It seems needless for us to say anything about so well-known a work, and to say anything new is, we believe, impossible.  Mr. Blewitt is invariably happy in his choice of subject, and in this treatise on Real Property his sparkling wit, his light style and clearness of expression do ample justice to the perennial freshness of his subject.  The reader is swiftly carried from situation to situation and thrill follows thrill with daring rapidity.  The plot is of the simplest, but worked out with surprising skill, while the events are related with that vivid imagination which the subject demands.  Who is there that does not feel a glow of exaltation and rejoice with the heir when he comes, upon reversion, into the property from which he has been so long excluded?  Mr. Blewitt treats this incident with a sense of romance and picturesqueness of language reminiscent of the ballad of “The Lord of Lynn.”  In its facts the ballad bears a striking resemblance to those so graphically described by our author, but in point of execution lacks the true breath of poetic inspiration which pervades Mr. Blewitt’s book.

Nor is his work wanting in pathos.  There are few who will not sympathise with the hero when he discovers that the life-estate of the fair widow whom he adores with all the fierce yearnings of his passionate soul is subject to a collateral limitation to widowhood.  Mr. Blewitt’s silence on the disappointment which embittered his spirit and the doubts which tormented his mind is more eloquent than any soliloquy of Hamlet.

It is not however in description but in characterisation that Mr. Blewitt is pre-eminent.  We know of nothing in works of this nature to equal the skilful psychological analysis, the sympathy of treatment and the fidelity to nature with which the author draws line by line the character of Q. The description of him as seised in fee simple is a touch of genius.  We can remember nothing in the English language to compare with this unless it be that brilliant passage in which Mr. Blewitt sketches in a few lightning strokes the character of Richard Roe, a man at once pugnacious, overbearing, litigious and utterly regardless of truth and honesty.

The learned editors have rendered a great service to the cause of learning in publishing this new edition.  The editing is very creditable to English scholarship.  The additional matter is a new note on page 1069, in which the reader is referred to an article in a recent number of the Timbuctoo Law Review, which, in fairness to the editor (of Real Property), is not, of course, quoted here.  The student will, we have no doubt, feel himself fully recompensed by this new matter for the price of the new volumes and the depreciation of the 228th edition.

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[Illustration:  NERVES ON THE GREEN.

Irascible Golfer. “CONFOUND IT!  WHAT IS THAT INFERNAL OIL-ENGINE OR SOMETHING THAT BEGINS THUMPING WHENEVER I AM PUTTING?”