CURRENT LITERATURE.
Hermes in Obscurity. By the Author of "Papers for Thoughtful Girls." (Strahan.)—Miss Sarah Tytlor has in this volume followed up the book to which reference is made in the title-page by a second series bearing the same name. She tells her readers eleven stories, each illustrating in a very simple and natural way some great quality which she wishes to recommend to her readers. If we except an occasional obscurity in the style, for such we have sometimes seemed to see, those stories are all that could bo desired, genuine pictures of human thought and feeling, without any false sentimentality or pathos. " Trustworthiness ; or, how Polly Culpepper kept her Father's Castle," and "Strength of Body and Mind; or, the Woman who trampled on Dragons," are especially worthy of note. The author, with a truly artistic insight., contrives to give a certain unity of interest to the various stories by connecting them with the local associations of one place, Greenwich, associations which she introduces with much skill and taste.—The Cousin from India, by Georgiana M. Oraik (Sampson Low and 0o.), is the story of a dreadfully wicked little girl who comes home from India, upsets the
order and peace of a well-conducted household of children, and is finally redeemed from her evil by the cost of the life of one of the children among whom she is brought. We cannot profess a liking for this sort of story, but it is the barest justice to the author to say that it is very well told. Nothing could be better than the fairytale which the naughty cousin, who has a flue imagination of her own, tells to little " Davie," with the matter-of-fact questions and difficulties which the boy suggests, and the masterly explanations which she invents to moot them. Little Sunshine's Holiday, by the Author of "John Halifax, Gentle- man" (Sampson Low and Co.), is a prettily-told tale for chit. dren, the work of a writer who, as we need scarcely say, has both practice and sympathy to inform her hand.—Among books for children we may mention Evenings at the Tea-7'able (Strahan), not unworthy, we should, say, of the well-known manufactory of the article from which it proceeds ; Old Merry's Travels on the Continent (Hodder and Stoughton); Alfred and his Mother, by Katharine E. May (Nimmo); The Story of a Moss Rose, by Charles Burro (Nimmo) ; The Standard-Bearer ; a Story of the Fourth Centwy, by Ellen Palmer (Nimmo). The details seem carefully studied ; we notice a passage which describes what is seldom realized, the infanticide habitually • practised by the Romans ; The Garden Gate, and other Stories, by Henry G. B. Hunt (Cassell and Co.); and Carrie Williams and her Scholars (Book Society); The Tower of the Hawk, a history of the House of Hapsburg, by the Author of " Chillon" (Hatohard).
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