Tack-by-the-Hedge. By Selina Gaye. (Seeley and Co.)—This, we are told,
is a true story, and a very good story, too. Jack is a "waif," whom a kind-hearted lawyer, who knows better than most men who is his " neighbour," befriends. He becomes gardener's boy, page, then office clerk. Then comes the great catastrophe, which bids fair to ruin his career, but which ends by promoting it. The story is told with simplicity and good-taste, and with a religious feeling which is evident, without being" obtrusive.—The Countess Violet, by Minnie Douglas (David Bogne), is a tale of a very different kind, It starts in magnificent fashion with a Countess in her own right, a girl yet in her teens, for heroine. The Countess developea an admirable disposition, and initiates the most judicious and useful schemes of charity. She has two guardians, who present the usual contrasts,—the elderly man of the world who is all coldness and cau- tion, and the young man who catches the contagion of her enthusiasm, and with it another ailment not unlikely to be produced under the circumstances. The story is wholesome, and not unreadable, but it does not commend itself by any impression of reality.
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