The Prince of a Hundred Soups, edited by Vernon Leo
(Unwin), is very clever and admirably illustrated burlesque on—at least, we presume so—Italian municipal life of a period anterior to the pre- sent. The preface is quite as interesting as the book itself, the editor telling in it a great deal about the author, a somewhat "crank" actor, who intended his work "not in the- least as a Christmas book, but as a practical demonstration of a theory based upon an enormous amount of research." Whether this story be simply a mystification on the part of the editor, or not, there is more humour in the volume than in half.a-dozen ordinary pantomimes.
The annual volume of Cassell's Family Magazine is an excellent one. The fiction is, to say the least, above the average. Sel- dom, if over, has Mr. John Berwick Harwood been seen to snob advantage as in Ralph Raeburn's Trusteeship, which possesses among other virtues, that of brevity. This author has not yet given us a better character than that of Frank Preston, the conquering though long-maligned hero and manufacturer, whose opinions on social subjects put one not a little in mind of the new Member for Liverpool. The "miscellaneous" artioles are excellent and varied ; "A Chinese Novel" is especially entertaining. Some papers pro- fessing to throw a little light on the minor mysteries of journalism strike us, however, as rather thin.—Mrs. Warren keeps up the character of her Ladies' Treasury (Bemrose and Son) very well, and no objection can be offered to such sentiments as "good humour, sympathy, a brave heart to will and to do, and the fascinations of a cultured intelligence, are for girls the best and most successful stepping-stones to matrimony." The fiction and the general articles are rather poor, however. The fashions are, of course, the chief thing in a magazine of this kind, and Mrs. Warren certainly gives her readers abundance of them. At the same time, is it not possible to throw a little "cultured intelligence" into the faces of the heroines of fashion-plates ?
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