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for the colonies"-as if a "boughten" pudding could ever convey the full atmosphere of "home!" Publishers, of course, begin even in September to issue their special gift-books, and so it is that we have now most of the interesting and attractive volumes from which the purchaser, some time 'before the fourth week in December, will have 'to make a somewhat confused and dazzled choice. Of this mass of literature what follows is a first brief review, printed thus early in order to convenience those of our readers for whom the far colonial posts will wait no longer than the middle of

November.

Mr. Andrew Lang, if only because of the regularity with which he has produced "a book for Christmas," deserves first place. This year he has made a new departure with "The Animal Story Book" (Longmans, 6s.), described by himself in his preface as "more or less of a true story book," and the work almost entirely of ladies. It needs but little description, for it is made

(Nutt, 6s.), made up of some four "Adventurous Voyages on the Sea of Imagination," is his contribution this year; and, as in the case of his "Fairy Tale" volumes, he has had the invaluable cooperation of Mr. John D. Batten as illustrator. One of Mr. Batten's pictures-"Chiron's Farewell to the Argonauts" appears on the next page. Mr. Jacobs has gone far afield for the materials for this volume-Hellas supplies "The Argonauts" (reprinted here from Kingsley's "Heroes"), "The Voyage of Maelduin" is Celtic, "Hasan of Bassorah comes from the East of the " Arabian Nights," while "The Journeyings of Thorkill and Eric the FarTravelled" is made up from two minor Norse sagas. The idea of the book was new, and will bear repetition: old stories like these, legends of antiquity, all compact of the finest part of ancient fancy, are just the things on which to train children's imagination. The poetry of the incidents will touch them, if anything will. Certainly, as long as Mr. Jacobs can invent such gift-books as this, he will remain a nursery benefactor.

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(From the Animal Story Book.")

up entirely of stories about animals-some of them new, others translations from Dumas, or even adaptations from Gauthier and (curious juxtaposition!) Pliny. Anyhow, the result is eminently of the kind that children are supposed to like, and its attractiveness is immensely enhanced by the crowd of illustrations-one of which," Androcles in the Lion's Cave," we reproduce here-by Mr. H. J. Ford.

One rather wonders who is the greater favourite with children-Mr. Lang or Mr. Joseph Jacobs, who also has for some time past been adding to nursery libraries with yearly volumes. "The Book of Wonder Voyages'

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"Songs for Little People" (Constable, 6s.) by Mr. Norman Gale is addressed to rather younger readers. Just now we spoke of books that children are "supposed to like." Mr. E. V. Lucas has pointed out that Stevenson's "Child's Garden," although it comes under that heading, is not really fit for children. Mr. Gale's book, consciously or unconsciously, is modelled on that gem of literature, and comes near similar rejection as far as the nursery is concerned. Still it is a pleasant volume, with some quite delightful verses in it, of which "His First Prayer" can stand as a somewhat artless example:

"God bless Favver, God bless Muvver,

God bless Sisser,

God bless Bruvver,

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(From "Songs for Little People.")

"smiling and stilly" makes રી silly line. There are a number of illustrations to the 4 poems by Miss Helen Stratton. One of the smallest, that of Bartholomew, who

"Is very sweet, From sandy hair To rosy feet," we reproduce here. A rather good addition to the long list of books which have taken "Alice in Wonderland" as their model is "To Tell the King the Sky is Falling (Blackie, 5s.), by an author new to us, Miss Sheila E. Braine. Half its charm it owes to its illustrations by Miss Alice B. Woodward, but it is a pretty story, with enough talking animals and accommodating fairies in it to please the most exigent child. Last year one of the great successes was "The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls." The ladies-Miss Florence K. Upton and Miss Bertha Upton-who wrote the verses and produced the illustrations for that volume have collaborated again this year on a similar work, "The Gollywogs' Bicycle Club" (Longmans, 6s.), in which the Dutch dolls again figure, and are as amusing as ever. This is just the book for a very little child. Mrs. Hugh Bell's " Fairy Tales and How to Act Them" (Longmans, 6s.) is extremely practical, well illustrated, and lucid in its explanations.

