Toddleben's Hero. Told in Pen and Pencil by M. M.
Blake. (Methuen.)—Toddleben is a little boy, distinguished from the Russian engineer who defended Sebastopol by a second "d," and his hero is a cousin who has just got a commission in a cavalry regiment. The hero goes out to the Soudan ; hence the second title of the book, " A Story of the Camel Corps." The story is ingeniously compounded of love and war ; among the hero's com- rades is an officer who has behaved badly to a lady at home, breaking off his engagement when she lost her fortune. The composition would not be a bad one for a novel, but we cannot approve of it for a book meant, we presume, for boys and girls not in their teens. It is the greater pity, because there is some really good stuff in the book, as, for instance, the description of the old soldier.
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