Roger Kyffin's Ward. By W. H. G. Kingston. (Routledge and
Sons.)—A tale of the end of the last century, with panics of French invasion, the mutiny at the Nero, prose-gangs, smugglers, wrecks at sea, gambling in lotteries, and other sources of excitement, will com- mend itself to youthful readers. Mr. Kingston's hero goes through all these adventures. He takes his grandmother to the public drawing of the lottery at the Guildhall, and is under the disagreeable necessity of carrying out her dead body when all the tickets she has taken come out blanks. He afterwards becomes a clerk in a City house, is led astray by one of his colleagues, and is accused of forgery. There he falls a victim to the press-gang, is wrecked, passes some time on a raft, but is picked up by a ship which does not seem to have been called the Osprey. and is luckily saved, for the purpose of being sentenced to death as one of Parker's followers in the famous mutiny. How his betrothed intercedes first with the King and then with the much more formidable Mr. Pitt must be gathered from Mr. Kingston's own pages.
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