ALL SORTS OF STORIES.*
Ma. LANG, whose prefaces have only one fault, that of being too short, gives us a most appetizing bill of fare of the feast provided for us by Mrs. Lang and himself. He even gives some little tasty morsels, for, as he puts it himself : " N.B.—There are stories in this Preface." So we are told of "the who met in America the other man whom he had been h.n--ed i„r murdering in England,” with a curious parallel in the history of Michael Hamilton, who went on pilgrimage after be had been hanged. In the book itself there are " all sorts," and good sorts, too. First comes a hors-d'ceuvre, as it were—a folk-tale. Then there are stories from the Greek, as Meleager, Be!. lerophon, and Hercules, more or less familiar. Next we may mention some tales of mystery, as "The Vanishing of Bathurst"—Benjamin Bathurst was sent on an errand by the English Government to the Court of Vienna in 1809— and " What Became of Old Mr. Harrison ? " Old Mr. Harrison reappeared after two men—one of whom confessed his guilt—had been hanged for murdering him ; Benjamin Bathurst was never heard of. Nor was Owen Parfitt, of whom Mr. Lang tells us in his Preface. Parfitt was an old man and paralysed. One summer afternoon he was sitting as usual in a chair in the garden. The chair was found empty, but Owen • The All Sorts of Stories Book. By Mrs. Lang. Edited by Andrew Lang. London : Longman and Co. [6s.]
was never seen again. Another attractive " sort " is to be found in the extracts from familiar romances. From "The Count of Monte Cristo," for instance, we have the escape of Edmond Dantes from the Chilteau d'If, andlhe finding of the treasure—two great stories which make up, an more than make up, for much that is somewhat tedious. The treasure story is followed by Poe's masterpiece, " The Story of the Golden Beetle." Coming back to Dumas we have D'Artagnan's first adventure in Paris. Of the rest—there are thirty tales in all— we may mention " Loreto, Velazquez, the Military Spy," reminding us in a way of De Quincey's "Spanish Nun" and " Aunt Margaret's Mirror," a mirror which showed such things as Egyptian wizards make appear in pools of ink. This is certainly " a feast of good things."
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