Miss DOROTHY TENNANT, because her recorded opinion, probably, as a spinster, is (and here the Baron “quotes” not, but “alludes"), that you can find better artistic material in this line at home, than you can obtain by seeking it abroad; yet when she married, off she went to Milan, Venice, and so forth.  For pleasure, of course, not work; but work to her is evidently pleasure.  May happiness have accompanied her everywhere!  The drawings are pretty, rather of the goody-good “Sunday-at-home-readings” kind of illustrations.  And what on earth has a sort of pictorial advertisement for “Somebody’s Soap” got to do with Street Arabs? “Washed Ashore; or, Happy At Last,” might be the title of this mer-baby picture, in which two naked children, not Street Arabs, or Arabs of any sort, are depicted as examining the inanimate body of a nondescript creature, half flesh and half fish, which has been thrown up by the waves “to be left till called for” by the next high-tide, when, perhaps, its sorrowing parents, Mr. and Mrs. MERMAN, or its widowed mother, Mrs. MERWOMAN, arrayed in sea-"weeds,” may come to claim it and give it un-christian burial.  But that the Baron, out of deference to the wishes of “Caspeg, London,” does not like to quote one single line, he could give Mrs. STANLEY’S own account of how this picture of the Mer-baby came to be included in the Street Arab Collection.  For such explanation the Baron refers the reader to the book itself.  “Caspeg,” farewell!

I have, the Baron says, commenced the first pages of The Last Days of Palmyra.  Good, so far; but several new books have come in, and Palmyra cannot receive my undivided attention, says

THE BARON DE BOOK-WORMS.

P.S.—­My faithful “Co.” has been reading Ferrers Court, by JOHN STRANGE WINTER, author of Bootle’s Baby and a number of other novelettes of like kind.  He says that he is getting just the least bit tired of Mignon, and the plain-spoken girls, and the rest of them.  By the way, he observes that it seems to be the fashion, judging from the pages of Ferrers Court, in what he may call “Service Suckles,” to talk continually of a largely advertising lady’s tailor.  If this custom spreads, he presumes that the popular topic of conversation, the weather, will have to give place to the prior claims for consideration of Somebody’s Blacking, or Somebody-else’s Soap.  This is to be regretted, as, in spite of the sameness of subject of the Bootle’s Baby series, JOHN STRANGE WINTER is always more amusing than nine-tenths of his (or should it be her?) contemporaries.  B. De B.-W. & Co.

P.S.  No. 2.—­The Baron wishes to add that on taking up the Bride of Lammermoor in order to refresh his memory before seeing the new drama, he was struck by a few lines in the description of Lucy Ashton, which, during rehearsals, must have been peculiarly appropriate to her representative at the Lyceum, Miss ELLEN TERRY.  Here they are:—­“To these details, however trivial, Lucy lent patient and not indifferent attention.  They moved and interested Henry, and that was enough to secure her ear.”  “Great Scott!” indeed!  Perfectly prophetic, and prophetically perfect.  B. DE B.-W.