The Farm on the Down. By Anne Beale. (Hodder and
Stoughton.) —In this volume Miss Beale gives us two really excellent stories. In" The Farm on the Down," an undutiful daughter, who has left her home because a foolish attachment has been thwarted by her mother, and so runs a most serious risk of ruin, is brought back to her duty by the tender kindness of a stranger whom she is fortunate enough to meet. Selina, the worker of this good work, is a beautiful character, so simple, so fresh, taking the highest views of duty, but finding a childlike delight in the simple pleasures of life. Some of the scenes which Miss Beale draws are most pathetic ; and the whole story, short as it is, is one of her greatest successes. " The Cottage by the River," the second tale in the volume, is a Welsh story. The head of the family, who has a characteristic incapacity for understanding that salmon belong to anybody in particular, gets into trouble,
but on a charge of which he is really innocent. The story of his family, the vigorous old grandmother, the broken-down wife, with her perpetual exclamation of " There's unfeeling you are !" and the various children, is excellently told. There is just the right mixture of humour, the local colour is delicately put in, and the Welsh-English excellently managed.
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