of the select reading public.  He took up the first, read a few sketches of Our Churchwardens, but failing to appreciate the subject, returned it to the bag, and went in for Monsignor.  Perhaps the weak state of health in which our engine found itself, had not been improved by the additional weight imposed on it, owing to having to carry Monsignor.  “Uncommonly heavy,” said the Baron, when he arrived at the hundredth page; “I will keep it in reserve for my lighter and gayer moments, when timely repression may be necessary.”  So saying, he restored this to the same receptacle, and made another dip in the lucky bag.  This time he brought to the surface The Case of George Candlemas, by GEORGE SIMS. Very nearly giving it up was the Baron, on account of its title, so suggestive of the usual vein of shilling shockers, and very glad is he that he did not do so, as for the next hour and a quarter not only was the Baron really interested, but highly amused, and it would have done the heart of GEORGE SIMS, of Horrible London and other emotional tales, good to have seen the Baron chuckling over this capital short story, which is as ingenious as it is genuinely droll.  It belongs to the same genus as the Danvers Jewels, though, in this latter, the idea of the character of the narrator is more humorously conceived than is Mr. SIMS’s Baronet who acts as an amateur detective.  The Baron highly recommends this story, as he also does a short tale in Blackwood, for this month, entitled, A Physiologist’s Wife, by A. CONAN DOYLE.

The Baron’s attention has been turned to five little volumes of Love Tales, English, Irish, Scotch, American, and German.  They form a companion set to Weird Tales, published also by PATERSON & Co., and a pocketable size, most useful for travellers.

A propos of Travellers, why does not some English firm bring out a series of Guide-books, of the size, and written in the style of the Guides Conty, which, for travelling in France, are far and away the best Guide-books I know.  The Guides Joanne are of course good, steady, trustworthy Guides, but they don’t attract the traveller’s attention to out-of-the-way places, and to the “things to do,” in the same pleasant way as do the writers in the Guides Conty.  Where to go, when to go, how to go, how to make the most of a short visit, what to ask for, what to look for, what to take, and what to avoid, these are details for which the Guides Conty go in.  They might be better, perhaps, in the way of maps, but this is a fault of all Guides.  Wishing, when at Havre, to visit Merville-sur-Mer, and the celebrated Corneville, with whose cloches we are all acquainted, in vain I searched the ordinary maps, and at last found quite a microscopical place, and without the “Sur Mer,” as there wasn’t room for it in a map of either the Guide Joanne or Conty, I forget which.  Why it seems