19 DECEMBER 1885, Page 24

Folk and Fairy Tales. By Mrs. Barton Harrison. (Ward and

Downey.)—A number of curios and articles of vertu in a New York drawing-room tell their various stories to a little boy, and thereby amuse him, and, we should believe and hope, not a few other little boys and girls. Hans Andersen, of course, is the master of this kind of story-telling, and we cannot read any book of this sort without thinking of him ; but Mrs. Barton Harrison is a very apt and skilful disciple, and there are not a few of these,—they number some twenty altogether—which are well worthy of the magician himself. Mr. Walter Crane seconds the author's pen most excellently with his pencil.