Girls are always far less well catered for than their brothers in the matter of literature. Perhaps it is that they are supposed earlier to develop a taste for ordinary fiction. The one book for girls that stands out this year is Miss Frances Armstrong's "A Girl's Loyalty" (Blackie, 5s.), well illustrated by Mr. John H. Bacon; but perhaps most girls will be more flattered if they are given the new presentation edition of Sir Edwin Arnold's poem, "The Light of the World; or, The Great Consummation" (Longmans, 6s.), illustrated very finely after designs by Mr. Holman Hunt.

There is the usual crowd of volumes addressed specially to boys, and it is no easy matter to make a selection. Certainly the boys who last year had given them the first volume of "The Story of the Sea" ought this year to have the second and completing volume (Cassell, 9s.). "Q.," beloved of boys since his " Splendid Spur," has edited the work, and has been assisted by Professor Laughton, Mr. Laird Clowes, Mr. Arnold-Forster, M.P., and Mr. H. W. Wilson. The illustrations are admirable, and certainly no better

present for a boy who cares for the sea or for true stories of adventure, could be devised. M. Jules Verne is, of course, up to time with a new romance-" Floating Island or, The Pearl of the Pacific" (Low, 6s.) is its title this year, and if one can judge from its exciting illustrations, it is likely to equal all its predecessors in popularity. Mr. Henty has his usual budget, and of these, "With Cochrane the Dauntless: a Tale of the Exploits of Lord' Cochrane in South American Waters" (Blackie, 6s.), illustrated by Mr. W. H. Margetson, is perhaps the best. Mr. Ascott R. Hope is another old favourite, and his long schoolboy story, "Black and Blue" (Black, 5s.), shows he has lost no whit of his cunning. A new writer is Mr. Frank Aubrey, whose "The Devil-Tree of El Dorado: a Romance of British Guiana" (Hutchinson, 6s.) is a romance indeed, with weird imaginings worthy of Mr. Haggard at his best. And finally comes "The Sunny Days of Youth: a Book for Boys and Young Men" (Unwin, 3s. 6d.), a collection of chapters addressed to intelligent and aspiring youth.

The most popular gift-book for "grown-ups" this year is likely to be "The Art Bible, comprising the Old and New Testaments, with Numerous Illustrations" (Newnes, 12s.), a large volume profusely illustrated from photographs, with maps, and with drawings by various artists, many of them of world-wide celebrity. A beautiful book is Mr. Edward Gilbert's "Christ the Redeemer: being Extracts from the Works of Three Seventeenth Century Writers-Robert Herrick, George Herbert, and Bishop Ken" (Hardy and Page, 5s. 6d. net). It is charmingly illustrated with six plates, after pictures by the Italian school of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. "A Book of Old English Ballads, with an Accompaniment of Decorative Drawings" (Macmillan, 6s.), is the work of Mr. George Wharton Edwards, and comes to us from New York. It is a beautiful example of American book-production.

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(From "The Book of Wonder Voyages.")

OUR MONTHLY PARCEL OF BOOKS.

EAR MR. SMURTHWAYT,--Selecting for your

D parcel is no easy matter at this time of year,

when every day brings its own volumes of interest. I have had, unwillingly, to omit over a score of books which, at any other season, I should have been glad of the opportunity of sending you. But I go on the principle that it is no use sending you more than you can read yourself, or than your household can read. Also I send nothing of a distinctly "gift-book" character: volumes of that kind you must choose for yourself. Here is my list of what has been selling best in October:

London Pride. By the author of "Lady Audley's Secret." 6s.

The Grey Man. By S. R. Crockett. 6s.

Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers. By Ian Maclaren. 63. The Wheels of Chance. By H. G. Wells. 5s. net. The Life and Correspondence of Archbishop Magee. By John Cotter Macdonnell, D.D. Two volumes. 32s. Gaston de Latour: an Unfinished Romance. By Walter Pater. 7s. 6d.

The surprise in this list of what is popular is to find on it the name of the late Walter Pater, the one man surely whose talent one might have said would never have gained him the applause of the multitude. And yet there it is: "Gaston de Latour: an Unfinished Romance" (Macmillan, 7s. 6d.). I think possibly that one word "romance" explains this sudden development of public taste. His essays alone would never have won Stevenson popularity; his "romances" were what made his name familiar in every English home. If the reason is not there, I can only say that the success of "Gaston de Latour" is very much a tribute to the power of criticism in forcing a man down the public throat-for if there has been one writer whom all critics have united in praising it was Walter Pater. But, anyhow, on any grounds, the "unfinished romance "deserves its place. It is one of those beautiful stories, beautiful alike in feeling and in style, which, once read, one feels again and again the temptation to return to. That Pater was an exquisite literary artist we all have known-now we know, even more fully than before, how much English literature has lost by the early death of a writer who was always an artist, whose one fault was perhaps that he was too continually conscious of his art.

