... Sunday, for 1894. (Wells Gardner, Darton, and Co.) This is a prettily bound volume, full of good things, pictorial and other wise, for the little people. Stories of all sorts and sizes about Mexican cowboys, Indian kitmagliars, and Japanese maidens, as well as pleasant little sketches of our own English homes, poetry for girls, stirring adventures for the boys, pictures for the wee ones, and, ...

... Valdmer the Viking. By Hume Nisbet. (Hutchinson and Co.) Mr. Hume Nisbet has made a scholarly overhauling of old Norse lore and legend in this work, and spun it into a graceful web of his own fashioning. The Viking, at all times a most fascinating vagabond, basks now in the added charm of his chronicler's fancy. Whether Valdmer renders up unearthly music from his spirit-harp, whose strings ...

... THE BOOK AND ITS STORY. Q.'S TALES FROM TROY TOWN* I was reading the other day a very elaborate study upon Q. and all his works, in which some Meissonier of review fell to discuss and to analyse those particularly original gifts which have earned for this author such high place and undoubted fame. If I do not misjudge him, the essayist had some little difficulty in locating Q., who, ...

... Our Darlings. Edited by Dr. Barnardo. (J. F. Shaw and Co.) The annual volume in which Dr. Barnardo kindles juvenile interest in the beautiful work which he has done for so many years among ragged and wretched children makes an excellent gift- book, containing, as it does, 424 pages, several coloured illustra tions, and numberless stories, which are bound to be popular. It is bound in two ...

... Sable-and-Wiiite.' By Gordon Stables. (JaiTold.) A doggy autobiography of considerable canine style and intelli gence, dealing eloquently of the ups and downs which attend even the case of a show Highland collie. We willingly accom pany this white-and-sable beauty in the pleasures, palaces, and even vicissitudes through which he may roam Crystal Palace shows, dog-stealers' dens, vivisecting ...

... Evil May-Day. By E. E. Green. (T. Nelson and Sons.) Turbulent times were not unknown in the days of King Harry, and this story of 1517 has its full complement of riotous citizens, 'prentice boy mobs, timid traders, lovely maids, bold gallants, and all the picturesque component parts of a mediaeval romance. If there is no great skill in the spinning of the plot, it is at least told prettily, ...

... Two Little Children and Ching.' By Edith Cuthell. (Methuen.) One does not expect much agony of plot in a tale so presumably written for inchoate intellects. Still, the authoress would have. perhaps, effected a more lasting friendship with her young readers if she had surrounded her canine hero with a little more incident, or endued him with a little more instinct. But that, doubtless, was an ...

... .-' The creator of the inimitable Hans Breitmann had written an account of most of his own life, not with a view to publication, but merely to supply material for a friendly biographer when he himself should he no more. In ignorance of this fact, the publisher of these volumes fortu nately asked Mr. Leland to write his memoirs, and the result is a very pleasant contribution to that most ...

... * Five-and-forty years ago the Hungarians were a beaten, conquered people. The heel of the Austrian bureaucracy was on them; the hoof of the Muscovite had trodden them down. They had risen for their liberties, and, after defeating the regiments of the Kaiser, had fallen before the legions of the Czar. The haughty little nation, on which the Turks had hammered in vain for centuries, was reduced ...

... .* In the presence of Edward Bellamy, Ignatius Donelly, and last, but not least, the Rev. W. Baxter, no one would dream of denying that the gift of prophecy is as highly developed at the close of this century as ever it was in the world's history. But, as Alexander Dumas said to the judge when he accused him of being a dramatist, Il y a des degrés. In the days of, let us say, Elijah, the pro ...

... .* We were all complaining a few weeks ago because Mr. Andrew Lang bad given us a true story-book. Truth is all very well, and is easy, as the venerable Abraham Coles told us; but Mr. Oscar Wilde and the souls have led us away from the odium mendacis, so that the best appraised virtue of the moment is the virtue of lying. This is perfectly fit and proper, for if superstition were taken from ...

... * Mr. Birrell's praise is in all men's mouths. We need not be in a prodigious hurry to hate him for that; but I submit that it renders him suspect. The friendship of the compact majority is compromising to a critic. For it is the business of the critic to understand everything, and to see farther through a brick wall than other men; whereas the compact majority only understands its own ...