My Kalulu, Prince, King, and Slave: a Story of Central
Africa. By Henry M. Stanley. (Sampson Low and Co.)—This is a speci- men of Mr. Stanley's skill in utilising the material which he picks up in his erratic and adventurous life. He has contrived to work tip the experiences of his brief sojourn in Central Africa into a very -exciting tale of adventure, into which he presses all manner of men and beasts. The narrative is clever and varied, and its improbabilities are among its chief attractions. It lacks those fine touches of detail which might raise a fiction of this kind to the highest rank, by making it so convincing that the juvenile reader would feel it must bo true; that Baluln really existed, was actually sold into and out of slavery sr in the manner herein described ; and did in sober earnest slay leopards and crocodiles according to the text and the pictures. To only a few of the great story-tellers does this faculty belong ; the author of My Kalulu has it not, even when he is dealing with well- known and acknowledged realities. He pitches the tone of feeling among the African peoples and their Chiefs much higher than we should have supposed to be natural or indeed possible, but this is a portion of the licence of fiction, and necessary to make the boys, Selim and Kalulu, who are Arab and Negro respectively—the two conflicting types—interesting. The wild-beast stories are charming, and the illustrations very geed.
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