... LESSING'S LA OCOON.X. MIsS IROTHINGHAM'S careful and clear translation of a work which has been more often praised than either translated or, we suspect, read will give those unacquainted with German a very fair idea of the famous work of the earliest and greatest of modern German critics. The simple and well-knit style of the author of the Laocoon suffers less by translation than might ...

... NEW BOOK/S AND NEW EDITIONS. The Great Conversers; and other Essays. By William Mathews, LL.D (Chicago: Griggs and Company.) Dr. Mathews, who is the Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the University of Chicago, has the pen of a ready writer. He has evidently read a great many books, and his memory enables him to fill his pages with allusions and quotations. We do not find in ...

... MEIER Y ENGLAND. f MR. HARRISON AINSWORTH, when he takes hold of some period of history. and writes what he calls s a picturesque chronicle, reminds us of nothing so much as a child who has got to himself a large pumpkin, and scooping cut the inside and cutting the rind into some resemblance to a hideous face, keeps it till nightfall, and then sticking a candle into it, hopes to scare, and ...

... A V.L v L . - - I - ' Crushed beneath his Idol. By A. C. Sampson. 3 vols. (Tinsley.) A servant getting rid of his master in some distant land, personating the dead man, and appropriating his money and estates is a common theme for a sensa- tion novel. The book before us is but a slight variation of this well-worn subject. The part that Fred Rolt is to play is evident from the beginning even ...

... ROMAN IMIPERIAL PROFILES. * IN Lockhart's Life of Scott, mention is made of an illustration to the Border Minstrelsy, which had rather a curious history. The engraving was designed by Grecian Williams, from a copy made by Clerk, of a, sketch by Scott himself. Though the product of the work of three draughtsmen, one of whom could not draw a straight line, while the two others had ...

... k SERBIAN Folk Lore is not a book which will take a very high place among recent collections of traditional popular tales. The stories want that slight measure of viaisemblance and consistency which even a nursery audience looks for. They cannot bear comparison with M. Deulin's charming Flemish fairy tales, Les Contes du Roi Gamnbrinus, and yet they show traces of the literary treatment ...

... $ THE eistirguished position occupied| by Sheridan among what are called lit erary politicians ought to render him an object of peculiar interest at the present moment, when a literary politician, celebrated, like himself, for brilliarcy of wit and sarcasm, has risen to the summit of affairs. We feel irdebted, therefore, to Mr. Stainforth for affording us a fresh opportunity of glancing at his ...

... Birds: Their Cages and their Keep. Being a Practical Manual of Bird-keeping and Bird-rearing. By K. A. Buist. (Macmillan and Co.) A bird of some kind is to be found in almost every English home, and yet it is rarely that the feathered friend of the house has the attention paid him to which he is entitled. He is entirely dependent on his owner's care for the necessaries and comforts of life, ...

... A PEEP A T MEXICO. # MR. GEIGER'S book makes no more pretensions than is implied in its modest title. He paid but a flying visit to Mexico, landing at Manzanillo, on the Pacific Coast, and passing through the capital to Vera Cruz; and he professes merely to record the observations that struck him in transit. But he more than performs his promise; his chapters give us the impres- sion of ...

... SOMIE MUSICAL ENTERTA INVENTS. THIE fantastic version of Blue Beard now being performed at the Charing Cross Theatre, under the direction of Miss Lydia Thompson, is not precisely an opera bouffe. Neither is it a burlesque of the ordinary burlesque pattern. It is a lyrical extravaganza of a novel kind; and if it is difficult to classify it, it is impossible not to be amused by it. To be able ...

... OLD SAILORS. Mrz, Bx RON las written for the Strand Theatre a comedy in three acts, entitled Old Sailors, a sort of companion work to his Old Soldierr, there being, however, no connection between the two productions beyond that of sirnilarity of title. But as Old Soldiers proved remarkably suc- cessful, there stermed to be sufficient reason for contriving a play to be called Old ...

... TTHE LIFE OF YAHES DIXON.X, 'HE who would gain a knowledge not only of this man or of that man but of the great classes into which mankind is ever dividing itself should be a wide reader in biographical literature. By no other means can he gain an insight into the various forms of life and thought that exist outside his own little world. Though it is true that these forms are constantly ...