29 AUGUST 1874, Page 21

A Voice from Another World. By W. S. L. S.

(James Parker and Co.)—A person who hides a pair of wings, "larger far than wings of condor or of albatross—glorious wings, richly adorned in bars of many glowing lines, like wings of humming-bird or bird-of-paradise "— under the unassuming disguise of a brown cloak, and presents himself to mankind as "a young, deformed man of short stature," has at least novelty and ingenuity to recommend him. He would be a treasure in the packing business, if he could apply to its details the skill which compressed a pair of wings answer- ing to the above description into the dimensions of an ordinary hump. But when, added to this, he is called Aleriel the Wanderer, when he comes from another planet, and is deeply versed in all the learning of ours,—except history ; when he flies up to the mountain- tops, and frightens whole parishes out of their wits by allowing his -"glorious eyes" to emit flashes of light which have the extraordinary property of projecting themselves into space in concentric circles, it must be acknowledged that W. S. L. S. has introduced a very un- common individual into the ranks of fiction. Aleriel the Wanderer tells the person to whom he reveals himself and his wings many wonderful things, and shows him many extraordinary sights, by which the author desires to urge upon mankind that "the con- ceptions of super-human beings, of a material heaven and of an