4 DECEMBER 1886, Page 23

The Boys who Lived on the Road from Long Ago

to Now. By Jane Andrews. (Mackie and Son.)—Miss Andrews begins with "Sabin, the Aryan boy who came down to the plains of the Indus," and so takes us through Persia, Greece, Rome, Saxon England, New England, &c., down to "Frank Wilson, the Boy of 1885." The idea is a good one, and it has been well carried out. It would be possible to criticise some little matters here and there. An Athenian citizen would hardly call his daughter " Thratta." It would be a lifelong reproach to her. But, on the whole, the accessories have been carefully and correctly got up. The style is perhaps a little two laboriously simple.