Island Nights' Entertainments. By Robert Louis Stevenson. (Cassell and Co.)—We
like Mr. Stevenson better when he has his foot upon his native heath than when he is among the palms and corals of the Pacific. There are three stories in this volume, one of a " beach-comber " who possesses a rudimentary conscience, a possession not often found, we understand, in that class ; the second is an adaptation to the circumstances of life in the South Seas of the old story of the bottle-imp,—the creature which can realise all its owner's wishes, but must be sold, under pain of damnation, for something less than the price paid for it ; and the third, a tale of South-Sea magic. It is needless to use any ordinary expression of praise in speaking of anything that Mr. Stevenson has written. His name is a far more powerful com- mendation. But we must honestly own to having felt less satis- faction than we had thought possible to feel from anything written by the author of "Kidnapped."
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