MR. ANSTEY'S LAST TATM.S.* MB. ANSTEY'S humours are of an

uneven nature. There is a little too much mixture of the real and the unreal to give the impression of completeness which we like to look for in stories of a fanciful kind, and we admit to having found that fault with the famous Vice-Versa. The fairy-opening, for such in fact it was, was not sufficiently in harmony with the matter-of-fact story of school-life which followed, and left us half in Tom Brown's land and half with the Ugly Duck. The same sense of admixture was upon us in reviewing some modern fairy-tales a few weeks since, and we contrasted them at the time with the old-fashioned directness and symmetry which characterised such stories as the Arthurian legends of the Patimbogion. We must, however, we suppose, concede the premisses on which these half-and-half fairy-tales in modern surroundings are based—similar in their kind to the super- natural elements in such stories as Dr. ,Tekyll and Mr. Hyde, or the famous She of Mr. Haggard. There, we have always rebelled against the Oxford termination of the story, for no man could have gone back to real University life after seeing She's end. Her end would spoil the title. Mr. Anstey has always something quaint and new to say, and some odd fancy which will tickle the curious in such literature as his. The idea of "The Talking gorse" is excellent. Mr. Pulvertoft, of the Molly Coddle order, finds that the only way in which to approach the beautiful Amazon, Diana Chetwynd, is to ride with her in the Park. And his admission to her that he has not ridden for years is qualified by the informa- tion to the reader that that blank number of twelvemonths is just twenty-eight, being the figure of his own age. So he takes to a fashionable riding-school near Hyde Park, and soothes himself, after much discomfort, by walking in the Row and criticising the riding as indifferent, and contrary to the rules. Informed by his riding-master that on a quiet and steady horse "be won't come to no harm," but will be "all nohow on an animal that takes advantage," he hires 'Brutus' from a neighbouring job-master, partly as "a kind 'oss to be ridden on a pack-thread," but chiefly on the strength of an expression of sagacity in the eye hardly to be expected for seven-and.six an hour. Just as he has crossed the Serpentine, and flatters himself that his experiment is successful, he is suddenly addressed by an unfamiliar voice with, "I say, you!" The speaker is his horse, and a thoroughly comic scene of dialogue follows between the two, Brutus's ' explanation of his miraculous gift of speech being simply that the rider is "enough to make any horse talk ;" and the effect of the story • The TaTking.Horse, and othfr Tales. By F. Anstey. London Smith,

Elder, anc1:00. .

is to put into words in a literal sense the complete mastery of a skilled horse over an unskilled rider. 'Brutus '—who sounds like an animal of Mr. G. R. Sims's—requests at once to be conducted to his stable and bought, simply informing Mr. Pulvertoft, who proposes to "roll off," that if he does, he pro- poses to roll on him. Whereupon the rider requests to be taken back, and he will buy him at once. "Yes," says the

"but before he gets down." The bewildered proprietor— for this new edition of the ass of Balaam is audible only to his rider—proceeds to take advantage too, Brutus ' running him up till be goes at his own price, without warranty or opinion. 'Brutus' objects to his stables, and gets new ones. Gustavus Pulvertoft bores him by leaving him there for some days,—and so far prevails, as he wants to see the other horses in the Row. 'Brutus' thereon promises him various " tips " as to an im- proved seat, so that Gustavus imagines himself to have become his master, till he is addressed as "old sack o' beans," and informed that he is sawing the horse's month off. Gustavus, however, discovers that Brutus's ' weak point is flirtation, and induces him to fall in love with Diana's mare to such purpose, that the two become inseparable, and Diana and G-ustavus on the best of terms. Unluckily, 'Brutus ' and Wild Rose' have a tiff; and as the horse transfers his affections to the grey mount of a tittuping old-maid who is a bugbear of Gustavus's, the latter found himself obliged to ride with the latter, to offend Diana by his apparent desertion. Just as things are to be explained between them, Brutus ' bolts from her after Miss Gittens's mare, with his unlucky burden. And Diana, alas ! becomes engaged to a rival equestrian, less popular, but also less dependent on his horse. By way of denouement, Gustavus thrashes 'Brutus' with all his might and main, to be thrown severely and have concussion of the brain. In the end, we are left in pleasing but absolute doubt—at least, the present writer frankly confesses that he is—whether Mr. Anstey in- tends his work to be taken as the story of a delusion produced by a fall ; as a half-fairy story, like Vice-Versa.; or as a fancy to while away an hour with, without further consideration. Nor do we think that it very much matters.

