and not of the poor in it. If the child died, and no doctor had been applied to at his dispensary for a bottle of physic, the coroner might commit for trial; but he almost never did So. A child's life was a bagatelle. But to-day the child must be fed, or fine and prison foilow. No marriage lines, even, are needed to make a father responsible. If the child lives with him, that is all, and that is enough. Be he even father of the child or not, if he has "charge or care' " of it and neglects it, he takes his chance of a possible two years with hard labour. Beggars, showmen, tramps, and nurses are bound to find food for the little folks they have with them. Changed, too, is the law as to ill-treatment.

Before the Act was passed it was illegal to work a horse with a sore foot, but not until that date was it illegal to walk a child with a sore foot, as tramps were doing up and down all over the land, driving it thus through misery to death. A dog might not be yoked to a vehicle, but a child might, however unnatural the load or frail the child, as children actually were, to barges on tow-paths of canals, and to pot-and-pan carts of pedlars on roads. Many a :sullen brute has thus made his living out of the dying of This child.

Till that day, though no child was allowed under ten to be employed in money-making for parents in a factory, however well lighted and warmed and secured from weather, in all our great centres of population any number might be seen employed hawking, in cold and rain, and fine, up to the silent hours around the midnight; children, little more than skin-and-bone babies, were legally slaving and suffering to keep their big, callous fathers and mothers in drink.

Little folks, quite helpless to disobey, were sent out to beg-illegally, it was true-and it was the helpless child that was taken to the lock-up when anybody found it in their fheart to give it in charge. All this, so far as the attitude of the law to it, is now changed. The person who sends out the child and receives what it gathers, not the child, is now made punishable.

STILL PURSUING.

:

All that is to the good but the Society is still not satisfied. Mr. Waugh thinks that no child ought ever to be sent to the workhouse, and that it is little short of an änhuman infamy to separate little brothers and sisters when they are left orphaned. He is busy with Bills against the abuse of child-life insurance, and against the evils of baby-farming.

All blessing on the heads of those who provide homes for the destitute, says Mr. Waugh. Disaster, disease, and death, neither respects honesty, industry, nor virtue. For these let there be charity. But there are cases where he would find, "not homes for their destitute children, but treadmills for the people who made them destitute." As a matter of fact, in the bulk of the parents where the Society has prosecuted for right to feed and clothe wage has ranged from 25s. to £3 a week. Nor was the neglect because of a large family. The average children in its thousands of cases has been 28. The policy of the Society is to keep children at home, not to take them away, and to make rightful parents properly treat them. The gaol is no proper place for a child. Instead of the prison, Mr. Waugh would substitute the birch. He would totally abolish all juvenile imprisonment and prescribe the birch, under the following limitations:

That a schedule of regulations should be introduced into the law, strictly defining (a) the size of the birch, (b) the place and (c) reasonable manner of its application, (d) the number of the strokes for seven years old, and for each subsequent additional two years of age, and (e) finally, that the birching ought not to be inflicted at a prison or police station, but at the offender's house; and (3) further, that it should be the duty of the Court to order legal assistance to a child charged before it, children being wholly unable to present their case themselves.

But Mr. Waugh would not only emancipate children from the gaol, he would also emancipate them from the police station. There ought to be a special administration for offences of children and a special Court where, without technical limitation, their circumstances and history being fully known, they might receive such treatment as a judge in chambers would be free to give to such cases as come before him-a full treatment, and one of equity.

THE CLOUD THE SIZE OF A MAN'S HAND.

Already this proposal as to juvenile delinquencies is adopted in South Australia. Mr. Waugh quotes in his last report from an official letter from the State's Children Department at Adelaide, describing the practice in that colony

For some years we have felt that the practice of arresting children on all charges, and locking them up at the city watch-house in company with the drunken, degraded characters usually confined in such places, and then deporting them as prisoners to the police court to be tried as criminals, was pernicious in its effects on and unjust to the children, and was, at the same time, most unwise as a question of policy. This Council, therefore, urged the Government to instruct that all charges against children should be heard in a court to be held at the offices of this department.

