9 JUNE 1894, Page 27

A Study in Colour. By Alice Skinner. (T. Fisher Unwin.)—

The author has been living among coloured people, and has two observations to make on the result of her experience. They have as little regard to morals, as far as the Seventh and Eighth Com- mandments are concerned, as can well be, and they have a very great regard to colour. One might put it thus, that a mother with a yellow or whity-brown child born out of wedlock is better thought of than her neighbour with a quite black child of legiti- mate origin. These facts, if facts they are, are enforced with no little iteration in this "Study in Colour." The little book—one of the "Pseudonym Library "—is agreeably written, and there are pleasant sketches of scenery and life ; but it is certainly monotonous ; we may say that there are only two notes in the tune, and that neither of them is very sweet.—The Rousing of Mrs. Potter, and other Stories. By Jane Nelson. (Same publisher.) —Here we have eleven sketches, chiefly of life, city and rural, in the Western States of America. Over most of them there is the usual melancholy cast. The English-speaking race over there seems to take its pleasure and its work very sadly.