19 DECEMBER 1896, Page 23

Sappers and Miners. By G. Manville Fenn. (F. V. White

and Co.)—Mr. Manville Fenn is at his beat in his Cornish stories, and with a couple of British boys and an old tin-mine he contrives to keep the reader's attention fairly well on the narrative. There is too much dialogue to our thinking, but the average boy does quite as much talking as anything else, and so will not find the pages of dialogue in which Gwyn and Joe and Tom Dinds take part tedious. Boys who know anything about mines or who are interested in them will find Sappers and Miners replete with incidents, accidents, and trying experiences of the two heroes, who spend most of their time, unwillingly be it said, at the bottom of the mine.