25 DECEMBER 1886, Page 23

Our Little Ones. (Nelson and Sons.)—This collection of " illus-

trated stories and poems for little people "—and an excellent collec- tion it is—comes, we may conjecture, from the other side of the Atlantic. The engravings have an American look—we might say an American excellence—and the contributors' names are leas familiar to us than they should be. And in the little story of "Mary and Dog Carlo," the "railway track," as it is called, winding among mountains has a suggestion of the Pacific lines. But wherever the book Comes from, there is no doubt of its merit ; the rhymes are simple and good, the stories suited to the children without any arrie're pensde of pleasing the grown-up, a very common fault in this kind of literature.