According to this procedure (which affects all girls under eighteen and boys under the age of sixteen years) all children arrested for or charged with any offence are dealt with entirely at this Department, and do not come into contact with the police-station and police-court at all; this result cannot but be looked upon as of wide-reaching importance, saving, as it does, from the bardening and contaminating effects of association with adult criminals and of public trial, the innocent child as well as the youthful first offender, the uncontrollable boy as well as the young girl just beginning a life of shame.

What is needed to meet the wants of child life, Mr. Waugh argues, is a new department of Government and a responsible minister of the Crown to work with all voluntary associations for righteousness to children. Nor can any Government be a Christian Government while it neglects the tens of thousands of young and helpless victims of selfish, base, and filthy national vices; for, above all other subjects of the Crown, these need the force of the secular arm. Avarice in employment, apathy in education are already controlled, but the control of these is of secondary importance compared with the control of vice at home. Men do not remember that although the nation is but slightly dependent on the children of to-day for the prosperity of to-day, it will be wholly dependent upon them for the prosperity of

Supposing that you are convinced that you should have an aid committee in your district, the first thing to be done is to ascertain whether such a committee already exists. To assist you in your enquiries on this point I print herewith a map showing every place where such committees have already been formed. If you live in any one of these seventy-two centres you can support the committees that exist. Make them more influential, more representative, and more prosperous by sending in your name and subscription as a supporter. For remember, all

this work means money. Its expenditure to-day is at the rate of £30,000 a year, and in proportions similar to those of its expenditure in the past.

During its seven years the Society has paid for law expenses £8,195; for doctors' attendance on children, £830; for temporary maintenance of children, and for the disposal of them to institutions, £3,570; for inspectors and the cost of sending them to their cases, £8,570; for literature to inform, to change the ancient traditions as to what can without penalty be done to a child, to touch the hearts, and to

(4) 400 cases in which children were employed in ways unsuitable to their strength, and injurious to health and life; and

(5) 1,800 cases of abandonment, and of exposure for begging purposes.

The average cost of a district in full working order to the Society, for officer's salary, legal proceedings, medical examinations and evidence, travelling expenses, printing, etc., for a year is not less than £250. The extent to

arouse the country to interest and generosity, £5,217. Such has grown to be the magnitude of the work.

This expenditure resulted in direct benefit to children in(1) 5,000 cases in which parents neglected to feed and clothe and provide them with the necessaries of life, both in sickness and in health-various degrees of starvation.

(2) 3,000 cases in which children were treated with savagery (using the word with apology to savages) which made their existence more or less a mental and bodily pain.

(3) 500 cases of animal passion, often more abominable than that of wild animals!

LONDON includes
Kensington
East London
Clapham
Sydenham

which wrongs against children can be stopped depends wholly upon the money at disposal for the purpose.

THE SCHEME-NATIONAL, NOT PAROCHIAL.

"A noble Society," said Mr. Justice Hawkins on a recent circuit, and surely part of its nobility is the width of its scheme. The idea of larger towns taking care of themselves and leaving the small ones and the villages to do as best they may, Mr. Waugh repudiates. Half the ill-used children of the land are abandoned by it, for

He

cruelties have very little to do with surroundings and density of population. They arise from vice and selfishuess, which are confined neither to area nor class. would inaugurate a national policy for children which shall provide guarantees that every child, not in London or in Birmingham alone, but in every solitary cottage of the land, shall have at least an endurable life.

Suppose, then, that you want to form an aid committee in one of these counties, or in one of the large towns where no such committee exists, how are you to set about it? The first thing to be done is clearly to grasp what the Society is in the first place, and what an aid committee is in the second. The object of the Society as set forth in its constitution is as follows:

The prevention of the cruel treatment, wrongful neglect, or improper employment of children; also all conduct by which life, or limb, or health, is wrongfully endangered or sacrificed, dor by which morals are imperilled or depraved. Such objects are pursued by (a) remonstrance and moral suasion; (b) enforcement of existing laws; (c) promotion of any amendment of the law that may be proved to be necessary or desirable.

