CURRENT LITERATURE.
We have received the annual issues of various " Peerages," all of them established books of reference, with merits and con- veniences of their own, and so carefully kept up to a high standard of correctness that it would be ungracious, even if it were possible, to make any comparison between them. The largest and, in one sense, the most complete is Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage. By Sir Bernard Burke. Edited by his Sons. (Harrison and Sons.)-In this volume we have the ancestry and the collateral branches of all families in which there is some hereditary honour. It is now in its fifty-eighth year.—Debrett's Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage, and Companionoge (Dean and Son) is another very familiar name. Indeed, it is easily the doyen of Peerages, for it has attained
the patriarchal age of one hundred and eighty-three years.
The volume has the recommendation of having been "personally revised by the nobility."—The Windsor Peerage (edited by the Editor of Dod's Parliamentary Companion and Edward Wal- ford, M.A.) is a very convenient book, well arranged, and of convenient size. For practical reference, when it is enough to ascertain what is to be learnt about the actual holder of a title, nothing could be better.—The Royal Blue Book (Kelly and Co.) has a wider range than the works mentioned above, taking in many persons who, though without title or order, fill a consider- able place in society. The Blue Book has two issues annually,- this in January and another in May. It is in its seventy-fourth year.—Dod's Peerage (Sampson Low. Marston, and Co.) has reached its fifty-eighth year.—We may take this opportunity of welcoming the fifty-third issue of Thom's Official Directory (Thom and Co., Dublin). This, as our readers are probably aware, has for its speciality copious information about Irish affairs. The usual particulars, official and other, about the government of the Empire generally, are given ; so far " Thom's " occupies common ground with other books of the class. But it has of its own much interesting matter about Ireland. An example, one that might surely be imitated, is the giving in the street-directory of the rateable value of every house. —.Ferguson's Ceylon Handbook and Directory, edited by J. Ferguson (Ferguson and Co , Colombo ; Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co.)
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