The Round Rabbit.

A BOOK of delightful rhymes for children is "The Round Rabbit," by Agnes Lee. Birds, kittens, dogs, and other pets that children love have a place in these short verses, and a number of wholesome sentiments about pleasantness and carefulness and kindred virtues are represented in such charming guise that they will be sure to have an influence for good on the child mind. It is seldom that one finds a book of verses so full of sweet sunshine and at the same time possessed of such merry, catchy jingle. The following paragraph is quoted from the poem from which the volume takes its name:

"Round stone, did you know of my little round rabbit, So soft and so white and so dear,

Whose one little pleasure, whose one little habit,
Was loving each soul who came near?

Oh! what has become of my little round rabbit?
I try not to think nor to fear!"

The Jamesons.

LOVERS of good literature will be delighted to learn that Miss Wilkins' story, "The Jamesons," is already in its eighth thousand, the first large edition having been exhausted by the advance orders. Miss Wilkins knows her subject thoroughly and she is unexcelled among living writers as a portrayer of character. In this respect, and in her humorous touch, that so easily shades off into pathos, she is strongly suggestive of Dickens, with the distinction that there is rather more of restraint in the work of Miss Wilkins. Her characters never become caricatures. Of course, luxuriance in the case of Dickens was a manifestation of unrestrained genius. Miss Wilkins writes down the people of her somewhat limited field as faithfully as a camera could reproduce the streets and houses of her New England villages.

The idea of "The Jamesons" is ingenious

several amusing situations. Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson is the wife of a city man who has lost the most of his money. The family have been accustomed to spend the summer at fashionable watering places, but are now obliged to take board in the little village of Linnville. Mrs. Jameson descends upon the innocent but intelligent villagers like a veritable avalanche of progress, culture, and superiority. Her various attempts to improve the town, ending with the celebration of its centennial, which she herself organizes, are delightfully told. Miss Wilkins' books are worth reading for the reason, if for no other, that one is sure to be introduced in each new volume to some cleverly drawn character, the memory of whose acquaintance will remain a life-long pleasure. Such a character is Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson, whom the reader, as well as the inhabitants of Linnville, learns at the last to love and esteem. The placid vanity of Mrs. Jameson and her confidence that she can make all her fads interesting to the villagers gives Miss Wilkins opportunity for some of her finest work, and the note throughout is a joyous one, a welcome change from some of her recent books. (Doubleday & McClure Co. $1.)-Chicago Times-Herald.

From Calkins' "The Cougar Tamer."
HE FIRED AT THE

The Cougar Tamer.

WILD beasts, Indians, heroic scenery and unconventional white men go to make the substance of the volume of short stories by Mr. Calkins. This writer devises his episodes of adventure with ingenuity and elaborates them in a style that is clear and effective. Some of his stories are dramatic. All of them have the attractiveness of the open air, of experiences more or less thrilling encountered under novel circumstances. Merely as stories these productions are worth reading. (Stone. $1.50.)

N. Y. Tribune.

Sand 'n' Bushes.

HERE is "Sand 'n' Bushes," and let it be said to Maria Louise Pool's great glory that the nicest, neatest humor just capers through the pages of the book, and the surprising quality is this, that if men will enjoy it, why, women must. Perhaps, too, Maria Louise Pool writes more for the delectation of her sisters than for her brothers. When a man jokes, you are apt to hear the blow of the hammer and the driven nail might be clenched, but as the rare woman, when she makes the tun, there is no ugly sound of impact. It is as the ripple of a wave, but then you know, too, that the incoming tide, gentle though it may be, has its power of abrasion.

But it is not easy to define the ways of the author of "Sand 'n' Bushes"; her peculiarity of

Copyright, 1899, by H. S. Stone & Co. SQUAD OF SAVAGES. touch escapes you. Though your heart is wreathed with smiles, still there come, just occasionally, tears, and she lets you know that there are terrible tragedies in all human lives.

What is it all about? Two young women, maybe they are close to thirty, make a trip on horseback from Boston to uttermost Cape Cod, and tell their adventures. Fancy the start. Two ladies on horses they know nothing about, one carrying with her, of all the impossible things Of course in the world, a kitten in a bag. Kitty claws the horse, and it looks as if one of the animals would be without a rider. You are delighted when the kitten escapes, and the scratching incubus is lost forever.

Gossip along the roadside is charmingly told, and such rencontres as happen when girls on wheels are met with.

Amabel, when half-way on the trip, loses her skirt, and no ingenious pinning of it up will keep it in place. Amabel is a reformer and makes herself a bifurcated garment and buys a man's second-hand saddle. Then comes the question on the part of her comrade: Can Amabel ride man fashion? "I will ride or die," she answered; and Miss Pool writes: "When a reform becomes a fact we are not half as startled as we had expected to be; it is remarkable how quickly the thing seems commonplace and as if it had always been so."

Pastor Naudie's Young Wife. WHEN the librarian of one of our large public libraries was in Paris last autumn, and wished to buy some new and good French novels, he asked for a dozen of the most popular French stories, and among those given him was "Le Ménage du Pasteur Naudié," the French title of this novel. It was the only one of the stories given him really adapted for English readers, the only one which was morally pure and yet intellectually strong.

