"With All My Worldly Goods I Thee Endow." By G.
Washington Moon. (Routledge and Sons.)—Mr. Washington Moon is anxious to have the words which form the title of his story struck out of the Marriage Service. They are false, he says, and being false they invalidate the whole, and consequently "nine-tenths of the titles and inherited estates in England are not in the possession of their rightful owners," the children born of marriages contracted in such words being illegitimate. May we venture to suggest that it is a poor consolation to the woman who does not get the worldly goods thus promised to her, to be assured that she is not a wife at all, and that her children are bastards ? After delivering his soul in this way, Mr. Moon goes on in his preface to denounce the practice of borrowing books : "It seems to me that if a book is not your own by right of purchase or of gift, you ought, in honour, to abstain from reading it, unless it belongs to a public library." This, we fear, is hardly even a counsel of perfection. And we regret to say that, in our experience, the person "who was mean enough, and callous enough, to ask even an author ! for the loan of one of his books," is more common than he seems to be in Mr. Moon's. People are even brazen enough to consider it a compliment ! Surely, too, Mr. Moon would make any sacrifice to make the momentous lesson which he wishes to teach as widely heard as possible. We cannot hold out the hope that readers will find Mr. Washington Moon's novel as entertaining as his preface.
We have received the yearly issue (March 23rd, 1889—March 15th, 1890) of Work, "an illustrated magazine of practice and theory for all workmen, professional and amateur," edited by Francis Young (Cassell and Co.) ; Church Work : Mission Life, edited by the Rev. John George Deed, M.A. (Wells Gardner, Darton, and Co.) ; and of The British Weekly Pulpit (British Weekly Office).
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