have absolutely a magical effect.  Besides the full-page pictures, etchings, and photo-gravures, the minor details of title-lines, head- and tail-pieces, and the like, are executed in a way so pretty and clever as to leave nothing to be desired.  The rich quarto is sumptuously bound, and, altogether, as a holiday gift-book the work has every element of beauty and appropriateness.

“Pepper and Salt” is one of those brilliantly clever books for little people which rouse a wonder as to whether the juvenile mind keeps pace with the highly stimulated imaginative powers of modern artists and finds solid entertainment in the richly-seasoned feast prepared for it.  There is plenty of humor and whim in this volume, in which many old apologues appear in new shapes; wit, too, is to be found, and a sprinkling of wisdom.  Effective designs, droll, fantastic, and invariably ingenious, set off the least of the poems and stories, and make it as striking and attractive a quarto as will be found among the young people’s books this season.

“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” gave a new stimulus to children’s literature, with its effective magic for youthful minds and its brilliant success among all classes of readers.  “Davy the Goblin” is one of the many volumes which have been founded, so to say, on its idea and been carried along by its impulse.  Thus little can be said for the actual originality of the book, although it deals in new combinations and abounds in droll situations.  It is well printed and illustrated, and most children will be glad to have a new excursion into Wonderland.

Mrs. Burton Harrison’s “Bric-a-Brac Stories,” illustrated by Walter Crane, make an attractive volume with a good deal of solid reading within its covers.  The stories are told with the verve and skill of a genuine story-teller, old themes are reset, and new material dexterously worked in, with characters drawn from fairy- and dream-land, and, set off by Mr. Crane’s delightful drawings, the whole book is particularly attractive.

“Rudder Grange” is one of the books which it is essential to have always with us, and we are glad to see the stories so well illustrated, although the subject passes the domain of the artist, Mr. Stockton’s humor being of that delicate and elusive order which strikes the inward and not the outward sense.  “Pomona reading” in the wrecked canal-boat is a droll contribution, and many of the cuts show that the artist is in full harmony with the spirit of the author.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 1:  On another occasion he remarked of Trollope, “What drivel the man writes!  He is the very essence of the commonplace.”]

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: 

[Note A:  Original reads ‘Corresponddence’]