17 NOVEMBER 1894, Page 12

Young England. (Sunday School Union.)—This is the fifteenth annual issue

of this "Illustrated Magazine for Young People throughout the English-speaking World." We cannot pretend to have an accurate recollection of the character of the many periodicals belonging to this class ; but we may say that Young England, though not so bulky as some of its rivals, is of excellent quality. The papers on Natural History and Games, and those entitled "Before History was written," may be specially noticed. There are two serial tales, "The Secret of the Fire Mountain" and "A. Gentleman Adventurer," running through, or nearly through, the volume. "Golden Deeds" are stirring stories of real achievements of heroism. The jokes are more than com- monly good, and, though there are acrostics, enigmas, &c., for the amusement of the reader, there are no prize competitions. The bribery and corruption practised by many of these periodicals for boys and girls are not by any means wholesome. A. line coloured picture, with the title of "The Cry that Saved Rome," serves for frontispiece. It is explained in the text ; but "A. W. G." should have told his younger readers that the opportune reappearance of Camillus when the ransom was being weighed is a fiction invented by Roman patriotism. The details of the picture itself, though effective in themselves, are doubtful. The climb of the Gauls was not up a wall, but up an almost precipitous rock. " Galli per dumos aderant," is Virgil's reading of it in "The Shield of /Einem"