GIFT-BOOKS.
PETER PAN AGAIN.*
E are very grateful to Mr. J. M. Barrie for bringing Peter to closer quarters. We have known and loved him, many of us, across the footlights, but here we have him under our very eyes. It is not so much for the children among Peter's admirers that this has been done. They, we feel sure, were more than content with what they had. But the " grown-ups " will welcome Mr. Barrie, and Mr. Barrie is at his best interpreting the "Never, Never Land" to them, telling them some more not only about the inhabitants of that delectable region but about Mr. and Mrs. Darling. Who will not rejoice to hear of the latter that her mind " was like tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East: however many you discover there is always one more " ? As to Mr. Darling, we were never quite sure that Mr. Barrie was fair to him, and we are still in doubt. He behaves very handsomely in the last chapter, but then he is not permitted to have even known of the innermost box in Mrs. Darling's mind. On the whole we think that Mr. Barrie's attitude to him and fathers in general is that they are a necessary but unimportant part of creation. Then there is the inevitable end. Wendy grows up. Peter, for whom time does not exist, forgets to come for several years, and then, never dreaming of change, returns to find a different Wendy. Mr. Barrie -knows how to do these things, but he has never done better than this—Peter sobbing on the nursery floor and Wendy, who has forgotten how to comfort him. Of course we are not left with this tragedy. Jane, Wendy's daughter, is to take her place, and so on, while children are "gay and innocent and heartless." Perhaps we feel that there could never again be quite such another as Wendy, but we are conscious that this would certainly not be Peter's point of view.
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