It is a pleasure for the Baron to be in perfect accord on any one point with the Author of Essays in Little, and in proportion to the number of the points so is the Baron’s pleasure intensified.  Most intending readers of these Essays, on taking up the book, would be less curious to ascertain what ANDREW LANG has to say about HOMER and the study of Greek, about THEODORE BE BANVILLE, THOMAS HAYNES BAYLEY, the Sagas, and even about KINGSLEY, than to read his opinions on DICKENS and THACKERAY, placing DICKENS first as being the more popular.  The Baron recommends his friends, then, to read these Essays of ANDREW’s, beginning with THACKERAY, then DICKENS; do not, on any account, omit the delightfully written and truly appreciative article on CHARLES LEVER; after which, go as you please, but finish with “the last fashionable novel,” wherein our M.A., in his Merriest-Andrewest mood, treats us to an excellent parody.

The Baron has appointed an extra Reader, and this Extra-Ordinary Reader to the Baron has just entered upon the discharge of his duties by reading Monte Carlo, and How to Do It, by W.F.  GOLDBERG, and G. CHAPLIN PIESSE (J.W.  ARROWSMITH).  He reports in the following terms to his loved Chief:—­This book achieves the task of combining extraordinary vulgarity with the flattest and most insipid dulness—­not a common dulness, but a dulness redolent of low slang and dirty tap-rooms.  The authors seem to plume themselves on their marvellous success in reaching Monte Carlo, which, with their usual sprightly facetiousness, they call “Charley’s Mount.”  They are good enough to tell such of the travelling public as may want to get there, that the train leaving Victoria at 8.40 A.M. reaches Dover at 10.35.  Stupendous!  These two greenhorns took their snack on board the steamer (Ugh!), instead of waiting until they reached Calais, where there is the best restaurant on any known line.  Instead of going by the Ceinture, they drove across Paris.  The greenhorns arrive at Monte Carlo, and then settle on their quarters.  Anyone but an idiot would have settled all this, and much more, beforehand.  One gentlemanly greenhorn, who wishes us to think that “il connait son Paris,” talks of “suppers of Bignon’s” (which must be some entirely new dish), and informs us that, “at the Hotel de l’Athenee, the staff esteem it rather a privilege, and a mark of their skill in language, to grin and snigger when sworn at in English.”  Oh, sweet and swearing British greenhorn! now I know why the French so greatly love our countrymen.  But why, oh why do you imagine that you have discovered Monte Carlo?  For the details of the journey, and the instructions to future explorers, are set out with a painful minuteness which not even STANLEY could rival.  As for Monaco, dear, restful, old-fashioned, picturesque Monaco, whither the visitor climbs to escape from the glare and noise of Monte Carlo, the greenhorn dismisses it scornfully, as having “no interest.”