SOME OF THE PRINCIPAL CHRISTMAS BOOKS.—II.* WE do not hesitate

to give a high place among the Christmas books of the year to the memoir of Randolph Caldeoott, one whose pencil charmed so many with its graceful humour. It is written by a friend and fellow-labourer, one who knew the artist well, written

most sympathetically, and adorned with a copious and representative selection of drawings, many of which have not been before pub-

lished. These drawings are nothing less than delightful ;—so various, so genial, and so fall of taste and, when the occasion serves, of a sense of beauty, are they. Randolph Caldeoott began life as a banker's clerk, and kept to his desk steadily for more than ton years. He did his clerk's work well, but he gave his off-time tl art. And to art in 1872 he finally devoted himself. Fourteen years afterwards, having then not quite completed his fortieth year, he passed away in Florida, whither he had gone in a vain search for health. Of the charm of these drawings it is impossible to give any ides,—happily, most of our readers know well enough what Randolph Caldecott could do. It will be sufficient to say that they will got here a notion, which it would not be easy to obtain otherwise, first of the growth, and then of the variety of his artistic genius. Among the multitude of illustrations, not far off two hundred in number, it is difficult to make a selection ; but we may notice, among the early efforts, " Coming of Age of the Pride of the Family," " Looking out for the ' Graphic' Balloon," a delightful little caricature of Joho Bull, Sawney, and Pat watching for the stranger that is coming across the Atlantic ; and "The Stage Coachman," from the illustra- tions of Washington Irving's "Old Christmas." Caldeoott never did anything better than this. For a specimen of the gaiety of his every- day fun, let the reader turn to p. 92, where he writes to a cor- respondent that the quiet of their country existence has been dis- turbed by the proposal of the boy Sharp to take the donkey-oart "for a few sultanas. We stroked our beards, but as Sharp seemed bent upon the affair, reluctantly consented." Perhaps the joke looks flat in print, but the drawing of " what we anxiously expected," the boy Sharp scarcely visible, as he drives, among the voluminous dresses of three stout Turkish ladies, is irresistible.

A notice of what was, perhaps, Randolph Caldeoott's best piece of continuous work may appropriately follow what has just been said about the history of his early artistic career. It was three or &dr years after the time when he carried into effect his resolution to devote himself entirely to art, that Randolph Caldecott brought

• L Randolph Caldeoott r his Early Art Career. By Henry Blackburn. (Sampson Low and Co.)-2. Old Christmas and Bracebridge Halt. Illustrated by Randolph Celdeoott. (Ifaemillan.)-3. Rip Van Winkle. Illustrated by Gordon Browne. (Bleat° and Bon.)—S. Notes and Jotting, from Animal Life. By the late Frank Bookland. (Smith and Elder.)-5. Brynard the Los. (J. O. Nimmo.)-5. A Final Reckoning. By G. A. Monty. (Blaokle and Son.)— 7. The Bravest of the Brow. By G. A. Henty. (Mackie and Son.)-13. Under Bayard's Banner. By Henry Frith. (Cassell and Co.)-9. On Special Service. By Dr. Gordon Stables. (Hodder and Stoughton.)-10. Jack Hooper : his Adventures at Sea and in South Africa. By Commander Lorett Cameron. (Nelson and lions.)-11. Astray t a Tale of Country Life. By Charlotte M. Yongo, and others. (Eintebard and Oe.)-1•L Pour-Winds Pans. By Mrs. Moleswerth. (Macmillan.) oat, in conjunction with Mr. James D. Cooper, the engraver, the two charming pieces in which Washington Irving rivalled so happily the humour of Addison himself. Old Christmas appeared in 1875, and Bracebridge Hall in the following year. Caldecott's pencil had not, indeed, then attained the sure touch which it reached in later days; and the illustrations might therefore be said to be unequal, if all, without exception, were not good in their way. Some are simply perfect. The " Coachman " lives for ever as the ideal embodiment of an extinct type; the "Fair Julia" is of a type happily not extinct, but never more worthily represented. Of a different style is the " Gipsy Girl," and in another, very different still, " Old Christy," the huntsman. The pictures are more than a hundred in number, and make this volume, paper and print being appropriately good, one of the most charming of the season.

