... * The reader who takes all this flood of Memoirs quite seriously must be not only a gentle reader, hut a very green reader. It may be doubted, however, whether anybody is quite so green as to accept these Memoirs of Josephine. They paint that injured woman in a light which is not shed upon her by the authentic records. Certain it is that Mdlle. Le Normand had a genius for flamboyant ...

... C 0 RE A Under the title which heads this page there has usually been a summary of one book and its story. This week the story-- and a very timely story it is-- is spread over two books. Corea has long been a subject of interest to the mere politician. To-day it interests the whole world. You may spell it with a C or a K, it is all the same-- a strange country, of which few travellers for ...

... . There ought to be a considerable public for English plays and players in the big Continental cities, yet the risk of bad business seems to deter English managers from entering the field. The experiment of taking out an English company to certain of the Continental capitals has occasionally been made, it is true, but only in a very tentative sort of way, and very little has been heard of the ...

... Longus' idyllic pastoral lends itself exquisitely to illustration, and the etchings of Champollion from Raphael Collin's designs which illustrate this superb edition of Daphnis and Chloe are worthy of the charming fifth-century romance. Its charm lies in its absolute simplicity, unsophisticated either by the suggestiveness of Paul and Virginia, or the affectations of all modern pastorals. ...

... . One of the most interesting books of the new season to students of literary history will be Mr. Francis Espinasse's Reminiscenees. Mr. Espinasse has had a long and varied journalistic career, including the editorship of papers in Edinburgh, Manchester, and the Metropolis. But his best work, perhaps, was done on the London Critic, a paper which at one time had a very good circulation, and ...

... . À propos of the supplement of John-a-Dreams this week, I think that, next to Mrs. Patrick Campbell, the most interesting recruit to the Haymarket company is Miss Janette Steer, who, after taking up Mrs. Tree's part of Mrs. Murgatroyd for the last nights of A Bunch of Violets, has now made a palpable hit as Mrs. Wanklyn in John-a-Dreams. Miss Steer affords a crowning example of how a ...

... THE BOOK AND ITS STORY. THE BURDEN OF CHOICE* It is an old story, the story of the ass between two bundles of hay, but it is always taking new shapes; to no two human beings is the offered choice quite the same. It changes, as human nature changes, and therefore each storyteller may tell it again with a good heart. In Disillusion Miss Dorothy Leighton gives us the alternatives in their ...

... THE BOOK AND ITS STORY. A ROYAL ROMANCE.* The Semiramis of the North, who ''flashed across the latter half of the eighteenth century and over the very threshold of the nineteenth as a marvellous incarnation, not only of power, grandeur, and triumphant success, but also of adorable and adored femininity, is the subject of an intimate and a very interesting study from the impartial pen of M. ...

... . There seems to be no reason why the Matinee Theatre should not prove a successful institution, seeing how many people there are who, for one reason or another, or none, do not go out in the evenings, yet desire to see the kind of mis cellaneous entertainment which prima facie belongs to the music-hall. Of course, I could not find myself in St. George's Hall without a sigh at the thought of ...

... * Criticism is essentially a civilised tiling, and the last age of the world, being very civilised, defined literature as a criticism of life, and expressed itself in certain great writers whose work was full of criticism. Its typical writers-- perhaps because the criticism of science was all about in them-- had no constant and tranquil belief in the divinity of imagination, no matter how ...

... * France has a full library of books on prisons, crime, and criminals. The Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris is not only stored, but packed with them. Printed, or to be pored over in manuscript, they form a class apart in French literature. They begin before Mirabeau, they are fresh again in Fouche, they go points better than any new journalism in Vidocque; and in Mace, Goron, and others of ...

... A SINGES OF THE SONGS OF 1830. Even Yyette Guilbert, who lias returned to us once more, though she is essentially the chanteuse fin de siecle, has lately also sought to include in her repertoire a number of sixty-year-old songs, and Beranger's Grand' -mere has proved one of her greatest successes indeed, her audience are now not satisfied unless she will favour them with a few couplets of that ...