CURRENT LITERATURE.
Almeria's Castle. By Henrietta Lushington. With 12 illustrations. (Griffith and Farran.)—Lady Lushington takes the place of honour among the caterers for the rising generation this Christmas. She has written a charming story, whieh will please young and old alike. It is a long time since we have made acquaintance with pleasanter people than Clarissa Almeria Grantham, as the little lady, aged 7, delights to proclaim herself, and her two friends, Miss Anne Clay and Tom Stubbs. We find our little friend in a rambling half-ruinous home, near a light- house in the outskirts of Bombay, with a sick mother and a busy father, rather lonely, and very much afraid of Bandicoot, King of tho Rats ; Stubbs is the sailor at the lighthouse, who spins delightful yarns, and Miss Clay has just joined her cousins, the great folks next door. Sad herself through the loss of a brother, whose housekeeper she had been in a quiet English parsonage, and rather weary of her fashionable friends, she is struck by the " little pale face, with its eager eyes," of the lonely child, and the consequence is our little friend is taken to many pleasant places about Bombay, and to the Poonah hills, to the groat satisfaction both of herself and of the reader. It turns out that the lost brother was a college friend of Clarissa's father, the latter having suffered in fortune through a quarrel with a mysterious personage, Almeria of the Castle, which quarrel is prettily described by him, in the shape of a fairy story. "Ono day Almeria took him into a garden full of brilliant flowers, and bade him choose which he would have for
his very own. But he thought them all too gay and garish
will have a wild white lily that grows out of sight in the wood,' he said." He gathered the white lily, and carried it proudly in his hand, and had to take the consequences. These are not, however, finally dreadful. The story, after taking us through much pleasant Indian life, including the marriage of the fascinating Miss Clay, passes to England, where we are introduced to the fairy princess, who returns to gracious- ness, and all ends happily.
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