The "Good Little Girl" Priscilla is, in fact, a modernised version of the maiden who dropped pearls from her mouth when she opened it, improved into a moral for the sake of the young. The idea of a little prig-child lecturing everybody, on all points — as, for instance, her father for writing articles on a Sunday—and meeting a perfectly orthodox old fairy sitting in a lane, who gives her jewels to talk for the edification of her elders, is evidently thus purposed. The father and mother take the production for illicit sweets, and see no gems in the matter at all. Only a bad old aunt de- tects the magic, and carries Priscilla off for a long visit, with an eye to annexation. The adventures of the aunt's family with the jewels are quaint enough, for, alas ! a son up to date takes some of them to a skilled jeweller, who proves them to be mere paste, like the utterances of the good little girl, who returns home chastened to her parents, and tries to talk good to her betters no more. Rarer and rarer become the bad jewels, till the heroine has changed her ways altogether.

The other stories in the little volume, partaking of no half- digested fairy element, are, on the whole, better reading. The greedy dog, which continually falls ill from over-eating, do what its best friends will to keep it from cake and excesses, and is eventually found to spend much of its time on board a river-boat in wheedling the passengers, will be a hero of some interest to young readers ; and elder ones, authors especially, will find a good deal of fun in the terrible revenge of the poet turned photographer upon the great critic Vitriol, who had robbed him of fame and mistress by one bitter article turning his poetry into ridicule. How the photographer induces the critic to give him a sitting, which the purse-wise Vitriol gets for nothing, in order to make a present to the poet's ex-intended, now his own, and finds himself forced, at the point of an empty revolver, to sit in various impossible attitudes—face downwards over a cane-bottomed chair ; cross-legged, with his thumb in his month, a smile on his face, and a Gainaborough hat on his head ; on horseback, on a spotted wooden horse— and in these disguises to find his portraits presented to his lady-love, who shows him the door for a heartless buffoon,— these are the adventures we may read of, with the necessary sympathy, on whichever side we may happen to entertain the feeling, in the eternal war between the critic and the author. We commend the story to the serious consideration of Mr.

Oscar Wilde. .

"A Matter of Taste" is an ordinary magazine story, much as such stories are, being the romance of love between an testhetio maiden and a philistine lover, who takes a house for her, and, on the principle that women understand such matters better than men, furnishes and decorates it, under the guidance of a terrible mamma and sisters, after a fashion to distract altogether the famous wsthete whom we have just mentioned, and his disciples in his art. The struggle between Ella's honest love for George, on the one hand, and her terror of the mustard-yellow curtains and the mottled-marble mantel- piece, in slabs of petrified brawn, on the other, with the walls distempered in drab, is at all events a new study of the old

love-problem. The dens ex machina' is no less than the pro- verbial plumber, the latest enemy of man, who sets the place

on fire through a bad gas-escape, and moralises in a puzzle, as Mr. Anstey would probably do, that Fate was at the bottom of the job, when the lover abuses him for his carelessness, and the lady thanks him for his services.

"Shut Out," being a romance of the pavement of the melodramatic kind; "Tommy's Hero," the dream of a boy who has seen a pantomime, and imagines himself fastened to a nightmare clown ; "A Canine Ishmael," a pretty little story of dog-life ; and "Marjory," an old-fashioned ghost-story, with the rather traditional little girl who protects the gentle schoolboy against the rough one, and gets killed by the latter through accident, afterwards appearing to both on the orthodox principle ; while "Paleface and Redskin" is a story of schoolboys who play at Indians, the prominent character being the boastful Clarence, who gets monstrously frightened by his own devices through the machinations of a humorous uncle,—it will be seen that this little volume, if it happens to have any special purpose, rather aims at an all-round variety than at anything else. " Paleface " recalls to us, oddly,.

echoes of Miss Edgeworth's Barring Out—do schoolboys read that capital story nowadays, we wonder P—and, indeed,

we seem very often, when perusing Mr. Anstey's tales, to be catching sight for a moment of "the immortal sea that brought them hither." They are at times possessed of the oddest flavour of memory.

For ourselves, we think that we like "The Canine Ishmael the best, told as it is "from the notes of a diner-out." Poor Pepper ' ! He is the bosom-friend of his master, and his master marries. The young wife pets and makes much of Pepper,'—till a baby is born. Then 'Pepper' suffers the usual dethronement, till, driven from place to place, and rag

and all, one day he bites the baby. Very little, but he bites it. He is given away, but he hates his new home and cannot rest. One day, ragged and altered, he sets on the baby perambulated by a nursemaid, and gets a violent blow ; when, poor beastie,

he is seen by the mistress, who at once knows that he but wants to "make it up" with the baby, and tries to follow and

recover him. But he gives her a look of canine reproach,

goes,—and is seen no more. The diner-out, who hears the story from the lips of a lovely neighbour, gets quite excited in his sympathy with 'Pepper,' till she takes to a warm defence of

the mistress. "You don't mean to say that you take the baby's part?" he says. She did ; it was her doing. She was the cruel

mistress after all. But—" As I rose and drew back my chair to allow my neighbour to pass, she raised her eyes for a moment, and said, almost meekly, I was the baby, you see I '