Small Boys in Big Boots : a Story for Children
of All Ages. By Archibald Clavering Gunter. (Routledge and Sons.)—This is a very clever book, worthy of the author of " Mr. Barnes of New York." But we demur to the description of it as a "story for children of all ages." Certainly not, we should say, a story for children, properly so called. There is a good deal of real fun, fun, too, to which no one need object, though boys and girls on the other side of the Atlantic seem to be far more " audacious " than they are on this, and are certainly not good examples. But perhaps we have a sufficiency of examples, both good and frightful, in the literature which abounds at this time of year. But such a villain as Whiticar is quite out of place in a book to be read by children. A rascal who plots an elopement with another man's wife, and shams suicide as a way of carrying off his ill-gotten gains, is not a personage to whom we would willingly introduce an English child. Perhaps in the States, where a young gentleman of six orders his meals on his own account, things may be different.
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