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, LEMPRIÈRE 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.
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!
The first appearance "of the Personal Devil" Was nigh the Tree of Knowledge, good and evil; And so the Tempter's latest _rôle_ we see Is still associated with a TREE.
_House of Commons, Wednesday, September 20._--Met WOODALL, V.C., crossing Lobby just now on the way to his battlemented tower. Shouldn't have known him--indeed, had passed him, when I recognised his voice hailing me. It had an unusually tinny sound, due to fact that it made its way through the interstices of a closed visor.