The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's. By Talbot Baines Reed.
(Religious Tract Society.)—We quite understand why so many requests have been made to publish this story in a separate form. It appeared first in the Boy's Own Paper, where, of course, it would have most chance of being read by those for whom it is meant. There is no one who has more insight into the character of the genuine English schoolboy than Mr. Heed; no one who knows better his hatred of meanness, his wonderful impulsiveness, his capacity for mischief, and his too often hasty judgment. Mr. Reed gives us a wonderfully vivid view of healthy English school-life. Indeed, there can be no doubt that his reproductions of the quarrels, the hates, and jealousies of the public-school boy is by far the most accurate and realistic that any one has yet penned. "Greenfield Junior" is exactly what an honest and sensible lad may become ; though, indeed, he appears unnecessarily " green " in the incident of the "entrance papers." Surely a boy who at any rate talks fairly good grammar, could not, even when coming from home, have had so little commonerense as to think "Oh! Alz !" constitutes a sentence. One of the characters in the plot goes to the bad as a matter of course ; this we think perhaps the weakest part, and in a double sense the weakest character. Still, every story must have a plot, at least to interest a boy ; but, on the whole, the most attractive portions of the book are those which deal with the ordinary incidents of school.life.
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