Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. By Lewis Carroll. With forty- two
illustrations by John Tenniel. (Macmillan).—This is the book for little folks, and big folks who take it home to their little folks will find themselves reading more than they intended, and laughing more than they had any right to expect. Alice is a charming little girl (witness Mr. Tenniel passim), with a delicious style of conversation, who runs down a rabbit-hole one fine day and finds herself in Wonderland. She is amongst all sorts of small creatures, rabbits, mice, &c., that have a tongue and use it, and contradict her shamefully ; then she cannot eat or drink anything without changing her size, and, as she says pathetically, being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing ;" then she has to take advice from a very rude caterpillar, who is smoking a hookah upon a toadstool (here is a charming illustration of Mr. Tenniel's), and then
she takes tea with the March Hare and the Mad Hatter (here the fun waxes rather furious) ; finally, after an interview with a Cheshire cat, she mixes in the proceedings of a pack of cards, who move about in great state and do many funny things which are amusingly illustrated, and at last, being treated with disrespect by her, all rise up into the air and come flying down upon her, and awaken her out of her pleasant but exciting dream. Mr. Carroll's story is very funny, but we wish that he had left out the hatter ; this personage is de trop also in Mr. Tenniel's illustrations, which without him are always graceful or quaintly humorous.
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