TWILIGHT LAND.*
IT is very difficult to state with anything like precision the merits or faults of a book of fairy-tales, or to give intelligible reasons for liking or disliking it. One can do little more than say in arbitrary fashion,—This is good and readable. Readable, and that in a quite eminent degree, we have found Mr. Howard Pyle's Twilight Land to be. It is a large octavo of more than three hundred and fifty pages, but we got from cover to cover with very little skipping, and felt sorry to have arrived at our journey's end. The one fault we have to find with the writer is that he makes the tellers of his stories interfere too often with a comment or even with a moral. These things should be told with perfect gravity ; there should not be a hint that there is anything out of the common in them ; above all, there should be no moralising. "In he ran "—" he " is the magician when he finds that the soldier has cheated him by flying away with his wishing. stool—" through a crack of the door (and mischief has got into many a man's house through a smaller hole, for the matter of that)." That is very true, doubtless ; but it is an impertinence. We do not read these things for edification. The fault, however, is rare, and seems to become rarer as we read on.
Whether any of Mr. Howard Pyle's stories are absolutely new we cannot say. We are not sure that it would be a recom- mendation if they were. Reminiscences, of course, are common in them. There are all the things which are indispensable in such collections of stories, the talisman of Solomon, the im- prisoned Genie who waits on the man whom chance has made his master, the Sleeping Princess, and above all, the youngest son who turns out to be so much better, wiser, and more fortu- nate than his elder brothers (for if there is a lesson taught by fairy-lore, it is that there is a virtue in being the youngest of three). One analogy that is new to us is to be found in the "Salt of Life," where we have an echo of the story of Lear and his daughters. "How much do you love me P " asked the old King, who was minded to divide his kingdom among his three sons according to the measure of their affection. "As a mountain of gold," said the eldest ; "as a mountain of silver," said the second. And they received an appropriate share. "I love you as I love salt," said the youngest, and was banished for his answer, which, however, he does not fail to justify. Perhaps some one may suspect a moral here ; if so, he had better turn to the story of the two Kings, the father who writes on his palace-wall, "All Things are as Fate wills," and the son who writes, "All Things are as Man does," but finds that his father was wiser than he. The most direct suggestion of a well-known original is in "The Fruit of Happiness," where the servant travels with an angel, and sees the strange dealings of his guide with those whom he visits. But here too the variations from the story of the " Hermit " are large enough to justify the new version. The illustrations are numerous and uncommonly good, though now and then they would have been improved by a little more carefulness in the drawing. Twilight Land is a very pretty gift-book indeed.
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