The A l Annual. (S. W. Partridge and Co.)—This is the
first volume of a new venture, for which we cannot but think a more attractive title might have been invented. The magazine seems to promise, indeed to perform, well. Each part—it is published weekly—contains some devotional matter, Biblical information or the like. This is perhaps the principal element. Fiction is represented by tales by Dr. Gordon Stables, who writes '° Oonalaska : a Tale of a Far North Land ;" Mrs. L. T. Meade, who contri- butes " That Home in London ;" and Mrs. C. Garnett, whose story is called " Mad John Burleigh." Short tales, papers on natural history, some useful articles on social matters and domestic economy, and a great variety of miscellanea, make up the volume. The illustrations deserve a word of praise. The genuine efforts of imagination, such as " Expectancy," on p. 352, and the repre- sentation of actual things, whether of architecture, landscape, or natural objects, are mostly good. But the illustrations, so called, of the tales, though not inferior in merit to the average of such things, do not either adorn or explain. When will publishers learn that they spend money for naught in these things ? It can hardly be that these drawings cost less than the letterpress the space of which they fill.
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