The aid committee is an integral part of the Society. Aid committees are not companies of persons loosely associated in virtue of a common name, doing similar sort of work, but in their own ways and as best they can. They are bodies of persons who have considered, accepted, and united under one constitution, having both local and national and identical methods-are indeed one corporate body, having a common life and action and purse, enforcing the proper treatment of children according to their rights under the law. An aid committee is in no sense an independent society. It is a helper: eyes, voice, and hands to the Society, by which the whole Society makes its existence and power known in a particular part of the land.

The next thing to be done is to write to Rev. B. Waugh, 7, Harpur Street, Bloomsbury, London, W.C., who will give all directions and assistance in extending his protectorate of the suffering child.

CASH DOWN.

The most practical way in which many of our readers can help is to subcribe at once to the funds of the Society, and to keep on subscribing to the day of their death. At present the drain upon the funds of the Society has exhausted its resources. The deficit is over three thousand pounds. Mr. Waugh has made it the dominating

principle of the Society that wherever a child is being tortured there the Society will appear to rescue and to avenge, whether there is cash in the bank or not. He walks by faith and not by sight. He feels he is called of God to this work for the children, and woe be to him if he hangs back or hesitates whenever a child's wrong remains unredressed, or a single helpless infant wails its little life away in unheeded misery. But it is scandalous that in this free and Christian England such a work should ever be crippled for want of funds. Men like Mr. Waugh are too rare and priceless a commodity for their range of usefulness to be circumscribed for want of a few cheques which could be cashed to-morrow without the owners suffering a single privation. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children should have an annual income of at least £50,000. It needs at this present moment very urgently a lump sum of £5,000. That sum must come in before Christmas, and I hope my readers will send it in.

Especially would I appeal to those well-to-do people who have never been blessed with children, to consider whether the money which, if they had been parents, they would eagerly have lavished over one or two children of their own, might not now be spared for the saving of the myriad children who are the object of the Society's care. And I would also appeal to those who have buried their children. They have been bereaved. Their little ones have been taken from the trouble that is to come. Had they lived they would have been sent to the public school and the university. There would have been the dower for the daughter, the capital for starting the son. None of that is needed now. The little green mound in the graveyard covers all that is mortal of your child; but what of the money that would have been his portion? It is in your hands. Can you not use it for the children of others? If you send it along to Mr. Waugh for the prevention of the cruelties which other people's children are suffering to-day, you will raise up blessings upon their memory. These tortured children, it is true, are not your sons and your daughters; they are often poor wretches, not born so much as damned into the world, the offspring of vice and crime. But "take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven."

AR1.

BROWN, G. BALDWIN. The Fine Arts. (John Murray.) Crown 8vo. Cloth. Pp. 321. Price 33. 6d.

The third volume of the University Extension Manuals, designed to meet the need for text-books for use in connection with the authorised course of lectures. The object of this particular volume is "to stimulate the reader's interest in the more purely artistic qualities of works of art," for, as the author wisely points out, we too often consider and criticise a picture or statue as a completed work, without due regard for the processes by which the artist has arrived at the result, and without any knowledge of his aims and means. BRUCKE, ERNST. The Human Figure: Its Beauties and Defects. (Grevel and Co.) 8vo. Cloth. Pp. xiv. 188. Price 10s. 6d.

A work as important from the point of view of the artist as it is interesting to the amateur. The translation has been "passed" by Mr. Anderson, the recently appointed Professor of Anatomy at the Royal Academy, who contributes a commendatory preface. This, like the preceding work, is intended to add to the reader's knowledge-and consequently to his enjoyment-of works of art. There are several good woodcuts in the book.

KNIGHT, WILLIAM. The Philosophy of the Beautiful. (John Murray.) Crown 8vo. Cloth. Price 38. 6d. University Extension Manuals.