At the head of the list stands Miss Braddon's " London Pride" (Simpkin, 6s.), a good s'ory in her usual vein, readable always, not a little clever in the observation it displays, and full of ingenuity. "The Grey Man" (Unwin, 6s.) has helped to enhance that growing reputation of Mr. Crockett's. It is all very well for the other Scotch school to belittle him, but there can be no doubt, with this book and "The Raiders" before us, that he can write a romance with the best of his rivals. He writes well and he writes with spirit. "Ian Maclaren," too, is on the list again-this time with a volume which, although it is called "Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers" (Hodder, 6s.), is much more a repetition of the manner of the "Brier Bush" series than a complete story. And by the way, Dr. Robertson Nicoll, who "discovered" both Mr. Crockett and Mr. Watson, has discovered another "kail-yard" storyteller in the person of Mr. David Lyall, whose " The Land o' the Leal" (Hodder, 6s.) is put forth in the dress that one associates with half the successes of these topographical story

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Mr. Barrie first sowed; these others, however admirable, have but followed in his path. But if one wants originality one is pretty safe in looking to Mr. H. G. Wells for it. Certainly his "The Wheels of Chance' (Dent, 5s. net) is not so startlingly original as "The Time Machine," or its gruesome successor, but it is not hackneyed-the very fact that it is a cycling romance shows how up-to-date it is. Most people who have learned to ride will recognise the truth of the description of Hoopdriver's initiation into the difficulties of hill-climbing, back-pedalling, and the proper management of the brake. The idea of the story? A draper's assistant saves his money and starts on a bicycling tour round the South Coast. He has adventures, humorous and otherwise, and all worth reading about. Still, I don't know that it is in this kind of story that Mr. Wells's talent has its best opportunity. Mr. Ayton Symington's illustrations are all clever in their way. "The Life and Correspondence of Archbishop Magee" (Isbister, two vols., 32s.) you will read all about long before you come to these notes. Writing of " Ian Maclaren" reminds me that in your parcel, among the theological books, is another volume from his pen, but signed by his real name and titles-John Watson, M.A., D.D. "The Cure of Souls: Yale Lectures on Practical Theology" (Hodder, 6s.) it is called, and it is addressed particularly to those younger students to whom their theological course offers obstacles over which their masters have not at present seen fit to assist them.

A continuation of the Rev. John Hunt's "Religious Thought in England from the Reformation to the end of the Last Century," under the title of "Religious Thought in England in the Nineteenth Century" (Gibbings, 10s. 6d.), is perhaps the most valuable historical work I have to send, although possibly you will take a more actual interest in Mr. H. de B. Gibbins's "Industry in England: Historical Outlines" (Methuen, 10s. 6d.), in some sense an 'expansion of the same author's "Industrial History of England," a little handbook which has had a deserved success. Mr. Gibbins has not been con-tent in stating the dry facts of industrial progress, he has treated his subject philosophically, has made it dovetail with the civil, religious, and military history of the kingdom, and has altogether produced a very creditable and very useful work. The maps enhance its value considerably. Then you will find Major Glyn Leonard's "How we Made Rhodesia" (Paul, 6s.), made up of letters and diaries written by the author "during the years 1890-93, when Rhodesia was in the first stages of its existence," and, a volume of very much lighter appeal, Mr. Albert D. Vandam's "Undercurrents of the Second Empire: Notes and Recollections" (Heinemann, 7s. 6d. net), a gossipy collection of anecdotes and memories whose character you can at once guess when I tell you it is by the author of "An Englishman in Paris."

