The Girls and I. By Mrs. Molesworth. (Macmillan.)—The " I
' who tells this story is a lad of eleven, who relates various ex- periences which he and his sisters have met with. Jack—that is the lad's name—is of an orderly temper, and is much troubled by the want of neatness and punctuality in two of his sisters. He has to contend with a certain defect of business-like qualities even in his mother. This makes an occasion for not a few amusing comments from him on family affairs. The incidents of the story are the loss of a certain diamond ornament which the grandfather lends to "I's" mother when she goes to the Drawing room, and an attack of whooping cough which this same loss by a curious combination of circumstances, Miss Anne's headlong ways among them, brings about. Mrs. Molesworth is always great about boys, and speaks through the mouth of one of them in a very natural way.
The Golden Buckle. By the Author of " Starwood Hall." (National Society's Depository.)—The author of " Starwood Hall" is distinguished from most writers of books for boys and girls by what is coming to be known rather vaguely as " force,"— " force " which is exhibited both in the realisation of character and in the narration of incid■-nt. It has never been shown to more purpose than in this historical romance of London, and of two related, and yet in a measure, opposed families—the Garsides and the Hobdays—in the time of the plague of the mania for astrology, and of "the scowerers." There is in it not a little, indeed, of the idle and the industrious apprentice, and of the eternal war between them ; but this element was inevitable, and is not at all objectionable. What The Golden Buckle was, which gives the title to the book—whether the words are to be taken literally or metaphorically—youthful readers must ascertain for themselves.
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