31 JANUARY 1891, Page 38

A Humble Romance, and other Tales, and A Far.Away Melody,

and other Tales. By M. E. Wilkins. (David Douglas, Edinburgh,),— In these stories we have a most novel class of heroes and heroines,. and the very clover author has struck quite a now vein of interest. The stories are all short, but very graphic and pathetic, yet entirely unsensational. The scenes are laid in the villages of New England in the Eastern States of America. The clranzatis personaz are all very humble, and many are very poor people, and they are chiefly old or elderly women. It is difficult to believe that such very slight materials should have inspired such touching sketches. Two very old women and a tumbledown cottage, with a garden producing a vegetable diet chiefly of dandelions, are,. for instance, enough for a little tragedy quite spiritual in its nature,