The Quiver. (Cassell and Co.)—This magazine continues to fulfil its
purpose of supplying "Sunday and General Reading" very well. Fiction, which, we need hardly say, is of a serious type, occupies but a moderate space ; the directly instructive element is predominant. This is just as it should be. There is more than enough of even harmless fiction, which the world did very well without at the very best periods of its intellectual growth. We may mention among the contents of the volume five papers on "Great Centres of Religious Activity." The five are Edinburgh, Manchester, Leeds, Hull, and Newcastle-on-Tyne. All are copiously illustrated with portraits. Of a kindred character are the papers headed "The Penniless Poor in London," giving a variety of information which, painful as much of it necessarily is, we ought not to be without. With these should be mentioned Mr. R. Garfield's "Among the Russian Jews in the East End." This is a curiously interesting account. These people, poor as they are, have yet something which raises them above the level of the quite degraded English class. They have a national hope, for they believe that the Messiah will come to rescue them, and they have a religion, to which they cling, and in which, though it may be hard for us to see anything beyond ceremonial, there is an elevating power. The Quiver has been commending, we see, to its clientele a claim for providing playgrounds for "Slum Children," a work in which it will co-operate with the Kyrie Society. This plan of associating young readers in charitable works is one of the best features of such magazines as the Quiver. An object appealing more strongly to the sympathies of the young it would be difficult to find.
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