24 JANUARY 1880, Page 24

We have to acknowledge a second edition of A Pocket

of Pebbles; by William Philpot (Macmillan), " picked, sorted, and polished anew," —an edition worth welcome, if only for the excellent "new preface" which has been added, and from which we must quote one sentence, as setting forth as well as possible the raison d'être of such a book as this :—" Do you think that I, living in this year of grace, would be so graceless as to set up a new light ?' The most I ask is that you hold up my pebbles fairly to the old one,—that lighteth every thought that cometh into the mind."