An Ocean Chase. By Harry Collingwood. (Griffith, Farran, and Co.)—The
growing practice of introducing ultra-senti- mental love affairs into books which are either intended for boys, or are certainly to be read almost exclusively by them, is rather objectionable. But if it be regarded as at all permissible, • The Handsome Brandon, : a Story for Girls. By Katharine Tynan. London : Blackie and Bon. then Mr. Collingwood's account of Dick Berrington's ocean-chase for his "lost love," otherwise "sweet Eva Hepburn, an Australian beauty and heiress," must be allowed to be at once highly in- genious and eminently spirited. The detective " business " at the beginning—the discovery that the spiriting away of Eva is the work of a Russian adventuress and Countess, aided and abetted by a weak rather than wicked English uncle—is, of course, stale, yet it is not ineffective. It is, however, when the chase of the Russian Olga' by the English' Evangeline' actually begins that the reader's attention is thoroughly aroused. Mr. Coiling. wood gives Dick Barrington and his crew abundance of adven- tures. They have to fight with cyclones and pirates, and to fall in with innumerable derelict barques and foundering steamers, before, in Magellan Straits, they run down the Olga.' Even after that, and before the happiness associated with marriage bells is allowed, the 'Olga' has to founder. The story is lively from start to finish ; while a little—but not too much—useful information is insinuated into it. Practice will soon make Mr. Collingwood perfect as a teller of adventures by sea.
Fifty-two Holiday Stories for Boys and Fifty-two Sunday Stories for Boys and Girls constitute, along with Fifty-two Holiday Stories for Girls, Mr. Alfred Miles's very valuable contribu- tions to the gift-book literature of the season. Mr. Miles has been able, as usual when preparing his volume for boys, to enlist the services of such masters in the art of story-telling as Mr. Henty and Mr. Manville Fenn. There is scarcely a poor story in the collection; the military and naval tales, however, are the most read- able. Presentiments of evil, of course, figure in such, but one is glad to gather from " A Death Warning," by Mr. Henty, in which the man who gets the warning lives to be chaffed by his friend, who gets no warning, and is yet nearly killed, that there is a tendency among present-day story-tellers to laugh such things to scorn. That truth is stranger than fiction—in spite of Grin- Rougemont—is pretty conclusively proved by Captain R. K. Clarke's "Mutiny of the Frank N. Thayer," which certainly shows in a marvellous fashion what can be done by a couple of determined men, even though they be but coolies. Much wisdom is shown by Mr. Miles in the selection of suitable Sunday stories; too much prominence is not given to what may be described as the George Washington style of "goodness." These volumes, the character of the illustrations in which deserves a word of commendation, are published by Messrs. Hutchinson and Co.
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