Professor Knight, promising another volume for his constructive views on the philosophy of beauty, gives an outline of the history of opinion on æsthetics, and a sketch of the history of art-a knowledge of which, he rightly holds, is necessary to a knowledge of the theory of æsthetics. He deals in succession with Oriental art, the philosophy of Greece and Rome, mediævali-m, and the philosophies of modern Europe and the United States. The analyses of opinion are well done, and the book will be found useful as a means of looking up the drift of out-of-theway works or magazine articles. But the name of the Dorsetshire poet is Barnes, not Barns.

LOVETT, RICHARD, M.A. United States Pictures drawn with Pen and Pencil. (Religious Tract Society.) 4to. Cloth. Pp. 228. Map and numerous illustrations. Price 8s.

The series to which this volume belongs is widely and deservedly popular. The United States was included in it some years ago; but so many changes have taken place in the outward appearance of the Republic that it was thought well to supersede the original volume by an entirely new book. This book contains more than a hundred and fifty pictures of the natural beauties of the States, of the famous scenes and persons of its towns, and of the principal business and Government establishments. It is very credi ably got up.

BIOGRAPHY.

DANIELL, G. W., M.A. Bishop Wilberforce. (Methuen and Co.) Svo. Cloth. Pp. 224. Portrait. Price 24. ed.

A very readable sketch of the career of the prominent prelate known to many of his contemporaries as "Soapy Sam.' Those who have no time to read the three-volume biography prepared by Canon Ashwell and Mr. R O. Wilberforce will find a well-informed substitute in Mr. Daniell's book. Due weight is attached to the Bishop's influence in the Church and ia society; and a number of his best stories are told. HEDDERWICK, JAMES. Backward Glances; or, Some Personal Recollections. (Blackwood and Sons.) 8vo. Cloth. Pp. 310. Price 7s. 6d.

Mr. Hedderwick is a journalist who has spent a busy life in Edinburgh and in Glasgow. In the latter place he conducted the Evening Citizen, the first halfpenny evening newspaper published in any large city in the United Kingdom. The book is noteworthy mainly for the excellent stories it contains. In the course of a long and honourable Career Mr. Hedderwick has been brought into contact with Douglas Jerrol, Thackerav, Dickens, Edmund and Charles Kean, Miss Helen Faucit, Professor Wilson, Jeffrey, Macaulay, Disraeli, Mr. Gladstone, and many other distinguished men. He writes very pleasantly. INGRAM, JOHN H. Edgar Allan Poe. (Ward, Lock and Bowden.) Crown 8vo. Cloth. Pp. 490. Price 2s.

A volume of the excellent Minerva Library. Both here and in America this is looked upon as the standard life of Poe, for Mr. Ingram is the first biographer to do justice to the memory of the unhappy poet, an erratic but undoubted genius.

JERROLD, BLANCHARD (THE LATE). Life of Gustave Dore. (W. H. Allen and Co.) 8vo. Cloth. Pp. 414. 138 Illustrations from original drawings by Doré. Price 21s.

As interesting and well-written a biography of the popular artist as one could possibly desire. Doré was above all things a designer-an illustrator of books-and Mr. Jerrold's account of his early career is most delightful reading. He failed as a painter, and his failure cast a gloom over all the later years of his life. There are a number of very amusing anecdotes in the book.

O'CONNOR, T. P. The Life of Charles Stewart Parnell. (Ward, Lock and Bowden.) Paper Covers. Pp. 223. Price 1s. As a journalistic tour de force and a memoir pour servir this short biography is sure to have a wide circle of readers. It is written in a light journalistic style, and is thoroughly readable and interesting.

PHILLIPS, E. WATTS. Watts Phillips: Artist and Playwright. (Cassell.) 4to. Pp. 174. Price 10s. 6d. The author of "The Dead Heart" was certainly an extraordinarily versatile man. As a dramatist he had a certain success, turning out play after play with great rapidity, while as a caricaturist he wielded as clever a pencil as any one in London. A number of his sketches are reproduced in this volume and show signs of marked ability, being in style very similar to the work of John Leech and Cruikshank, to whom, indeed, he served a short apprenticeship in 1837. As a contribution to the literary, artistic, and dramatic history of the last forty years the book should find many readers.

