The Confectioners. By William Caine and John Fairbairn. (J. W.
Arrowsmith, Bristol. 3s. 6d.)—This is a highly humorous extravaganza in which the authors project us, so to speak, into a future when adulteration, substitution, and the sham system in general shall have reached its climax. We see Andrew Makepeace Gruntle, for instance, a marvellous babe, who out of Thames mud and the moss from a garden wall made a tasty pap which deceived his mother till she was alarmed by incipient rickets in the child. But specimens from a book of this kind are of little use. One by one they may seem silly ; the effect is produced by the aggrega- tion. The authors keep up their fooling at its top height, and never flag. This is as good a book of the kind—a kind common enough, but seldom sucsessf el—as we have seen for some time.
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