Franconia Stories. By Jacob Abbott. (Hodder and Stoughton.)— We do
not know whether these stories are old or new. If they are new, Mr. Abbott, whose "Young Christian" forms one of our earliest recol- lections of "Sunday reading," must be a veteran of literature. Fran- conia, our readers must understand, is somewhere in New England, and the stories accordingly describe American life. They are very didactic indeed, but they do not draw the common contrast of the good boy and the bad with a disagreeable rigour. " Phemey," for instance, the inferior character in the first tale, is represented with much good about him, and Stuyvesant, the superior one, is not by any means a prig. They are simply and prettily told ; they have a purpose, but it is not brought into an overwhelming prominence, and they have one distinctly amusing person, the French lad nicknamed "Beechnut," who is a humourist, besides being an excellent young man. On the whole, we find the book readable, and can recommend it to those who can be satisfied with a very simple diet.
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