A Tourist Idyll, and other Stories. 2 vols. (Sampson Low
and Co.)—The first of these stories is a somewhat amusing account of the perplexities which arise from a mistake made in a friendly exchange of cards. One of the parties gives a card which be had himself re- ceived on a similar occasion, and which bears a name that, rightly or wrongly, is odious to the family of the new receiver. Next in merit to this is "A Quartet of Queens," in which an elderly gentleman comes home from a long sojourn in India to find himself the nominal head of a house, in which four young ladies, of very marked person- alities, are really the rulers. His helpless inadequacy to support the rifle of a father is amusingly described. We must protest against the moral, if there be a moral, of the third story, "King Minor." It is horrible to read of a sweet creature like the heroine of this tale wasted in the hopeless attempt to reform a drunkard. It is a mis. chievous trifling with truth to talk of this madness being cured by "love and music."
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