CURRENT LITERATURE.
GIFT-BOOKS.
Messrs. Routledge publish a gaily coloured book of various nursery-rhymes, under the title of Mother Goose, and The House that Jack Built (which, by-the-way, is an adaptation of a Polish Passover hymn). The speciality of the latter volume is that it is shaped to resemble the house itself, having projections that resemble gables and chimneys. This kind of realism is also to be seen in A Apple Pie, illustrated by Gordon Browne (and well illustrated, we need hardly say), and A Frog He Would a-Wooing Go, also well illustrated by "W." Both are engraved and printed by Edmund Evans. Here one book has the outline of a pie, with a crust that has "risen" in such a way as to show a skilful cook, and the other a perhaps less obirious frog.—From Messrs. Rout- ledge, again, we get Archie : Illustrated Stories in Prose and Verse. The stories are sufficiently good; the illustrations, by A. W. Cooper, A. T. Elwes, M. E. Edwards, F. A. Fraser, Hal Ludlow, and E. J. Wheeler, mostly very good.—The Railway Book gives "Tales, Sketches, and Descriptions for Young People" of various matters connected with railways. These matters have plenty of interest and pathos in them. The old coaching days, for all their picturesqueness, cannot compare with them, so vast and varied is the life connected with them. This is a book which we can certainly recommend.---Little Wide-Awakes Primer, by Mrs. Sale- Barker, a picture-alphabet, in and out of order, examples for writing, and short reading-lessons.—The Noah's Ark Painting- Book gives on opposite pages pictures and blanks which are to be coloured like them. The drawings are not too intricate, nor the colours difficult to match.—Oranges and Lemons, the Bells of St. Clement's.
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