Two - Legs, and other Stories. By Carl Ewald. Translated from the
Danish by Alex. Teixeira de Mattes. (Methuen and Co. 6s.) —Our author's idea of the "fairy-tale" which a few wise men and many women and children will prefer to anything else is somewhat strange and, we must own, not attractive. We may call it a sermon, very powerfully expressed, on the text " Nature is one with rapine." Two-Legs is man, and we are told how the last comer into the world subdues it for himself, devours what is suitable for his food, enslaves the creatures which can do his work, and imprisons the lion to make a show. Then in the second story we hear how the hermit-crab and the sea-anemone make a sort of alliance, each being always on his guard lest the other should eat him up. and live till a craw devours them both. So the other animals behave just as man behaves. Even the trees do much the same. The beech-trees supplant the oak, and when the oak complains they answer: " We call it competition, and it's no discovery of ours. It's that which rules the world." If this is what is to please and instruct "a few old and weary men and a few young men with ardent and eager souls and many women and thousands of children," we are sorry for them.
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