favourite magazine. It commands such a list of good names
as con- tributors, that we are not surprised to find it capital reading. Mrs. Ewing, Mrs. Molesworth, Miss Peard, Miss Flora Shaw, the Messrs. Getty, and many other authors, honoured by Aunt Judy's patronage and esteemed by her readers, have helped to make this volume particularly interesting. Of Mrs. Ewing's opening story, "Daddy Darwin's Dovecot," of Mrs. Molesworth's "Blue Dwarfs," of the fairy drama "Snow-white," &o., we spoke fully in our issues of November 10th and December 10th last year. Since that time, Mrs. Ewing has contributed a story so beautiful, so touching and so use- ful—and, as any who knows Mrs. Ewing might suppose, with. its pathos not unrelieved by humour—that we cannot speak of it too highly ; but we do not recommend any one, whose nerves are not very hard, to attempt, incautiously, the read- ing of it aloud. It is called " Laetus Sorts Meil "—the little hero's family motto—and is about a handsome, spirited, and• clever spoilt boy, who becomes crippled by a sad accident and summons all his courage to his aid, to carry out his ideal of a brave, manly life, as a sufferer instead of as a soldier— which had been his dream. How he does it we will not tell ; but we will assure our readers that, without being strained or unreal, it is as unique a picture of simple and child-like moral greatness as we have• ever seem Miss Flora Shaw—whose charming story of " Hector "' the readers of Aunt Judy will not have forgotten—contributes the. long story of the volume, "Phyllis Browne," and, as usaal, her hero and heroine are natural children, but very far from ordinary or common-place ones. Tho story is only too exciting, as there are too many painful scenes, and chapter xix. should have been omitted altogether ; even the present groy-haired writer could not read it, but had to glance from paragraph to paragraph till the children were out of danger. Nor can we understand what Miss Shaw moans to teach, when she makes liar hero repent his wilful disobedience, not because it is disobedience, but because, the object of his solicitude—the cause of that disobedience— proved unworthy. He has tried to save a poor wretch's life, but the wretch proves a brute also, and our hero exclaims, " Coward I" For this he has sacrificed a dear cousin, and lie thinks if his father could see him now he would cast him off, &.-3. The inference seems an- mistakeable,—if he had known that the man was a cowardly brute,. he would have left him be parish and rot in this black-hole ; but, of course, Miss Shaw could not mean this. One other adverse criti- cism we have to make. Miss Shaw's heroine uses live bait for her fishing, and teaches her little, seven-year old cousin to put a live gudgeon on his hook ; he is mightily amused with its throes and antics till a large pike swallows it, and is, in its turn, caught and landed. And yet Miss Shaw's sympathy with the struggling poor inspire the whole story, and little Katie—the miscreant's daughter —is the most lovable and the most original character in it.
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