10 DECEMBER 1887, Page 13

Barbara a Story of Cloud and Sunshine. By Clara Vance.

(Hodder and Stoughton.)—This story is not altogether to our taste. The idea of the unnatural uncle is as old as " The Babes in the Wood,"

and we cannot see that the sufferers improve much in disposition by the discipline they go through. Family discords and disgraces are not, to our thinking, suitable to pat forward as "examples," even for our young people. The description of Sam, "who don't even smoke, he's that pions," "for abbot turning somersets," is amusing. Surely that doctor must have been of a new school who, in the presence of a child reeovering from the brink of the grave, makes a speech twenty- three lines long !