7 JANUARY 1899, Page 35

Dolly the Romp. By Florence Warden. (F. V. White and

Co., —Children who are always in mischief or making mistakes art more apt to be tiresome in fiction than in real life. In life there are intervals of sobriety and sanity; in fiction they go on from one thing to another without pause. Doll Bargrave is no excep- tion to this rule. She is sometimes amusing and sometimes pathetic, but she wearies us. As for the revolution which she works in the ways and thoughts of the grown-up people among whom she comes, it is beyond belief. Such revolutions do not take place. The episode of Margery would, we think, have been better left out.