ROBINSON, J. R., and HUNTER H. ROBINSON. The Life of Robert Coates, better known as Romeo and Diamond Coates, the Celebrated Amateur of Fashion. (Sampson Low, Marston

and Co.) 8vo. Cloth. Pp. 260. Portraits. Price 7s. 6d. Romeo" Coates, or "Diamond" Coates, as he was indifferently called in his time, was the half-crazy son of a wealthy West Indian planter, upon whose death he came to England in 1809. He appeared upon the stage as an amateur Romeo; drove a strange sort of curricle in the Park and kept up a steady and inordinate display of his diamonds. Why puolic and private sources" should be ransacked to furnish the "life" of such a man it would be difficult to say. Some Men of To-day. (Chapman and Hall.) Paper covers. Pp. 112. Price is.

A series of fourteen short, critical and biographical sketches, reprinted from the Home News, similar in aim to, but not so finished in execution as, the "Modern Men" of the National Observer. The series includes Lord Salisbury, Mr. Froude, Mr. Balfour, Mr. Parnell, Mr. George Meredith, General Booth, and Mr. Irving. WATTS, HENRY E. Life of Miguel de Cervantes. (Walter Scott.) Crown 8vo. Pp. 185. Price 1s.

A volume of the Great Writers Series.

WORDSWORTH, CHARLES, D.D., D.C.L. Annals of my Early Life, 1806-1846; with Occasional Compositions in Latin and English Verse. (Longmans, Green and Co.) Svo. Cloth. Pp. xvi. 420. Price 15s. Bishop Charles Wordsworth is the nephew of the great poet of that name; the son of the Master of Trinity who reigned from 1820 to 1-41; the brother of a Bishop of Lincoln, and the uncle of the present Bishop of Salisbury. The "Annals" bring the story down to 1846, when Wordsworth ceased to be second master at Winchester School. There is much interesting matter in the book, which will be followed shortly by another containing "annals" of the Bishop's later lifefrom his settlement in Scotland, 1847, to the present time.

ESSAYS, CRITICISM, AND BELLES LETTRES. BOSWELL, R. BRUCE (Translator). Voltaire's Tales. (George Bell.) Crown 8vo. Cloth. Pp. 475. Price 3s. 6d.

A volume of Bohn's Library, containing translations of many of Voltaire's stories, among them being Zadig" and 44 Candid," together with "The Child of Nature and "Micromegas." The translation strikes us as being particularly good, and students of French literature will find the volume a valuable addition to their set of B hn's.

DIRCKS, WILL H. (Editor). Essays and Other Writings of Henry Thoreau. (Walter Scott.) 8vo. Cloth. Pp. xvi. 272. Price 1s. Mr. Dircks' Introduction is brief and for the most part critical. The selection is fairly representative of Thoreau's peculiar genius. It forms a volume of the Camelot Series.

LEHMANN, R. C. In Cambridge Courts. (Henry and Co.) Crown 8vo. Cloth. Pp. 240. Price 3s. 6d. Whitefriars Series of Wit and Humour.

To cry out for a new humorist and then, the petition being granted, to cry him down, seems hardly logical; but perhaps Mr. Lehmann may receive kinder treatment, although the similarity between his muse and that of Mr. Barry Pain is by no means slight Most of the papers, too, are reprinted, like Mr. Pain's work, from the Granta, the subjects being mainly connected with the less strictly academe side of Cambridge life. The essays are good, the dialogues are better, but the poems are best, and the volume is illustrated with some excellent Cambridge sketches and views. By the way, we stated last month that Mr. G. A. Henty's "Those Other Animals," was reprinted from the Evening Standard. This was incorrect, as fully three-fourths of the volume were written specially for the Whitefriars Library, and therein published for the first time.

MATTHEWS, BRANDER. With My Friends: Tales Told in Partnership. With an Essay on the Art and Mystery of Collaboration. (Longmans, Green and Co.) 8vo. Cloth. Price 6s.

