is charming: Where all is so good it is di ffi cult

to choose a leavdee3nrsot.th6eadhsiordka„

quotation, but here is the last verse from the poem called "The Gentle Dark " :—

" The voice is tender, (0 little one, hark,) (W. and .arChambers.ekin

Blow out the candle, Trusting your friend as a playmate should. Hold up your arms to the Gentle Dark, The Dark that is kind and good."

A Book of Baby Birds. Verses by B. Parker. Illustrations by N. Parker.ly u these charming pictures Miss Parker shows that she has thoroughly studied her subject. The birds are drawn with cleverness and sympathy, and each little creature has a different and characteristic expression. They range from chickens to owls, and there are little descriptive verses about them all.

Rhymes of Real Children. By Betty Sage. Pictures by Jessie W. Smith. (David Nutt. 3s. 6d.)—This is a charming picture- book. The verses will please their small readers or hearers, and grown-up people will find the pictures well worth looking at. Both the colour and the drawing are good, and though there is plenty of the detail that children like in a picture, the whole effect is broad and harmonious.

The Surprising Adventures of the Man in the Moon. By R. M. Steward. Illustrated by L. J. Bridgman. (T. C. and E. C. Jack. 4s.)—This is one of those satisfactory books in which the characters are old friends,—such as the Moon and the Man in it, Santa Claus and all the merry company of Cinderella and the Prince, Jack Sprat, Tommy Tucker, and many others from the same enchanted country.—Babes in Toyland, by G. MacDon_ nough and A. A. Chapin (David Nutt, 5s.), is another book of the same sort.

The Children's Christmas Treasury. Edited by Edward Hutton. (J. M. Dent and Co. 58. net.)—This is a good mixture of old and new things, and very well illustrated. Among the authors of the new are Mr. E. V. Lucas and Miss Evelyn Sharp, and those of the old range from the Brothers Grimm to Nathaniel Hawthorne. There are pictures by Mr. Anning Bell and Miss Lucy Kemp- Welch. Children who are familiar with Kensington High Street will be much amused by Mr. Lucas's story, "The Monkey's Revenge." The Adveniures of Punch. By Ascott R. Hope. Illustrated in Colour by S. B. de In Bare. (A. and C. Black. 610.7-Punch and Judy and the baby are a very happy family when they are off the stage, and in this book Punch tells his wife of the wonderful adventures that befell him in his youth, from the days when his cruel stepmother ill-treated him to the happy time when he first met Judy as the pig-faced lady of a penny show. Dog Toby, too, is not forgotten. He was a great help to his master, and by his means he became apprenticed to an enchanter.

The Rosebud Annual, with nearly 200 Illustrations (J. Clarke and Co., 3s.), is an excellent collection of stories, verses, pictures, and puzzles. Among the illustrations are cats by Louis Wain, as well as reproductions of photographs of children and animals.

The Black Cat Book. Rhymes by W. Copeland. Cats by C. Robinson. (Blackie and Son. ls. 6d.)—These cats are very clever, and are drawn with a great deal of imagination. Some are purely comic, while others have more than a touch of cat nature in them.

Nursery Rhymes. Selected by Loney Chisholm. "Told to the Children Series." (T. C. and E. C. Jack. 1s. 6d.)—This little book might almost be compared to a child's " Golden Treasury," it is such a good collection of classical nursery rhymes. They are all there, beginning, as they should, with " Old Mother Goose."

Stories from Shakespeare's Plays for Children. By Alice S. Hoffman. Illustrated by P. Wilson. (J. M. Dent and Co. ls. each.)—These books are almost paraphrases of the plays, interspersed with long quotations. They are well done, and the notes may be found useful, but if a child is old enough to like these versions of the plays he would probably prefer the real thing.

Among the books that the children call " little tiny ones" are the " Stump Books " and the " Humpty Dumpty Books," published by Messrs. Treherne and Co. at ls. 6d. each. They are very pretty and strong, and of a convenient size for small hands to hold.—" The Little Dutch Doll Books " (Blackie, 6d. each) also give much pleasure to babies.

SEASONABLE PUBLICATIONS FOR 111.e7 BLIND.

