The Pirate's Hoard. By A. Alexander. (T. Nelson and Sons.
2s. 6d.)—This "Story of Hidden Treasure" is of the old- fashioned sort. The scene is laid in the days of Queen Elizabeth. The "hoard" consists mainly of jewels which have been stolen from a certain Sir John Rose. Might we ask whether a Devon- shire squire would have such a collection of gems at that date, say 1580 ? We see in what we may call the inventory "sparkling diamonds from the Brazils." Would Mr. Alexander be surprised to hear that the Brazilian diamond-mines were not discovered till 1728 ? Before that time these gems came almost entirely from India. Apart from this, it is very unlikely that any one in England, or we may say Europe, at that time possessed a collection of jewels of which "each was worth a dowry or a fortune in itself."—The treasure in Crag's Island ; or, The Mystery of Val Stanlock, by William Murray Graydon (S. W. Partridge and Co., 2s.), is of a much more modern kind. A large sum of money is abstracted from a bank, and the manager gets into serious trouble over it. How the money was recovered, and recovered by exactly the right person, is told here. The scene is laid in the United States, a country in which there is more room for exciting developments than on this side.
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