Edmund Layton, thick in the arm and at times, be it confessed, thick in the head, was so thoroughly in love with The Bright Eyes of Danger (CHAMBERS), and the brighter eyes of Charlotte Macdonell, Jacobitess, that in the rousing days of the YOUNG PRETENDER he not only lightly risked his life when his lady was in need, but more than once went out of his way to make things quite unnecessarily hazardous for himself, when I or any other of his more canny Hanoverian friends was longing to give him warning.  For instance, when that taking villain, Philip Macdonell, after beating him in the race for the French treasure buried in the sands of Spey beside the sunken ship (vide the frontispiece mystery chart), soon after fell comfortably into his hands, he had no more discretion than to take him out to fight a duel; whereon, as we others foresaw, the wily villain incontinently disappeared and the fun was all to begin again.  Maybe we might forgive him that, for of such staple are good yarns spun, but why in heaven’s name should bold Edmund Layton of Liddesdale go about to make himself and us miserable with feckless scruples that ruined the happy ending we had fairly earned?  Either he was right to let CHARLES STUART escape that day in the mist, in return for former generosity, or he was wrong; and one would have expected him to make up his mind and there an end, and not fret himself into a pother and Mr. JOHN FOSTER’S story into a most inartistic anti-climax over such a subtlety.  All the same a rattling good tale, full of hard knocks as well as bright eyes, and with more than a smack of STEVENSON.

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I fancy that I ought perhaps already to know The Wood-Carver of ’Lympus (MELROSE), which, hailing originally from America, seems to have made many friends over here before reaching me in its present form.  I am glad, more especially at the present season, to extend a grateful welcome to so kindly and charming a story.  Miss MARY E. WALLER has written a singularly refreshing and happy book, full of passages that reveal a great sympathy for country life and the hearts of simple people. Hugh Armstrong, the central figure, is a youth in a New England mountain farm, condemned to perpetual inactivity through an accident.  At the beginning of the story we see him, in the depths of misery, visited by a casual passenger from the stage coach, whose attention has been caught by his story as related by the driver.  Thenceforward things mend for Armstrong.  The stranger interests him in wood-carving; orders pour in, which help to bring comfort to the farm; books and letters arrive from unknown city dwellers.  Thus the tale is a record of increasing happiness, but kept (an important thing) from cloying by the tragedy upon which it is built.  If you will not be put off by American dialect or by the rather startling discovery that one of the kindliest characters is named Franz, you will, I believe, find a brief stay upon ’Lympus most beneficial to your spirits.