29 AUGUST 1885, Page 23

Notes for Boys (and their Fathers). By an Old Boy.

(Elliot Stock.)—The author is cheerfully and unaffectedly didactic. Though he does not give much point to his remarks, and is, for such a topic, somewhat deficient in illustration, he is always sensible, and for the most part readable. It would be difficult to say the precise good which is done by this kind of exhortation and precept ; on the other hand, it is quite certain that any lad who world lay all this in- struction to heart would be very much the better for it.—We are not so favourably impressed with another book, which may be mentioned along with the preceding, The Ways of Women, by Sidney Yorke (J. and R. Maxwell).—It is rather distasteful to see a writer cataloguing the qualities and defects, the "moral virtues and contrary vices," of women, just as some naturalist might catalogue the facts that he dis- covers about some new animal or plant. The author seems to pose as a superior creature, speaking with condescending interest of another, cognate indeed, but inferior. So a keeper at the "Zoo" might discourse on the habits of a peculiarly human-looking baboon. After all, "homo " means " woman " as well as "man"