The important historical biography of the month is,

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I suppose, Mr. Demetrius C. Boulger's "The Life of Gordon" (Unwin, two vols., 21s.). Mr. Boulger makes special claim to providing much new material, and he certainly reopens many old questions-that crucial one, for instance, of where lies the responsibility for Gordon's death. Dr. Archibald Forbes's "Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places" (Macmillan, 7s. 6d.) is just such another collection of the veteran war-correspondent's miniscences of great events and great men as that I sent you a year or so ago with such hearty commendation. That trick of picturesque description, of writing so as to interest, learnt by Dr. Forbes on many a battle-ground, he has not forgotten, and the present volume holds the excitement of a score of ordinary novels; and, of course, its historical value is by no means slight. A trained observer and a ready thinker, what Dr. Forbes saw he remembered, and the evidence of an eye-witness of such scenes as those that stand out as the turning points of the Franco-German war are often worth far more than the considered facts of the arm-chair historian. Mr. Stanley Roamer's "Cardinal Manning as presented in his Own Letters and Notes" (Stock, 5s.) is an endeavour to belittle the great Cardinal by use of the material thrust before the public by Mr. Purcell's indiscretion. And then there is "The Lives of the Brethren of the Order of Preachers, 1206-1259" (Mawson, Newcastle-onTyne), done into English from the original thirteenth century manuscripts by Father John Placid Conway, which I send you more as a naïve literary and religious curiosity than anything else. These old legends and narratives of the miracles of St. Dominic and his first followers are interesting and entertaining to a very high degree.

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Not perhaps to you personally, but to many readers who take special interest in literary matters, Mr. Clement K. Shorter's "Charlotte Brontë and her Circle " (Hodder, 7s. 6d.) will be the most welcome book of the month. In the first place it clears up once and for all the controversy which has gathered round the story of the marriage of the authoress of " Jane Eyre," and puts an end to much of that gossip about Harriet" so distasteful to all those to whom the name and fame of Charlotte Brontë are dear. And then it reveals clearly and finally the personality of this most gifted of three gifted sisters. Mr. Shorter has done his work with admirable discretion, and fortune has enabled him to offer to the admirers of Charlotte Brontë a very large number of new letters, almost all of which are of the very first importance. The interest of Mr. Charles Whibley's "A Book of Scoundrels" (Heinemann, 7s. 6d.) is literary too, in spite of the fact that it deals entirely with the lives and achievements of certain more or less famous housebreakers and highwaymen of the past. “There are other manifestations of greatness than to relieve suffering or to wreck an empire," says Mr. Whibley in his introduction, and forthwith falls to chronicling, in precious language, curiously suited to the subject, the exploits of such perverted "great men as Jonathan Wild and Jack Shepherd, Cartouche and Deacon Brodie, "Gentleman Harry" and Charles Peace. The book is something of a literary curiosity.

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Of political books Mr. G. W. Steevens's "Naval Policy, with Some Accounts of the Warships of the Principal Powers" (Methuen, 6s.) is both the most valuable and the most important. Mr. Steevens is no mere bookmaker; he writes with authority: in the first place, he is the fellow of an Oxford college; he was, to use an Irishism, one of Mr. Cust's right hands on the Pall Mall, and he is now in America as the special correspondent of

the Daily Mail. But his book is not pretentious: he makes no claim to the presentation of new facts, but merely to the collation and arrangement of those which have always been accessible to the public. His final chapter, "Are we ready for war?" is, of course, the real text of his discourse. "We are most unready," he answers. "We have not the ships; we have not the men; we have not the guns "; and he adduces his reasons for his conviction, and indicates the course by which, in his opinion, our naval salvation is to be secured. A more or less valuable work, but one suffering from the inevitable defects which follow on its being made up of the work of many different men, is "The Civilisation of Our Day: a Series of Original Essays on Some of its More Important Phases at the Close of the Nineteenth Century (Low, 16s. net.), edited by Mr. James Samuelson. Divided into four sections"The Utilization of Natural Products," "Social and Economic Progress," "Educational Progress," and "Intellectual and Religious Progress "it is the work entirely of "experts," including Sir Hugh Gilzean-Reid, who writes on The Press," Dr. Richard Garnett on "Free Libraries and Museums," and Professor Max Müller on "The Dawn of Reason in Religion." Mrs. Mona Caird's “Beyond the Pale: an Appeal on Behalf of the Victims of Vivisection" (W. Reeves, 6d.) is almost a pamphlet.

