As You Like It. Illustrative of a Great Sovereign. A
Christmas Story. By Lyulph. (Ward, Lock, and Tyler.)—This is a clever and ingenious story, by a writer who has already contributed two which were worth remembering to the fast melting crowd of previous Christ- mas stories. It contains a surprise for the reader, who does not suspect a political purpose in it until many chapters have been read, and his interest in the domestic history which it unfolds has been thoroughly aroused. When we perceive the writer's purpose, we also become aware of how cleverly he has collected the threads of the story into the knot which he outs with the sword to be drawn in the next great war, as his prophetic mind perceives it. Wp prefer the domestic to the prophetic portion, the orphan children and their gallant protector to the brilliant adventurer and the Prussian "Battle of Dorking," but the contrivance which renders the two strains of interest and of narrative compatible far surpasses in ingenuity and finish the ordinary machinery by which Christmas stories are tacked together. The character of Madrosin, who begins as a street Arab, and ends—but we must not spoil the story by telling how he ends—is strikingly original, and the author contrives to utilise his manifold reading about many lands pleasantly.
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