Ei/don Grange. By Andrew Clark, M.A. Illustrated by Alison Phillips.
(Hamilton, Adams, and Co.)—The story of Eildon dvange has for its plot a long and weary struggle between St. Ringan and the fairies for a certain beautiful and fertile farm, a most delightful motif for a lover of fairy-tales. St Bingos, brought up as a soldier, takes the cowl, and becomes head of a brotherhood, and bethinks him of a country grange where the monks can recruit themselves. He buys Eildon Grange, which the fairies have made as unpleasant as they can for all the tenants that had previously taken it, and, accepting the challenge from " the men in green," begins the stubborn struggle which, after many startling and seemingly hopeless defeats, finally goes in the saint's favour. This happy result is the fruit of an ingenious stratagem of one Phadraic, a monk, whose life had been full of remarkable vicissitudes, he having been in turn a chief and a serf, his misfortunes arising from an evil fate which overtook him every seventh year. The illustrations by Mr. Alison Phillips are, of course, very good, and grotesque and funny as they are, possess a distinct charm and piquancy. Eitdon Grange is a decidedly picturesque fairy-tale, and if the calm and somewhat diffuse style becomes at times monotonous, the interest is always vigorously kept up.
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