CURRENT LITERATURE.
GIFT-BOOKS.
Fresh from the Fens. By E. Ward. (Seeley and Co.)—This is a pleasant, thoroughly wholesome tale. The " three Lincolnshire lasses" whose story it tells are the daughters of a clergyman in the Fens, a man who has left a promising career in the Army for what he conceived to be his proper work. The children, brought up in an atmosphere of earnestness, carry the spirit of it into the worldly home of which they become inmates for a time, and do not carry it in vain. The chief literary excellence is the distinct but delicate characterisation of three little girls. They are realised for us with a force that is really admirable. The subsidiary figures of the kindly old Bishop and his wife are also excellent. We are not sure that we greatly admire the somewhat remarkable, one might even say improbable, complication which is found to exist in Sir Marmaduke's family. However, it is very well employed in bringing about the really beautiful devotion of " Duke" to the new interest which has been brought into his life. A word of praise must be given to the illustrations. "The Close at Avon- minster," which reminds us of, if it is not meant for, Lincoln, is particularly good.
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