14 NOVEMBER 1891, Page 24

CURRENT LITERATURE.

GIFT-BOOKS.

The annual volumes of Leisure Hour and Sunday at Home have been issued. They are notable mainly for the amount of interesting and instructive reading of all sorts that they contain, and perhaps even more for the improvement in the art of illus- tration which they manifest. The representations of character which appear in Leisure Hour, associated with the letterpress of "Every-Day Life on the Railroad," are remarkably fine. The fiction in both volumes is very much above the average. " The Story of Francis Cludde," although it is not very well -constructed, is the best work of fiction which its now well- known writer, Mr. Stanley Weyman, has yet published. "A Story of Constance," which appears in Sunday at Home, is little, if at all, inferior. A series of papers on " Religious Life and Thought in France," which is also given in Sunday at Home, is excep- tionally worth reading.