12 NOVEMBER 1892, Page 24

The Two Dorothys. By Mrs. Herbert Martin. (Blackie.)- Dorothy the

elder is a veteran author ; Dorothy the younger is a girl, her great-niece, who aspires to follow the same occupation. Her ambitions, her humiliations, the way in which she is called back to more prosaic duties, and in which she accepts the call, are well described. We are inclined to grumble at any encourage-

ment that is given to literary aspirants, of whom there is a multi- tude beyond all counting. Still, Mrs. Martin writes with good sense ; the way is not a primrose path by any means, and the young heroine does not achieve anything like a decided success till she is six-and-twenty. Mr. Gordon Brown's illustrations are not as happy as usual, or he could not have read the story that he has to illustrate. "How changed he looked ! " exclaims the author, when she is describing how Dorothy came back to nurse her little brother. But this does not mean that a child of two had changed into a child of eight or nine ; such we certainly see in the illustration that faces p. 162.