13 APRIL 1889, Page 22

CURRENT LITERATURE.

There is no very remarkable article in the April number of the Magazine of Art. The nearest approach to such is Mr. Ford Madox Brown's " Self-Painted Pictures," and that because, con- sisting of a series of landscapes in words, it has practically nothing to do with what at the first blush seems to be its subject. A reproduction of Mr. Brown's own portrait, painted by himself, is also striking in its realism. The next most popular article will no doubt be Mr. James Dow's on Mr. Macdonald's portrait gallery at Kepplestone, on account of the engravings which it gives of the portraits of Sir Frederick Leighton, Mr. Josef Israels, Mr. John Sargent, Mr. Jules Breton, and Mr. George Du Manrier, several of which were executed by the artists themselves. Mr. Telbin's paper on the painting of theatrical scenery is interesting and full of behind-the-scenes information of a perfectly innocuous kind ; and Mr. David Croal Thompson's article on the too little- known member of the Barbizon school, Narcisse Virgilio Diaz, is readable without being either too self-assertive or too gushing.

The April number of Belgravia is composed of stories which are, on the whole, above the average, though .hardly one of them is pleasant. There is undoubted power in Mr. Richard Ashe King's serial of " Passion's Slave ;" the scheming Clare, who is such another as Rebecca Sharp, promises to be a good character and a bad woman. The chief reason " why Adam Muir killed himself " is a positively repulsive one, but the portrait of Adam himself is admirably executed. Mr. John Stuart describes his story, " By Spin of a Coin," as "a study in cynicism," but the cynicism, though not devoid of cleverness, is marred by affectation. " The Orange Diamond," by Mr. Bathurst Deane, has all the air of novelty, in spite of its being a detective story,—or perhaps we should say, a. story of detection rather than of detectives. But should the conductors of Belgravia not give their readers something solid in addition to fiction ?

Sunday at Home for April is quite up to the average, so far as regards variety of contents and the quality of the leading serial story, " The Dalrymples," from the pen of Miss Agnes Giberne. There is a tendency to scrappiness, however, in the articles the object of which is to give general information. Thus, Mr. Ross's account of education in China is inadequate simply because it is too short. Even Mr. Lovett's on " Early Irish Literature and Art" might well have been a little longer.

The most notable article in the April number of St. Nicholas is a sketch of Elsie Leslie Lyde, a New Jersey girl, not yet ten years of age, who seems to be a born actress—or rather, actor---for she has taken to realising on the stage the little Lord Fauntleroy of Mrs. Hodgson Burnett's exquisite and marvellously popular story. Elsie seems to deserve all the praise which has been lavished upon her by friends, authors, and actors, and has, not inappropriately, been compared to Dr. John Brown's (and Sir Walter Scott's) Pet Marjorie. St. Nicholas holds its own in the magazine world; but some rather too heavy papers appear in it nowadays, such as "Ancient and Modern Artillery," and Mr. Edmund Alton's series of articles—lucid and interesting though these are—on " The Routine of the Republic."