CURRENT LITERATURE.
GIFT-BOOKS.
Six Thousand Tons of Gold. (A. D. Innes and Co.)—In virtue of the scenes of adventure which constitute the leading feature of this book and its general tone of wild improbability, it may be regarded as an addition to Christmas literature. From another standpoint, it may be looked upon as a contribution to the literature at once of the economics and of the ethics of currency. But as every well-constituted boy can easily skip ethics, economics, and politics, perhaps he should be allowed to regard that part of the book which tells of the marvellous Patagonian adventures, of the worthy old Scotehman Fraser, and the not less worthy young American Brent, as giving character to the whole. At all events, those chapters which relate the finding of the gold, and the devotion of a portion of it to philanthropic purposes, are more interesting than that final chapter which tells of its con- signment, as an international nuisance and danger, to the Atlantic. In spite of the modest and heroic bearing of Robert Brent, this last chapter has a stagey and artificial look. As a whole, however, Six Thousand Tons of Gold is a most interesting and readable story, and its author never descends to the merely commonplace in style.
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