Mirka. By Charles Godfrey Leland. (P. Welby. 6..)— These "Leaves
from the Life of an Immortal" are characteristics of Mr. Leland's genius. Flaxius is a "Wandering Jew," but with a difference, for there is nothing sinister about his immortality. He is an Etruscan magician of the early age, not long after the time when the fathers of the race found that chess and draughts could not quite stand in the place of food, and he attains his immortality by his largeness of soul. He is ever "roaming with a hungry heart," and meets all kinds of interesting and typical people, Hamlet, for instance, and the Emperor Julian, and Hans Breams= (in what may be called a previous incarnation). But it is quite impossible to give any idea of this book. It is enough, surely, to say that it is Mr. Leland's to send people of sense to it. But we may thank him for many excellent things in it, and not the least for the Breitmann ballad with which it is concluded, and especially for the last stanza of the ballad :—
" Keep up dy heart, 0 Britain, despite de envious jeers Of German, ',Venni', or Dago, of suffering and of tears ; Whatefer fools have said to thee of errors in the past, Thou art Gott's best civilizer, and wilt conquer at the last I"
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