... Out of Reach. By Esme Stuart. (Chambers. A pretty little tale of girl life this, with some orthodox misfortunes, arising chiefly from an absence of that convenient quantity which only poets speak of nowadays as the root of all evil. Two orphan girls are adopted by a stem and mysterious woman of the stepmother in fiction type. Through their appearance in the old, quiet house by the forest ...

... Courtship and Marriage. By Annie S. Swan. (Hutchinson.) Appropriate to all seasons of the year is this little grey volume. The authoress might be justly termed the Proverbial Philosopher of the hearth. Her stories have always a healthy' domestic tone, which account for the wide popularity attained by anything with the signa ture Annie S. Swan. In the present case we have 144 pages brightly ...

... Bluejackets. By G. Manville Fenn. (Griffith, Farran, and Co.) In this book we are at once plunged by the author into a very vortex of piratical society, and kept on the qui vive throughout with hairbreadth escapes on the part of sundry heroes to the story's active end. A trio of marvellous middies, in conjunction with a high-minded Chinaman, rove the seas prodigiously valorous. In Mr. ...

... THE BOOK AND ITS STORY. AN ENEMY OF NAPOLEON.' This book is rightly regarded by its editor as the most formidable indictment of the mail for whom M. Duruy has a profound veneration. There is no other instance in history of an editor launching at the memory he most highly esteems a bolt which he believes to have been forged by a miscreant. Harms loathed Napoleon, and left his Memoirs to his ...

... . When Mrs. Anna Ruppert presented herself last May in Camille at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, although it seemed absurdly audacious for her to choose a play in which Duse was just about to appear, some of the critics dealt kindly with her. They let her down gently, and politely suggested that she might, with study, be acceptable in a different class of part. Her production of Odette ...

... THE PLAY AND ITS STORY. LEIDA, AT THE COMEDY THEATRE. Those in whom the artistic impulse is implanted resemble wild birds try to cage them and clip their wings, and, like the starling that the Sentimental Journey's hero saw in Paris, they will distract you by incessantly calling, I can't get out-- I can't get out, or will die as do nightingales, which, if caged, beat their heads to ...

... . Custom has not yet succeeded in making stale and unprofitable the charms of the blouse, or in lessening its infinite variety-- quite the reverse, and so, as it seems the custom for public favourites to be subjected to frequent interviews, and their latest views on everything ascertained, I determined to once more interview the garment of the hour, and see what the last few weeks had done for ...

... * It would not be unfair to surmise that the time has now come when the Duke of Beaufort and Mr. Alfred Watson find some considerable difficulty in discovering subjects for the unfailingly excellent Badminton Library. In their task of producing a series of books which should be an encyclopaedia to sport, it is natural that the letter Z must sooner or later present itself. I am led to ...

... . I here is a shameless little insect called the ant, which has been prolific to the extent of swarming and stinging whole families out of house and home this summer with as much persistence and more industry than the other hanger-on of hot weather with which we have been so plagued-- the wasp. There is something tangible, though, in the latter, and you can dodge him or squash him as you will. ...

... MODERN PAINTING. BY GEORGE MOORE. There is a vague notion in the popular mind that what is called the New Art Criticism is a sort of voluble crotchet which, like the Irishman who was agin the Government, talks a great deal without any particular meaning. The only way for the public to correct this mistaken idea is to make Mr. Moore's book (Walter Scott) circulate through many editions; for ...

... * If I were a Londoner by birth--which, I regret to say, I am not--I should be inordinately proud of the Surrey side, and particularly of that part of it which contains St. Saviour's Church and its immediate surroundings. From London Bridge to Blackfriars Bridge the place is full of glorious suggestions. Here stood the Rose Playhouse, the property of that old money-lender whose name is ...

... * It is the fate of sequels to disappoint those who have waited for them, says Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson in the exquisitely chosen words of his preface to this book, but, by the judgment of many who know their Kidnapped, precisely those people who have waited for this sequel will relish it with the best appetite. Some years ago--I mind not if it be seven, it cannot be less-- we left David ...