We need not compare Mr. Gordon Browne with Randolph Calde- cott ; but we may say that he has rendered the humour of Rip Van Winkle with excellent taste and skill. The drawings are forty-six in number, and it is difficult to name the best. "Rip Fishing," on p. 27 ; " Rip Scolded by his Wife," the latter a quite admirable presentation of a termagant ; and " Rip the Second," like and yet unlike his father, strike us as being particularly good. The dogs, too, are as good as the men, witness the unlucky Wolf on p. 37, when he is under the depressing influence of Mrs. Rip's near neighbourhood.

We welcome heartily a new edition of Frank Backland's most entertaining and instructive book, a book so well known and appre- ciated that we need do no more than call attention to its reappearance. We have no wish to speak with any want of respect of the very meritorious efforts which are made for the entertainment of young readers by the writers of ingenious fiction ; but we may say that any one who wants to give a really valuable gift to a lad, one that will teach him, first, to use his eyes to some purpose on the world about him, and secondly, to regard the lower orders of his fellow-creatures with a kindly interest, cannot do better than present him with Frank Backland's Notes and Jottings from Animal Life.

Whence the original story of Reynard the Fox came from, no one exactly knows. But about 1793 Goethe put it into the shape which it will probably keep for the readers of many generations to come. Goethe's poem was rendered into English heroic verse by Mr. T. J. Arnold a little more than thirty years ago. Mr. Arnold's verse is easy and readable, about the same distance removed from prose as is Horace in his " Satires." The illustrations are from Wilhelm von Kanlbach's well-known drawings, twelve fall-page India-proof engravings by Joseph Wolf being added. These it is needless to praise. The paper and type are all that could be desired. Altogether, we have here a volume handsome to look at, and, it need hardly be said, entertaining to read.

Mr. Henty himself accurately differentiates his Final Reckoning from his previous works by saying,—"I have left the battle- fields of history, and have written a story of adventure in Australia in the early days when the bushrangers and the natives constituted a real and formidable danger to the settlers." Mr. Henty has never published a more readable, a more carefully constructed, or a better written story than this. A Final Reckoning tells of the quarrels and adventures of Reuben Whitney and Thomas Thorne, who are in the first chapter found attending the same village school in Sussex. Thorne, who is a born scoundrel, does his worst against Whitney, by contriving to have him accused of crimes which he himself commits, including a burglary. Whitney is acquitted of this charge, but the mere fact of his having been tried compels him to leave England for Australia. On his way thither, he makes a powerful friend, by whose aid, when he arrives in Australia, he is promoted to the position of police-officer, entrusted with important " operations " against bushrangers and "black fellows." He routs out the one gang, and gives the other a wholesome lesson. Finally, Whitney shoots down the infamous chief of the bushrangers, who, of coarse, tarns out to be Thorne, and who, confessing to all the crimes laid at his rival's door, clears his reputation. Mr. Henty's plot is strong, and so is his geography. It is a pity, however, that he introduces a love —even although it be only a calf-love—affair into A Final Reckoning. Boys should have nothing to do with love, either in fiction or in actual life, till they get to the lawn-tennis stage of existence.

We think that Mr. Henty, who in The Bravest of the Brave returns to the fields of history, has been happy in the selection of his hero. He explains the reasons why Peterborough may be said to have fallen into oblivion, and has doubtless been successful in rescuing,him from it, for at least the generation of boys of this Christmastide. Peterborough's exploits in Spain, during his campaign of little more than a year, are unique, and universally admitted to be unparalleled in the history of warfare. They were not likely to suffer in the telling of Mr. Henty ; the adventures of the aide-de-camp, Jack, will probably be found to be no less interesting than the marvellous operations of the General himself, in which be takes a leading part. The illustrations are on a par with the merits of the tale and the general get-up of the book.

