The Sunday Magazine for 1881. The Paths of Peace (Sunday
Magazine Christmas Number). Little Snowflakes (Sunday Magazine Christmas Number for the Young). (Isbister and Co.)—It is only necessary to mention these publications briefly, for they are already well known and well established ; and they are very justly admired. The Sunday Magazine contains its usual number of interesting and clever serial stories, by Hesba Strettou, L. T. Meade, and other authors. Some of the reflections in the story called " Cobwebs and Cables," by the first-named authoress, are, like the story itself, remarkably thonghtfal and full of power, such as those in the thirty-second chapter, on the comparative judgments of the young and the old, and the share which the influence and character of friends have in the wrong-doing of every one. The serious papers are naturally numerous and Evangelical in tone,—too numerous and too Evangelical, we think, but admirable in spirit, and very tolerably broad. The " Sunday Evenings with the Children" we entirely like. The biographical papers are very interesting, and perhaps at once the most pleasant and useful of any. The poetry is, on the whole, vastly indifferent, with a few honourable exceptions. The illustrations, on the other hand, are beautiful, with few exceptions ; but, again, we have to urge the proprietors not to use such thin paper,—the pic- tures darken and confuse the letter-press on the opposite side. Of Little Snowflakes, we have only to add, separately, that the stories are interesting and pathetic, and full of unaffected religious feeling ; but we regret that all the four tales are, on the whole, sad, and even painful,—surely, therefore, not peculiarly calculated to promote Christmas cheerfulness ? Nor do we see why a book written for all classes—as Little Snowflakes undoubtedly is—should deal only with persons of the very humblest walks in life. Again, there is too great a similarity in the subject-matter ; it is a mistake to make children not only the heroes in each case, but also the agents in in- fluencingand reforming their seniors. But both the Sunday Magazine and Little Snowflakes are earnest and unpretending agents in the diffusion of a thoroughly Christian spirit; and the former is a book worth possessing, and fall of valuable matter.
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