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272 CARNEGIE LIBRARY OF PITTSBURGH
The Old English Country Squire
By P. H. Ditchfield
"With his volume on 'The Old English Country Squire,' supplementing
those already published on the 'Parson' and the 'Parish Clerk,'
P. H. Ditchfield completes a pleasant trilogy on English rural life. Mr.
Ditchfield, as we know from his previous volumes, is an ardent lover of
the subject which he has made his own—the old-fashioned village community
of England, happy though feudal, and on the whole well content
with existence under the benevolent tyranny of 'the quality.' If
he is also somewhat of a special pleader and quite frankly a laudator ternporis
acti.. .we need not quarrel with him on that account, for his convictions
are those of the squires and parsons about whom he writes,
and without them his writing would lose something of its sympathetic
quality. But if he has grievances against modern tendencies, he has
also humor sufficient to keep them in the background. . .In these pages
the whole history of the English squire is given, from the age of chivalry,
when he was the gentleman attendant on a knight, to these less
ardent days, when, his warlike guise laid aside, he is simply one of that
order, a little lower than the nobility, which, as the author might affirm,
is likely before long to be known as 'the landless gentry.' Mr. Ditchfield
feels sadly that he is telling the story of a class that is rapidly
disappearing, and his serious purpose is to show that, whether the system
that created him is now outworn or not, the country squire has
played no inglorious part in contributing to the greatness of England
and has performed faithfully the work that fell to him to do. The admirable
illustrations are an attractive feature of this book." Nation, 1913.
(Call number 914.2 D630)
Social Life in Old New Orleans
By Mrs Eliza Ripley
"Since the appearance of George W. Cable's 'Old Creole Days,' in
1879, there has been a persistent interest in New Orleans, and a continued
demand for stories, reminiscences, and serious history dealing
with the life that was lived there. Iu many ways this interest has been
met, though a second Cable has not arisen to re-work the old vein or
discover a new one; and the life of the most European of American
cities, at least as it was in its most romantic epoch, still appears to the
world just as Cable represented it. Mrs. Eliza Ripley.. . limits herself to
a description of New Orleans society in the narrower sense, and thus
her work cannot compare with that of her distinguished predecessor,
though it is both interesting and important, even to the serious student
of history. There is a certain flavor and directness about the style that
is most entertaining, reminding one of the writings of Mrs. Roger