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In art, Mr. Ford M. Hueffer's "Ford Madox Brown: a Record of His Life and Work" (Longmans, 42s.) comes at a time when all the world is going to see the Arts and Crafts Exhibition, and paying particular attention to the room almost entirely devoted to Madox Brown's pictures and cartoons. It is a very fine volume, beautifully illustrated both with process pictures and photogravure plates, and it is, of course, of historical interest in adding still more to our knowledge of the foundation and early progress of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Such a book is worthy of its subject, and both combine to make it well worth the apparently somewhat high price asked for it. But, of course, the reproductions of Madox Brown's best known paintings could not be executed on such a scale and with such excellence, in a cheaper volume. "A Text-Book of the History of Sculpture" (Longmans, 6s.) is the joint work of Dr. Allan Marquand and Dr. Arthur L. Frotheringham, Jr., perhaps the greatest authorities on their subject. A book like this would be of little use without illustrations, and here they are both numerous and excellent, really illustrating the authors' argument.

The peculiar interest of the translation from the German of Dr. William Hirsch's "Genius and Degeneration" (Heinemann, 17s. net) lies in the fact that the author has gone over practically the same ground as Dr. Nordau in " Degeneration," and comes to an almost diametrically opposite conclusion. Rather more scientific in his method of treatment than the alarmist author of

Conventional Lies of Our Civilisation," it is encouraging to find Dr. Hirsch, after going thoroughly into the questions of art and insanity, and the psychology of genius, declaring that in his opinion "mankind is not in a black plague of degeneration."" One of the Bodley Head series, the Arcady Library, has just had a notable addition in the shape of Mr. John Buchan's "Scholar Gipsies" (Lane, 5s. net.), a book very much after the heart of the lover of literature, such a collection of essays, in fact, as one may put side by side with the productions of Robert Louis Stevenson in the same genre. "The baggage of a vagrant in life and letters," Mr. Buchan calls his volume,-" a few pictures

of character and nature, pieces of sentiment torn from their setting, a fragment of criticism, some.moralisings of little worth." Mr. James L. Ford's "The Literary Shop and Other Tales" (Lane, 3s. 6d. net) is made up of one long essay on certain light subjects of American literary interest, and some short tales well worth reading. Particularly this is a book that will help the Englishman to an appreciation of the American's outlook on letters, and to the difference that in this respect lies between the States and England. "Vignettes : a Miniature Journal of Whim and Sentiment" (Lane, 2. 6d. net), is a fresh indication of Mr. Hubert Crackenthorpe's remarkable talent. Not of any absolute importance in itself, it should be read by the novice in letters, for in Mr. Crackenthorpe's experiments one can learn something of the difficulties of the artist in words.

Half a dozen important new editions help to swell your parcel, and of these the second volume of Professor J. B. Bury's reprint of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (Methuen, 6s.) will perhaps be the most welcome. No better edition can be looked for: Professor Bury's learning is prodigious, and outwardly and inwardly the volume is one of the most creditable pieces of bookmaking that we have produced. Another very handsome new edition is that of Boswell's "Life of Johnson" (Constable, 12s. net), edited in six small volumes, beautifully printed and neatly bound, by Mr. Augustine Birrell, who, in his notes and introduction, says everything that the ordinary reader will find it useful to know. It is a reprint very much after the book-lover's heart, and will long remain the best both for the general reader and the scholar. Mr. Birrell, too, is the editor of the new and popular edition, in two volumes, of "The Poetical Works of Robert Browning," of which the first volume (Smith and Elder, 7s. 6d.) has just appeared. He adds a few brief notes and gives a short introduction to every poem. An Edinburgh edition has just started of "The Life and Works of Lord Macaulay." The first volume-a demy Sro.--begins "The History of England" (Longmans, 6s.), and the whole of his works are to appear in ten similar monthly volumes. A slighter reprint is that of "Aucassin and Nicolete" (Nutt, 1s.) "done into English" by Mr. Andrew Lang, a little book long out of print and valuable. Two new editions addressed not so much to the fastidious lover of books as to the multitude are those of Dumas's "The Count of Monte Cristo" (Warne, 2s.), and the Victoria edition of "The Works of Shakespeare" (Warne, 2s. 6d.)-both volumes of surprising excellence and cheapness.

