REVIEWS AND EXCHANGES 
with such particularity ns to aid her readers in avoiding similar ones ; and indeed 
as these latter may not he in the same happy position as herself and her sister 
authoresses, and able to apply her remedy of sitting down to write a cheque for a 
few hundred more trees or plants in place of those sacrificed, the omissions 
matter little perhaps. What matters more to her than the details of her gardening 
are the garden itself and her own passionate delight in it, with its acres of 
flowering lilacs and bird cherries wreathed in blossom, its copses of pine and 
birch trees, its background of golden cornfields and shadowy deer forests, all 
bathed and jocund in the pure, bracing Prussian air and dazzling sunshine, 
which she describes so vividly, and with such an absolute abandon of enjoy- 
ment as to carry her reader with her and almost enable him to share in the 
exhilaration of the happy chatelaine of this North German paradise. What 
will English people, however, think of a Paradise marred by such slavery as that 
in which the wretched peasants labouring on it are held : a slavery which does 
not admit of the female hands even knocking off field labour for more than a few 
hours before and after the birth of a child ! 
“ It is quite a usual thing to see them working in the fields of a morning and 
again in the afternoon ,” says the author, “ having in the interval produced a 
baby,” and from her way of mentioning the fact, Elizabeth (though she professes 
to compassionate the hapless victims of this tyranny) does not seem to be as 
much impressed by the horror and barbarism of it as are her readers, who will 
scarcely be surprised to read on the next page of how these labourers desert in 
gangs of fifty at a time ; while their overseer goes about among them with a 
loaded revolver in his pocket. 
Of her own babies she discourses very agreeably, and very charming little 
people they are : “ the April baby ” in particular, whose devoted admiration of 
her governess and misdirected attempt to please her by reproducing on her own 
chubby face “ after much struggling, and by aid of a lead pencil and unbounded 
love" the moustache which nature has bestowed on “ Miss Jones,” is a bit which, 
did space permit, we should like to quote in full. 
But here we must diaw the line of praise. Elizabeth’s garden and Elizabeth’s 
babies are charming ; but when she brings her husband —“ the Man of Wrath,” 
as for some occult reason she chooses to call him — on the scene, and permits him 
to prose to us for pages and pages together , we become bored — bored to extinc- 
tion ; and when, in addition to this, she has visitors to stay with her (in the winter 
time), and indulges them— and herself — in disquisitions of equal length on all 
manner of topics, neither interesting in themselves nor in any way germane to 
the subject of the book, our sense of boredom increases; and we begin to wish 
either that the summer w'ould return and allow Elizabeth to sally forth into her 
garden again, or that she would succeed in carrying out her very frankly 
expressed desire of getting rid of the said visitors many pages before this is 
achieved. 
The almost appalling frankness indeed wfth which this fair authoress describes 
and comments on her Prussian relations and acquaintances is probably the reason 
(and a sufficient one !) for the book being published anonymously ; but both they 
and her discussions with them might have been omilted from it altogether, not 
only without detriment, but with decided advantage to an otherwise very agree- 
able volume. 
Skerlchly’s Geology. Revised by James Monckman, D.Sc.Lond. Thomas 
Murby, 1S98, 8vo, pp. viii. and 256. Price is. 6d. 
Though we altogether demur to the publisher’s announcement that no other 
book at present covers all the requirements of the Suuth Kensington syllabus, it 
cannot be denied that, as revised by Dr. Monckman, this is an excellent and very 
cheap manual, sufficient for students for the Elementary Stage examination, and 
almost so for those aiming at the Advanced Stage. 1 he supplementary section 
is excellent, especially in its petrology, though we regret the retention of 
Naumann’s notation lor crystals. There is, however, room for much further 
revision, chitfly in the earlier part of the woik. It is absurd to continue to 
speak of the work of neaily thirty years ago as “recent” (pp. IX, 134, &c.) ; 
“Sir William Thompson” (p. 15) has now for some years been Lord Kelvin; 
whilst “Professor Wallace” would indicate one of two persons, neither of 
