The Home Book of Pleasure and Instruction. Edited by Mrs.
R. Valentine. (F. Warne and Co.)—What a pity it is that we do not form, a part of the girls of the United Kingdom, to whom this book is offered. Instead of being grateful for such a gift, we can but envy the favoured recipients. We feel sure that they will value it highly, and that it will serve as their companion from the cradle to the hymeneal altar. It begins with a collection of games for very young children. Then the games become gradually graver and more intellectual. Instead of dancing round the mulberry bush, we have charades and double acros- tics. We are no longer wolves and lambs, but Peter the Great and limited liability companies. But further responsibilities are entailed upon us. From dressing our dolls we are suddenly plunged in church work, which ought, properly speaking, to have been presided over by that one of the contributors to the volume to whom we owe the "Six Cushions." We gradually mount to all the popular sciences under the sun. We study botany, conchology, heraldry, photography, wood en- graving, and wax fruit modelling. By this time we have about attained a marriageable age, and we close Mrs. Valentine'rhome book in order to open the multitude of small, red cash-ruled manuals which answer to that name for the future. The only objection we have to find with this one as we close it is that the celebrated enigma on the letter h, which was written by Miss Fanshawe, is attributed to Lord Byron.
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