Under Bayard's Banner is a handsome volume, and though it

contains nearly four hundred pages, it will no doubt not be found too mach for the youthful appetite. The illustrations are good (the young horsewoman at p. 9 would seem to be in rather modern attire), and in knightly keeping with the rest of the book. "Le bon chevalier sans pear et sans reproche" is, of coarse, the central figure ; but the adventures of more than one kindred spirit are interwoven with the exploits of the hero ; and the story abounds with life, and warriors of all descriptions, including kings and emperors. While it provides chapters like "How Gaspard was pursued by the Guard," and " How the Prisoner was brought oat for Execution," the history of the period is by no means neglected ; farther than this a tale for boys can hardly go.

Dr. Gordon Stables has a field and a humour—an essentially Scotch (and Northern Scotch) humour—of his own. Both are seen to advantage in On Special Service. It consists of the adventures on board ship of Colin McLeod, a Highland lad, and is a capital Irish stew of Africa and America, picnics and hand-to-hand fights, wounds and hidden treasure, Portuguese slave-traders and Arab fanatics. In Benbow, Dr. Stables gives a lifelike portrait of a spirited sailor, perhaps of the old school. He also gives a sketch of a drily humorous doctor, who reminds one of Marryat. Oa Special Service is a book that is sure to be enjoyed by boys; and there is not a girl in it.

Commander Cameron has had more experience in writing books of travel for adults than in writing stories of adventure for boys. This may account both for the want of compactness and " go " in plot, and for the air of reality in respect of description which distinguish his Jack Hooper. We confess to having got a little tired of the first half of this book, with its innumerable fights with wild beasts, which, with all respect to Commander Cameron, have an old- fashioned look. When, however, Jack Hooper and his patrons get into difficulties with the Boers, the plot becomes stronger, and the incidents become more exciting. The final struggle between the English settlers under Mr. Penton and the Boers is told with great spirit, and a fall-length portrait of Jan, a tipsy, ill-conditioned, and vindictive Dutchman, is drawn with great, almost malicious, clever. ness. In spite of Mr. Rider Haggard, Commander Cameron has clearly a field open to him as a boys' author in South Africa.

In Astray, four accomplished ladies, all of them most deservedly favourites with the reading public, have put their heads, or at least their pens, together to produce a story. One success they have achieved,—that it would puzzle any critic to apportion the various chapters to their proper authorship. One conjecture we shall venture to make, that Miss Yonge, who is always careful of lights and shades, is not responsible for Marian Forester, the most conceited prig, if prig is of common gender, that ever appeared in fiction. Surely no real young woman could ever have assented to the remark that it is good to hear the other side of a question by saying, " Yes ; because else one can't see how entirely one is in the right." On the whole, too, the book pleases and instructs. Still, we cannot help thinking that any one of the four —(Miss Yonge's associates are Miss M. Bramston, Miss Christabel Coleridge, and Miss Esme Stuart)—would have done something better. One drawback is the perplexing fre- quency of change of scene. The first four chapters are extracts from four several journals. Chapter VI. gives an "explanatory letter" from a seventh character, and the eighth introduces as to another journal-keeper, this time a man of letters. All this is very perplexing. Still, this is a good story, and it is told, not so well, indeed, as it might have been, but still effectively.

After the realism, and, for the most part, somewhat commonplace realism, of most of the season's books, it is refreshing to get the delicate fancy with which Mrs. Moleeworth knows how to inform her work. Four-Winds Farm is a story of the early days of genius. The young child of the moor is moulded by the influences of the place ; and this moulding is expressed by the imagination that the four winds are his godmothers. The North and the East brace his nature for effort ; more gracious and tender influences come from the sisters of the South and the West. The human associations of his life are also recognised. It is not only the mysterious whisperings, of rebuke or comfort, that come to him from the spirits of the air, but also inspirations as to his dealings with kinsfolk and friends, as to forbearance and self-sacrifice, inspirations that make him what he is. The suggestion of the supernatural—it is nothing more than a suggestion—is skilfully worked in. But we mast confess that the illustrations, whatever their merits, do not satisfy us. We doubt whether any illustrations of imaginations that seem to be marred when they are reduced to fact, could satisfy us.