The Captain's Youngest ; and other Child - Stories. By Frances Hodgson
Burnett. (Warne and Co.)—Every one knows how admirably Mrs. Burnett can write about children and for children. Praise, therefore, is needless, other than saying that she is, on the whole, equal to herself in this new instalment of stories. But why, we would ask, this rooted determination to make her readers as melancholy as possible ? "The Captain's Youngest" is somewhat after the pattern of "Little Nell ;" so, in a different way, is "Little Betty's Kitten." Even in "How Fanntleroy Occurred," our feelings are worked upon. We read something about "his brief life," which is decidedly alarming, and makes a reader who knows the ways of the modern novelist look hastily on to the end. The end is reassuring. This, how- ever, is a very picturesque little sketch ; and the fourth story, " Piccino," can be enjoyed without any drawback. It tells us, in a most entertaining way, how a rich English lady took home with her a very lovely Italian child, and how the little fellow ran away because his new friends would wash him. His first bath inspired the same terror as the flood might have done with the impenitent.
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