28 JANUARY 1865, Page 20

Sketches of Christian Life in England in the Olden Time.

By the Author of Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family. (T. Nelson and Sons.)—Very inferior to the writer's previous work, and probably merely the result of the success of that. This volume is only a collec- tion of well-written stories, founded generally on some historical inci- dent, but unmarked by the distinct conception of character which raised the author's first work above ordinary books for boys and girls. It is quite up to the mark of such books, but does not rise above it.