16 JANUARY 1897, Page 26

Margaret Grainger. By Annie S. Swan. (Hutchinson and Co.)— Margaret

Grainger is a schoolmistress and gives us her experi- ences of various pupils. Eleven chapters, each dealing with the history of a pupil, make up her autobiography, and are short but complete stories themselves. There are many like Margaret Grainger, whose lives are bound up in watching the development of the girls they educate, and most interesting such work must be. The authoress knows how to draw all her characters distinctly, giving them a very clear individuality, and how to make them so interesting that the various narratives with their attendant morals serve to remind the reader forcibly of Pope's line, "The proper study of mankind is man." Both pupils and mistresses will appreciate some of these delineations of female character. Of course they are love-stories mostly, and perhaps the prettiest are "A Touch of Colour" and "The Pride of Killoe."