hacon Haconsson the Old,"—a curious comment, by the way, on the tenor of life in those days, as he died at fifty-nine. The story of Marie Louise d'Orleans, who became the wife of Charles IL of Spain, introducea its readers to a very strange world, life in the Spanish Court, an existence hedged in by a most intolerably rigid etiquette. How this lively young girl—she was married at seventeen—must have abhorred the whole affair ! To wear twelve petticoats in winter and seven in sampler was only a small part of the burden. If she wanted to see what was going on in the park, a Court official would interfere with—" Her Majesty the Queen of Spain never looks out of a window ! " If she tried to teach a game to her little pages and maids of honour, some seven or eight years old most of them, it was- " Her Majesty the Queen of Spain never condescends to notice children!" Add to this a husband who was half an idiot, of whose language she did not know a word, and we do not wonder that she was pretty well tired of life when she died at the age of twenty-seven.
One moral this book will certainly teach its young readers, not to have any covetous longings for a Royal station, though, of course, there was never anything quite like Spanish Royalty as it was two centuries ago. " Henrietta the Siege Baby " is the story of the youngest child of Charles I., born in Exeter iu June, 1644, a beginning of life which was not out of keeping with its course. She had many troubles, not a few of them of her own making, and she died at twenty-six. Here we have the moral over again. In the " Red Rese " we have a Prince for a change, and the Prince is Henry, son of Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond, afterwards to be known as Henry VII., about whom the sixth Henry uttered the strange prophecy : "In peace he will wear the garland for which we so sinfully contend," uttered it, too, when his own son Edward was still alive." After the "Red Rose," the "White," Elizabeth of York. Of her, also, Mrs. Lang has some curious things to tell • The Bock of Princes and Princesses. By Mrs. Lang. Edited by Andrew Lang. Loudon : Longman': and Co. Los.] us, the horoscope, for instance, which her father King Edward showed her, and in which it was written that she would be one day Queen of England. Another Prince comes next, " Richard the Fearless," son and successor of William Longsword, Duke of Normandy, and the great civiliser of the Norman race. In "Frederick and Wilhelmina " we are introduced to the strange Court of Frederick William of Prussia, with his passion for tall soldiers. The piteous story of Marie Antoinette succeeds, and finally, after two other chapters, "The Troubles of the Princess Elizabeth." Certainly the first twenty-five years of Elizabeth's life are the pleasantest to read about. Troubles there were in plenty, but she was always so prudent, so patient, and so dignified. In this last respect, at least, power did not change her for the better.
Mr. H. J. Ford's illustrations, eight of them in colour, add much to the charm of a very attractive book. The young people who are bored by these stories, even though they are true, must be very hard to please.
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