Mr. Matthews' volume of short stories (written in collaboration with Mr. F. Anstey and others) finds a place under the present heading in virtue of the introductory essay which it contains. The art of collaboration is discussed with much fulness; but Mr. Matthews leaves it as he found it-a mystery. There are several new and interesting facts in the essay concerning the Besant and Rice partnership and other similar combinations among literary men.

(Kegan Paul,

NEWMAN, F. W. Miscellanies: Chiefly Academic. Trench, Trübner and Co.) 8vo. Cloth. Pp. 384. The fifth volume in the new collected edition of Mr. Francis Newman's writings. Among the essays it contains are "One Side of Flato," "On Pindar," "On the Northern Elements of Latin," Modern Jatin as a Basis of Instruction," The Authorship of the Odyssey," "Moral Estimate of Alexander the Great," "The Political side of the Vaccination Question," etc.

SAINTSBURY, GEORGE (Editor and Translator). Edmond Scherer's Essays on English Literature. (Sampson Low, Marston and Co) 8vo. Buckram. Pp. xxxvi. 272. Price 63.

The late Monsieur Scherer, just before his death, "slated" Mr. Saintsbury's book on French literature, and one reason why the friendly office of translator was undertaken by the English critic is that he is thus able to heap live coals upon M. Scherer's "defunct head." The essays are distinctly luminous, and deal with those English subjects-Shakespere, George Eliot, John Stuart Mill, Taine's "History of English Literature," Milton, Sterne, Wordsworth, Lord Beaconsfield's Endymion," and Carlyle-which the author wished placed before an English audience. Mr. Saintsoury contributes an interesting Introduction.

SCOTT, Dr. JONATHAN (Translator). The Arabian Nights Entertainments. (Pickering and Chatto.) Four volumes. Post 8vo. Cloth. Price 24s.

Of the merits of Dr. Scott's translation, except from the literary point of view, we are unable to speak; but certainly we have seen no edition of the "Arabian Nights" more pleasing, both to the eye and hand, than is this, the first of a new series which will include only reprints of standard works of fiction which have appeared in the English language. Mr. Stanley L. Wood's very numerous illustrations are all excellent in every way, and the edition is one that can be put into the hand of any man, woman, or child without fear of evil.

FICTION.

DE MAUPASSANT, GUY. The Odd Number. (Osgood and McIlvaine.) Cr. 8vo. Cloth. Pp. 226. Price 38 6d.

A very comprehensive selection from M. de Maupassant's short stories, including the majority of those which have made a mark on French contempora y literature. In a short but admirably worded preface, Mr. Henry James sums up his confrère's leading qualities and peculiar

M. GUY DE MAUPASSANT.

(From a photograph by Nadar, Paris.)

powers of analysis. This volume of short stories should serve as a model to all English writers anxious to serve an apprenticeship in this

class of fiction. M. Guy de Maupassant was Flaubert's pupil, and be possesses in common with his master the power of describing with extraordinary fidelity the leading characteristics of the French bourgeois existence. Mr. Julian Sturges, the ans ator, has accomplished his work as well as could be expected.

BRYCE, LLOYD. The Romance of an Alter Ego. (Routledge.) Boards. Pp. 312. Price 2s.

The first duty of the author who essays to write a good sensation nove! is to be wary of overwhelming his plot with superfluous incident. The editor of the North American Review, however, has neglected this elementary rule; he piles sensation on sensation's head with a reckless disregard for probability and the reader's feelings, which would be hard to equal in the whole range of this class of fiction. This is the more to be regretted, as the morif of the novel is not at all a bad one. It is not invention, but restraint that Mr. Bryce must cultivate.

CAINE, HALL. The Scapegoat. (Heinemann.) Two vols. 21s. Part tragedy, part romance, and part idyll, Mr. Hall Caine's latest work will still be read when other novels concerned with narrower and more trivial issues will long have passed out of memory. The scapegoat is Israel ben Oliel, a Jew, who, meeting in his early life nothing but hardship and injustice, gains a position of power in a Moorish town. But early reverses have soured his soul, and he expends all his energy in repaying with three-fold interest the injuries which he has received. By so doing he offends his God, and a girl-child is born to him, sightless, speechless, and voiceless. Here is Mr. Hall Caine's greatest success. Naomi is the sweetest and the most winning of children, and the description of her gradual acquirement of the different senses is most beautifully written. But this is not the place to repeat the gist of the story; we recommend the reader to go to the book itself. Perhaps it is but carping criticism to say that The Scapegoat" would be the better for the exclusion of the rhymes dealing with love.

