10 JANUARY 1891, Page 19

Pixie and the Hill-House Farm. By Mrs. Gerard Ford. (C.

Gilbert Ellis and Co.)—These stories, the one of which, as we are told by the author, was written for children, while the other was not, are notable mainly as studies in Border life, customs, and dialect. They are both full of warm hearts and uncouth jargon. Of the two, " Pixie " will probably be the better liked by most readers, chiefly because an agreeable plot, ending in the sea giving up its dead, runs through it. The other drags some- what ; but the tale which it gives of a lost telegram is very amusing, and in its rustic realism recalls the work of Mr. Hardy. The illustrations of both stories are admirable ; they have, in fact, the look of photographs.