The publishers of the Weekly Summary embossed newspaper remember the blind and provide for their needs at this season -with great literary taste and skill. They have brought out a new series of their " Day to Day " readings of well- chosen quotations from authors so various that the list includes St. Francis de Sales and Luther, Archbishop Temple and Dickens, Waltham How and Whittier. The " guiding light" of a text for every day in the year will no doubt prove a comfort to many a beginner in the slow process of finger-reading, and the handy little calendar is decidedly up to date with its store of Japanese maxims and aphorisms. Christmas cards for the blind are not forgotten ; the kindly greeting on one is headed with a spray of real heather, and the stag at the water-brooks is a pleasant novelty. The Weekly Summary itself not only gives with remarkable completeness all important news, foreign and domestic, but broadens out on occasion into a full account of some interesting occurrence, a review of books or music, a poem of Mr. Kipling's, or, as at the Nelson centenary, into a thoughtful article. All this must be highly appreciated by readers so restricted in their reading as are the blind.

THE FITZWILLIAM VIRGINAL BOOK.

An Elizabethan Virginal Book. By E. W. Naylor, Mus.D. With Illustrations. (J. M. Dent and Co. 6s. net.)—This is primarily a history and study of the collection of clavier-music preserved at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, and known as the "Fitzwilliam Virginal Book." As such it will have special attraction and value for the student of music. But it has elements of popular appeal also. It has its interest for the general reader, especially for the reader of Shakespeare and the other Eliza- bethan and Jacobean dramatists. A very large proportion of the pieces in the collection are dance-music, and Mr. Naylor gives much quaint information about the dances and dance- steps to which these were accompaniments, illustrating them by passages from Shakespeare which become more intelligible in their light. For instance, when the clown in Twelfth Night tells Sir Toby Belch that the tipsy doctor's eyes were " set at eight the morning," and Sir Toby—reminded of the method of com- posing a Pavan which was set in phrases of eight semibreves— replies : "then he's a rogue and a passy-measure-pavin," the intention is to compare the rapid intoxication of the doctor to the quickened speed with which the musicians played the Paean every time they repeated it. Thus accelerated, Pavan became Passe-nine, Anglice "gassy-measure." But the Pavan played at its normal pace was a very sedate dance. Mr. Naylor borrows from Arbeau some descriptive touches which make its dignities vivid to us. , Noblemen danced it " with cap and sword: others in long robes, marchants honnestement avec unto gravite poses; and the demoiselles with an humble countenance, /es yeulz baisses, regardans quelquefois les assistans avec one pudeur virginale." The music of the Pavan, danced thus solemnly, was provided not only by flute and drum, but by hautboy and sackbut, and then it was called Le Grand Bal. Paean quickened into Galliard, Galliard into Courante or Coranto. But Coranto and also Alman, developing into Braille, or French Brawl, were of a lighter nature than Pavan, or even Galliard. The subtle gliding of the step and measure of one dance into another is curious to follow, and upon the lines of this evolution Mr. Naylor works out a sketch of some early developments of what we call " modern music." " The Elizabethan time has passed, but its spirit is not dead; and these chapters are meant to do further battle with the ignorance which still attributes the invention of the main features of Modern Music to the eighteenth century." The Fitzwilliam Collection, larger than any other similar collection, contains over a hundred and thirty dances, seventeen organ pieces forty-six arrangements of forty different songs, nine arrange- ments of madrigals, twenty-two fantasias by nine composers, seven fancy pieces by four composers, nineteen preludes by six writers, and six exercises in the Hexachord by four different authors, —a collection so representative that it is the conviction of Mr. Naylor that, were all other remains of the period destroyed, it would be possible to rewrite the history of music from 1550 to 1620 from the material contained in this book alone. The suite of dances will teach us all the story of the connection between the most refined inspirations of the most poetical natures and the "vile howlings and thumpings of a Central African dance of savages." The organ pieces are valuable as " examples of the stage which had been reached in such matters as modal tonality and other marks oX transition from the mediaeval system." The fantasias are examples of an early " but already well-developed form " of the fugue. The "Fancy Pieces " testify to the presence at this early period of the spirit of the Romantic school in the history of modern music. And the " arrangements " of madrigals and similar reductions of ecclesiastical music "are striking evidence that the serious amateur of music in the sixteenth century desired to have the best work of his time put into such a shape as could be made useful in his home." Mr. Squire's scholarly edition of " The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book " was published some years back, but it has not reached any large number of readers. and Mr. Naylor's hope is that these careful studies of the three hundred pieces contained in it will give its treasures wider publicity.