CAMBRIDGE, ADA. A Marked Man. (Heinemann.) Crown 8vo. Cloth. Pp. 336. Price 3s. 6d.

DALIN, TALMAGE.

European Relations: A Tyrolese Sketch. (T. Fisher Unwin.) Paper Covers. Pp. 200. 1s. 6d. Pseudonym Series. Not unworthy the reputation of the series to which it is the latest addition. Rather, as its sub-title implies, a sketch of Tyrolese scenery and legend than a novel of much deep analysis, though the development of the American heroine, Natalie, under the influence of her European surroundings and relations, is skilfully drawn. FARJEON, B. L. The Shield of Love. (Bristol: J. W. Arrowsmith.) Paper covers. Pp. 194. Price 1s.

The Bristol Annual for 1891 is a very poor specimen of Mr. Farjeon's work, and bears the impression of having been knocked off at very great speed. The sensational element is unconvincing, and the villain is utterly impossible.

FEUILLET, OCTAVE. Aliette. (F. Warne and Co.) Paper covers.. Pp. 191. Price 1s.

An adequate translation of La Morte, a novel in which M. Feuillet attempts to prove the advantages of Christianity over scepticism in family life.

HOBBS, JOHN OLIVER. Some Emotions and a Moral. (T. Fisher Unwin.) Paper Covers. Pp. 182. Price 1s. 6d. Pseudonym Library. In striving after epigram, Mr. Hobbes has almost failed to make his story. interesting. We can admire the language, but we cannot sympathise with the characters, a defect which vanishes in the last pages. when the story becomes tolerably exciting. The style reminds us of that of the authoress of "Jerome."

PRYCE, RICHARD. Miss Maxwell's Affections. (Chatto and Windus.) Two volumes. Price 218.

The author of "Just Impediment" has in this, his latest novel, givenus as good a study of the feminine character as anything that has beendone since Mrs. L. B. Walford wrote "Mr. Smith: A Part of his Life." Gertrude Maxwell, however, more directly recalls one or two of Miss Austen's heroines than any modern impersonation of English girlhood. Mr. Pryce also gives us a sober, well-studie picture of English country life; the village postmistress, Mr Peck, albeit a slight sketch, is as truly a creation as was George. Eliot's Mrs. Poyser.

ROBINSON, F. W. Poor Zeph. (Willoughby.) Paper covers. 1s. A sombre, low-life tragedy, unrelieved by even one touch of sunshine. Zeph is a milliner's assistant, honest and pretty, who attracts the attention of one above her in rank, a barrister, whose casual acquaintance drifts into friendship, and friendship into love, without doing the girl any greater harm than allowing her to think that in the end he will marry her. But he has not sufficient character to sacrifice position and prospects for the woman he loves, and Zeph is disenchanted as gently as may be. Remorse, however, convinces him that he is doing wrong, and he goes out into the night to find and to ask. her to forgive and to marry him. Too late; a crowd is round the hospital gate as poor Zeph is carried in stiff and lifeless. For her the wrench has been too painful, and she has sought refuge in the river. HISTORY.

BARING-GOULD, M.A., REV. S. The Church in Germany. With Maps. (London: Wells Gardner, Darton and Co.) 8vo. Cloth. Pp. 400. Price 68.

The idea-first mooted twenty-five years ago-of preparing a series of works giving English Churcbmen unbroken narratives of the chief events in the history of the national churches of Christendom, has at last taken definite shape, and Mr. Baring-Gould's volume on "The Church in Germany" is to be followed by others of a similar kind. While numerous works exist which record the progress of Christianity in Europe, no attempt has hitherto been made to present any clear conception of the consecutive events in the history of any one branch