4 FEBRUARY 1888, Page 22

CURRENT LITERATURE.

It is really remarkable how the editor of Temple Bar manages to keep up with the time in its demand for fiction without neglecting the interests of his original clientele that asks for armchair-reading of the historico-anecdotical character. Three serial stories by such authors as Mrs. Parr, Miss Fothergill, and Mr. Norris, ought to satisfy the most eager appetite for literary food of this sort, more especially as "Loyalty George" and "From Moor Isles" promise to be among the very best works Mrs. Parr and Miss Fothergill have respectively written. That being the case, however, readers of Temple Bar might very well have been spared "The Five Horse-Shoes," a poor story, by Mr. Hawley Smart. An excellent contribution to the armchair department of Temple Bar is a paper on "Jean Siffrein Maury," the remarkable ecclesiastic of the French Revolutionary period who with- stood Mirabeau and the sans-culottes to the face, but did not with- stand the blandishments of Napoleon. Mr. T. A. Trollope's "Some Supplementary Wiceamical Reminiscences," though not devoid of interest, are rather thin.