t our
literature wants--a light touch, a delicate hand, a graceful mode of
treatment, and an unstudied felicity of phrase. We want some one who
will do for our prose what Madame de Sevigne did for the prose of France.
George Eliot's style was far too cumbrous, and Charlotte Bronte's too
exaggerated. However, one must not forget that amongst the women of
England there have been some charming letter-writers, and certainly no
book can be more delightful reading than Mrs. Ross's _Three Generations
of English Women_, which has recently appeared. The three Englishwomen
whose memoirs and correspondence Mrs. Ross has so admirably edited are
Mrs. John Taylor, Mrs. Sarah Austin, and Lady Duff Gordon, all of them
remarkable personalities, and two of them women of brilliant wit and
European reputation. Mrs. Taylor belonged to that great Norwich family
about whom the Duke of Sussex remarked that they reversed the ordinary
saying that it takes nine tailors to make a man, and was for many years
one of the most distinguished figures in the famous society of her native
town. Her only daughter married John Austin, the great authority on
jurisprudence, and her _salon_ in Paris was the centre of the intellect
and culture of her day. Lucie Duff Gordon, the only child of John and
Sarah Austin, inherited the talents of her parents. A beauty, a _femme
d'esprit_, a traveller, and clever writer, she charmed and fascinated her
age, and her premature death in Egypt was really a loss to our
literature. It is to her daughter that we owe this delightful volume of
memoirs.

First we are introduced to Mrs. Ross's great-grandmother, Mrs. Taylor,
who 'was called, by her intimate friends, "Madame Roland of Norwich,"
from her likeness to the portraits of the handsome and unfortunate
Frenchwoman.' We hear of her darning her boy's grey worsted stockings
while holding her own with Southey and Brougham, and dancing round the
Tree of Liberty with Dr. Parr when the news of the fall of the Bastille
was first known. Amongst her friends were Sir James Mackintosh, the most
popular man of the day, 'to whom Madame de Stael wrote, "Il n'y a pas de
societe sans vous." "C'est tres ennuyeux de diner sans vous; la societe
ne va pas quand vous n'etes pas la";' Sir James Smith, the botanist;
Crabb Robinson; the Gurneys; Mrs. Barbauld; Dr. Alderson and his charming
daughter, Amelia Opie; and many other well-known people. Her letters are
extremely sensible and thou