The fiction I have to send you this month is varied in kind, but of unusually excellent quality. William Morris's last book, published but a few days before his death, The Well at the World's End: a Tale" (Longmans, 2 vols., 24s.), will certainly take rank among the very finest prose works from his pen, or from the pen of any writer at the end of this century. It has the true spirit of the old romances-that delicate but very real charm that Morris alone perhaps knew how to recapture. Mr. J. M. Barrie's "Sentimental Tommy: the Story of his Boyhood" (Cassell, 6s.), deserves all the success of his last book, "The Little Minister"; and yet it is one of Mr. Barrie's misfortunes that it is so long since that story appeared that the public may have found other (and less worthy) gods. His rivals have shown a less scrupulous regard for their art, and book has succeeded book with the seasons' regularity. "The Heart of Princess Osra"

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(Longmans, 6s.) is Mr. Anthony Hope's latest contribution-a collection of romantic tales, with Osra, a Princess of Zenda, as their central figure. Mr. Basil Thomson in his A Court Intrigue" (Heinemann, 6s.) has caught something of Mr. Hope's early manner, and he can write well-so well and convincingly that the "sell" of the end was not welcome to this reader. Mr. Thomson places his fantastic court in Brittany-a rare place for strange happenings, as other writers, Mr. R. W. Chambers among the number, could testify. Mr. H. Rider Haggard has produced Arrowsmith's Christmas Annual this year-a South African story entitled "The Wizard" (Arrowsmith, Bristol, 1s.); and another sensational work is Mr. Guy Boothby's "Dr. Nikola" (Ward and Lock, 5s.), the true story of the lurid gentleman who has gazed at us from every hoarding. The Rev. W. J. Dawson's "The Story of Hannah” (Hodder, 6s.) is another long essay in fiction by a writer whom you will know better as a preacher and popular critic than as a novelist; while Ugly Idol" (Lane, 3s. 6d. net), by Mr. Claud Nicholson, is the latest volume of the Keynotes Series-and a very characteristic volume too. Mr. Marion Crawford has produced another long novel under the title of "Taquisara" (Macmillan, 2 vols., 12s.); while another and even more important Anglicised American novelist, Mr. Henry James, has given us in "The Other House" (Heinemann, 2 vols. 10s. net) one of his longest and at the same time most successful studies in psychological narrative. "Simplicity" (Lane, 2s. net), by Mr. A. T. G. Price, is a curious little story, more or less with the same motive as "The Heavenly Twins." It forms the latest volume of Pierrot's Library.

You remember "Tales of Mean Streets?" The author of that volume, Mr. Arthur Morrison, has just issued a long story, "A Child of the Jago" (Methuen, 6s.), dealing with an even lower stratum than he discovered before to an astonished public. Never, I should think, was there a book dealing with so thoroughly brutalised a set of characters, and never certainly a book, with such a scene, on which so much artistic care has been lavished. The place of the story is a network of alleys, at the back of Shoreditch High Street; its people a set of ruffians, male and female, who never think of making a penny except by means which would place them within the reach of the law-if ever its representatives cared to penetrate to the recesses of the Jago. One can only hope that the whole place is a figure of Mr. Morrison's imagination; but he has presented his story with such skill and art that the reader has no choice but to be convinced. Maggie: a Child of the Streets" (Heinemann, 23.), is a story, only one degree less brutal than "A Child of the Jago," of a New York slum, by Mr. Stephen Crane, the youthful author of "The Red Badge of Courage." "Man" (Dent, 1s. 6d. net), by Miss Lilian Quiller-Couch, is a clever collection of short stories, each of which deals with a distinct mood of a man's life. And two collections of short stories that you must by no means miss reading are "Below the Salt" (Heinemann, 6s.), by Mr. C. E. Raimond, who wrote George Mandeville's Husband;" and "Some Whims of Fate" (Lane, 2s. 6d. net), by Miss Mènie Muriel Dowie (Mrs. Henry Norman), the "Girl in the Carpathians," and one of the pioneers of the new feminine movement. Her "Gallia" you read, and didn't like, I believe. These stories are reprinted from the pages of the Yellow Book.

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The publication of Mr. John Davidson's "New Ballads" (Lane, 4s. 6d. net) has been the poetical event of the month. One poem, "A New Ballad of Tannhäuser," is

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