Studio: international art (36.1906)

Reviews

intended by him, with the aid of a carefully chosen
body of experts. The result is indeed eminently
satisfactory, and the photogravures are admirable,
giving an excellent general idea of each subject,
yet bringing out well all the exquisite details of
decoration. Specially good are those of an English
and a French Gueridon,both of the end of the seven-
teenth century; a Commode by J. H. Riesener,
early Louis XVI. ; a French Secretaire of the same
time, of unknown authorship; an eighteenth-cen-
tury English Bookcase, by J. Mayhew; and a
Sedan Chair made for Queen Charlotte.

The Story of the Tweed. By Sir Herbert
Maxwell, Bart. With Illustrations by D. Y.
Cameron, A.R.S.A., R.W.S. (London : James
Nisbet.) ^5 $s. net.—Although, as the author of
this fascinating monograph on Scotland’s noblest
river remarks, the landscape through which it
passes has suffered greatly by the intrusion of many
unlovely products of civilisation, such as railways,
barbed-wire fences, and telegraph poles, it still
retains a greater glamour of romance than any
other part of the United Kingdom. From its
source in the exquisitely situated Tweeds-Well, to
the so-called Berwick Bounds won by the English
at so terrible a cost, it is associated at almost every
turn with some pathetic or gruesome tradition that
has been embodied in ballad, song, or story. To
select, from the overwhelming mass of material at
his disposal, the more important and significant of
these traditions; to sift in them the true from the
false, and to weld into one consecutive narrative
the proved, the possible, and the probable, required
no little judgment and literary skill; but, as is well
known, Sir Herbert Maxwell combines the gift of
eloquent expression with profound historical and
antiquarian lore. In his accomplished hands, the
Tweed—to whom, by the way, he gives the
feminine gender — is made to hold her own
throughout her long career, her tributaries being
accorded their true subordinate place, and before
many pages of her chequered story have been read
even the most cold-blooded reader cannot fail to
feel something of the affection for her which
animates her biographer. Each chapter indeed
seems to be more full of absorbing interest than the
last. That on Ettrick and Yarrow, for instance,
is so enthralling, that it is difficult to pass from it to
give the mind to Abbotsford and Melrose, with
their thronging memories of the Red Douglas,
Robert the Bruce, and the Magician of the North.
Yet Sir Herbert’s account of war-worn Jedburgh, the
road to which has been soaked again and again with
the blood of Scotch and English, excels its prede-
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cessors in its vivid realisation of the past; whilst
the story of Berwick-on-Tweed brings the long
record to a fitting close, and seems almost to
justify the quaint legend that when the devil
showed all the kingdoms of the world to our
Lord, he put his thumb upon the picturesque
stronghold, so greatly did he long to keep it for him-
self. Unfortunately the drawings of Mr. Cameron,
accomplished painter and etcher though he be, are
by no means equal to the text they supplement.
With few exceptions they are all marred by the
undue heaviness of the dark portions, giving
them an almost lurid appearance, and in many
cases the values are not correctly interpreted. In
the Eildon Hills, for instance, the total absence of
shadows makes it impossible to say whether the
background is, or is not, covered with snow, and
whether the foreground is intended for a coal-field
and river, or a meadow and a road ; whilst in the
Jedburgh Abbey, otherwise a beautiful drawing, the
reflections are not truly rendered, several objects,
notably the white wall, not appearing in the water
at all. On the other hand, the Norharn has some-
thing of the feeling of Turner, and the Tweeds-
Mouth is a most poetic rendering of a very fine
subject. Had all the illustrations been up to the
level of these two, the value of the book, great as
it already is, would have been largely increased.

Ivories. By Alfred Maskell. (London
Methuen.) 25s. net.—Reflecting, as they do in a

very marked degree, the gradual advance of the
human race in the power of appreciating and repro-
ducing beauty of form, carved ivories occupy an
exceptional position in the history of civilisation, as
well as of art, a fact that is fully recognised in the
scholarly monograph on them just added to this
useful “ Connoisseur’s Library.” Mr. Maskell, who
has evidently a very thorough grip of his fascinating
subject, prefaces his careful examination of a large
number of examples of typical work with a brief
summary of the history of ivory carving. After
briefly noticing the crude attempts of the cave-
dwellers of Europe at the delineation of animals on
bone or ivory, he passes in able review Assyrian,
Egyptian, Classic, Byzantine, and Occidental carv-
ings, etc., explaining in every case the use to which
the various objects described were put. The
interest of the narrative, in which there is not a
single dull page, culminates in the richly illustrated
chapters on religiousand secular art in the fourteenth,
fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, during which
were produced an extraordinary number of master-
pieces that are still the delight of all who are able
to appreciate the exquisite beauty of their design