BY ANNE GILCHRIST.
"The story of Mary Lamb has long been familiar to the readers of Elia, but never in its entirety as in the monograph which Mrs. Anne Gilchrist has just contributed to the Famous Women Series. Darkly hinted at by Talfourd in his Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, it became better known as the years went on and that imperfect work was followed by fuller and franker biographies,--became so well known, in fact, that no one could recall the memory of Lamb without recalling at the same time the memory of his sister."--_New York Mail and Express._
"A biography of Mary Lamb must inevitably be also, almost more, a biography of Charles Lamb, so completely was the life of the sister encompa.s.sed by that of her brother; and it must be allowed that Mrs. Anne Gilchrist has performed a difficult biographical task with taste and ability.... The reader is at least likely to lay down the book with the feeling that if Mary Lamb is not famous she certainly deserves to be, and that a debt of grat.i.tude is due Mrs.
Gilchrist for this well-considered record of her life."--_Boston Courier._
"Mary Lamb, who was the embodiment of everything that is tenderest in woman, combined with this a heroism which bore her on for a while through the terrors of insanity. Think of a highly intellectual woman struggling year after year with madness, triumphant over it for a season, and then at last succ.u.mbing to it.
The saddest lines that ever were written are those descriptive of this brother and sister just before Mary, on some return of insanity, was to leave Charles Lamb. "On one occasion Mr. Charles Lloyd met them slowly pacing together a little foot-path in Hoxton Fields, both weeping bitterly, and found, on joining them, that they were taking their solemn way to the accustomed asylum." What pathos is there not here?"--_New York Times._
"This life was worth writing, for all records of weakness conquered, of pain patiently borne, of success won from difficulty, of cheerfulness in sorrow and affliction, make the world better.
Mrs. Gilchrist"s biography is unaffected and simple. She has told the sweet and melancholy story with judicious sympathy, showing always the light shining through darkness."--_Philadelphia Press._
BOOKS OF TRAVEL.
"_It is a very good office one man does another, when he tells him the manner of his being pleased_."--SIR RICHARD STEELE.
+LETTERS HOME.+ From Colorado, Utah, and California. By CAROLINE H.
"There is a freshness about her Diary that is not often met with in books of this sort, and a happy regard for the minor details which give color and character to descriptions of strange life and scenery," says the N.Y. Tribune.
+SEVEN SPANISH CITIES, and The Way to Them.+ By E.E. HALE.
"Mr. Hale makes Spain more attractive and more amusing than any other traveller has done."--_Boston Advertiser._
+GONE TO TEXAS; or, The Wonderful Adventures of a Pullman.+ By E.E.
HALE.
"There are few books of travel which combine, in a romance of true love, so many touches of the real life of many people, in glimpses of happy homes, in pictures of scenery and sunset, as the beautiful panorama unrolled before us from the windows of this Pullman car."
+AN INLAND VOYAGE.+ By ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
"Those who have read Mr. Stevenson"s delightful "Travels with a Donkey," in which he told the story of a unique trip among the mountains of Southern France, will gladly welcome this bright account of a canoe voyage through the ca.n.a.ls of Belgium, on the Sambre, and down the Oise. Unlike Captain Macgregor, of "Rob Roy"
fame, Mr. Stevenson does not make canoeing itself his main theme, but delights in charming bits of description that, in their close attention to picturesque detail, remind one of the work of a skilled "genre" painter."--_Good Literature._
+TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY IN THE CeVENNES.+
By ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. With Frontispiece ill.u.s.tration by Walter Crane.
"Charming, full of grace and humor and freshness,--such refined humor it is, too, and so evidently the work of a gentleman. What a happy knack he has of giving the taste of a landscape, or any out-door impression, in ten words!"