1 NOVEMBER 1873, Page 24

The Golden Shell. By Linda Mazini. (Macmillan.)—The "Golden Shell," it

may be necessary to inform our readers, is the Bay of Palermo. The little volume before us gives, in the shape of the narrative of a visit paid by an English girl and her mother to certain Sicilian cousins, a very pleasant picture of life in that pleasant place. Rosalie, half Sicilian, half English, and the noisy, troublesome, but not evil-disposed Ciccio, are pleasant little people to know. Young people will enjoy the story of how the cousins enjoyed themselves, without feeling the hopeless envy with which, surrounded by the signs of a premature winter, and with unexampled coal bills looming in the future, we think of the blue sea, and sunny air, and ever-green hills of the "Golden Shell."