CHATTO AND WINDUS have just issued a new edition of OUIDA'S _Dog of
Flanders_. The well-got-up and cheaply-priced volume contains three
other Stories, nearly as charming. In the quartette OUIDA, my Baronite
says, will be found at her best--OUIDA, without the weeds of grossness
and comical classicality that sometimes grow in her pastures. Of this
volume of her works it may be said that, happily, LEMPRIERE is not in
it.
To those about to travel, whether there and back, or there or back,
is immaterial, the Baron strongly recommends _The Great Shadow_ and
_Beyond the City_, two stories in one volume by CONAN DOYLE, published
in ARROWSMITH'S three and sixpenny series. It is a long time since the
Baron has read a more dramatically told story than that of _The Great
Shadow_. Truly, if his opinion had been asked, he would have seriously
advised any novelist against attempting, in any form, a description of
the Battle of Waterloo. Yet, though CONAN DOYLE has done it admirably,
there is, thinks the Baron, just one chapter too much of this work. No
one, since CHARLES LEVER wrote, has achieved anything like it, though
there is just a smack of _Orthis Mulcaney & Co._ about it which--"but
that is another story." The Baron finding no fault with the
illustrations as illustrations, wishes that the tales had been left
to themselves, and that they had been told without these superfluous
aids. It is a pleasure to recommend such a book, and it _is_
recommended by everybody's trusted Literary Adviser, THE BARON DE
BOOK-WORMS.
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What the Vicar of Amesbury Inclines to Say.
(_Judging from his Letter in the "Standard," September 22, on the
Desecration or Preservation of Stonehenge Question._)
My friends, for goodness' sake forbear
From fussy interference here.
Blest be the man who "makes no bones,",
And blamed be he who stirs these stones!
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