The ordinary layman, looking to the contents of the new
num- ber of the Church Quarterly Review, will probably turn in the first instance to "The Journalist in Fiction." He will find it to be a very careful and complimentary notice—complimentary at the expense of Mr. Kipling—of the works of Mr. J. X Barrio. The writer, most of whose judgments will meet with general approval, seems to think that the method of the best journalism "—i.e., "trying to reproduce, with the crispest and most vivid touch, exactly what happens in the daylight of the world "—has helped Mr. Barrie in his art, and given it what is styled its uncompro- mising realism." But is there no idealism—the idealism of the man who is a novelist by birth, and a journalist only by circum- stance—in both the humour and the pathos of Thrums ? " Pessimism," " The Verney Papers," and " Oxford and Oxford Life " are also readable papers. The author of a vigorous—perhaps one should, in the slang of the day, say "actual "—article on " Prospects of the Irish Church under Home-rule," comes to the conclusion that Mr. Gladstone's proposed Irish Second Chamber will go down before his First, like the walls of Jericho before the trumpets.
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