We have read "La Haut," "La Sacrifiée," and "Les Roches Blanches," and no one of these stories equals in interest "Pastor Naudie's Young Wife." "La Haut" has very few incidents while "La Sacrifiée" plunges us in gloom and never lets us see the sunshine. Pastor Naudié's Young Wife" has plot, incidents, character drawing, and plenty of movement. The young wife is one of those puzzling, irrational, fascinating creatures, who keeps us continually on the alert wondering what she

From "Cathedral Days."

will do next." Love, and the wealth which comes with it, did at first make the pastor indifferent to the needs of his children and less zealous about his pastoral duties; but this was but a passing phase in his character. His true nature reasserted itself, and that true nature was a noble one. The pastor was capable of great heroism, and the story leaves us with a moral uplift which makes it seem quite unlike the ordinary French novel. The atmosphere of the book is intellectual and modern. are some-not too many-theological discussions, and all the conversation is clever.

There

The writer of the introduction, in which there is much information concerning the author's literary career, speaks of the novelist as belonging "to the country of Ariel and Calvin rather than to the country of Molière and Hugo," and it is to the readers of our best English novels that this story will appeal. Mr. Gosse, in a recent article, likens it to some of Mrs. Humphrey Ward's best work. (Little, Brown & Co. $1.25.)-Boston Literary World.

OLD ROMAN BATHS, BATH.

A Triple Entanglement. IT was at Cordova that Stuart Wallis first saw Enid Severn. He was an American, who, after seven years of hard work at Harvard University and Law School, had made the circuit of the globe, and was now rambling leisurely through Spain in company with his widowed mother, preceding his return to New York to assume the care of the estate left by his father, and to take his share in guiding the affairs of his native state. Enid Severn was a wholesome, normal, captivating young English girl, who was in Cordova with her grandfather, a retired army officer, for the purpose of studying the pictures in the Museo, after a winter of art study in Paris. The person who completed the trio concerned in the entanglement was Algernon Stuart Roy Dampier, the story of whose life calls forth the sympathy of the reader, in spite of the miserable failure which he made of it, when so many excellent opportunities held out infinite possibilities. (Lippincott. $1.25.)-Commercial Advertiser.

The United States of Europe. MR. W. T. STEAD, editor of the English Review of Reviews, has lately returned from a trip to all the capitals of Europe, where he has talked with the important men of each country, from the Czar of Russia down. He has written a book with the "catchy" title of "The United States of Europe," in which he sums up the present political situation in the light of the Czar's Peace Rescript and forecasts the immediate future. He contrasts with great force this remarkable step on the part of Russia with America's change of policy and her acquisition of colonial pos. sessions and military responsibilities. The views of the great statesmen of the Old World upon this subject are strikingly interesting, and the book is unusual in furnishing a complete and authoritative review of current international affairs, treating of America's task in the West Indies and Philippines, the "Chinese Puzzle," South African prob-, lems, the Fashoda muddle, the Concert of Europe and its work in Crete and Candia, and many other similar pertinent matters. It is fully illustrated. (Doubleday & McClure Co. $2.)

the Austro-Hungarian Empire by the commanding and beloved personality of Francis Joseph, but Austria proper, the ancestral domains of the imperial house of Hapsburg, predominantly German in race, character, and civilization.

Austria.

ANOTHER Volume in the popular and instructive series, The Story of the Nations, is "Austria," by Sidney Whitman, with the collaboration of J. R. McIlraith (illustrated). The subject, however, is not the incoherent nationali ties that for the present are held together as

THE TSARINA.

Doubleday & McClure Co.

Mr. Whitman accordingly relates the history of Austria as connected with its reigning family. It is a singular fact which he notes, "that no consecutive history of Austria such as this is exists in any language." The needs of the general reader are well met by a succinct and simple narrative. (Putnam. $1.50.)- The Outlook.

From "Prisoners and Captives."

Copyright, 1899, by R. F. Fenno & Co. WITH HESITATION THE OFFICER RAISED THE BRIM OF THE LARGE HAT."

The Angel of the Covenant.

J. MACLAREN COBBAN strikes the right note in writing historical fiction. Even a period so written about as the first days of the Restoration is described from a new standpoint in his story"The Angel of the Covenant."

This Angel is Mistress Maudlin Keith, and she is a creation worthy to stand with some of the women Scott has drawn for us. Her courage, wonderful resource, devotion to her friends, and her brisk energy and vitality appeal to all that is noble and good. Her devotion to the Scottish cause and her fierce objections to the methods of the priests and bishops make wonderfully interesting reading. The author is historically correct, too, and gives a reliable and fascinating picture of Covenanting days, when those who held a creed were willing to die for it. (Fenno. $1.50.)

Francis Turner Palgrave. FRANCIS TURNER PALGRAVE was perhaps best known in this country in connection with his "Golden Treasury," that exquisite anthology of English songs and lyrics, the first series of which appeared in 1861, and the second in 1897, or only a few weeks before his death; but by many Americans he was also known as a poet of more than ordinary merit. By all such, therefore, this memorial volume by his daughter will be welcomed, and not only because they like his verse, but also because they would be better acquainted with the man.

Miss Palgrave has, we think, accomplished what she undertook to do-to make the outside world acquainted with her father as he really was in his domestic life, as he moved among his friends and as he discharged his duties as an educator and critic. The impression conveyed by the fine portrait that graces this memorial is confirmed by the book itself. It is that of a man of the highest culture, of deep sensibility, and of noble character, who was loved by all who knew him, and who, devoted to his friends, could inspire their devotion in return. It could be said of him that he had a genius for friendship, as was illustrated in his relations with the late Poet Laureate. "Tennyson's affectionate friendship," he wrote after the poet's death, "has been one of the mainstays of my life."