Within Sound of Great Tom. (Blackwell, Oxford.)—These are simple stories,
with some good in them, and certainly no harm. Professor Dorchester, who was a success in Oxford, but not a success in the House of Commons, suggests its original too readily, but there is nothing spiteful about it. " The Big Row at St. Jude's " is more history than fiction. Every one remembers how a certain tutor was screwed up and a College sent down. The ladies, of course, as suits the altered circumstances of the time, play a considerable part in most of these dramas. In the fifties, and even the sixties, men used to speak of the engaged undergraduate with compassion as one who had most certainly ruined all his chances in the Schools.—This same difference between Oxford as it is and as it was a generation ago is forcibly borne in upon us when we read Voces Academicae, by C. Grant Robertson, M.A. (Methuen and Co.) It is very full of wit, and the wit is mostly of the sheet-lightning kind. But what a strange travesty of a University these pictures seem to present to us. The mere localities where the dialogues are held are enough. " A Garden-Party in the Garden of Lady Godiva Hall," "A Semi-Academic Bazaar," " In the Halls of Harmony," where we hear of the performers and the audience at an amateur Musical Society. The author's tone is somewhat cynical, but who could resist the temptation amidst surroundings so incongruous ?
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