The Magazine of Art for 1890, published by CASSELL & Co., is one of the best of its kind for pictures and Art-articles, The Mixture as before.

“Christmas is coming”—­but the Publishers seem to think that the Merry Old Gentleman will be here to-morrow.  Yet we know the proverbial history of to-morrow.  However, to humour the up-to-date notion, the Baron recommends to his young friends who wish to amuse their elders, Dolldom, a dolls’ opera, by CLIFTON BINGHAM, set to music by FLORIAN PASCAL.  Some of the songs are exquisite.  It would make a very funny play, children imitating dolls.  Published by J. WILLIAMS.

BLACKIE AND SON, are going it.  Here are two more, by their indefatigable writer, G.A.  HENTY:  By Right of Conquest; or, With Cortez in Mexico.  The young Sixteenth-Century boy, by his marvellous adventures, proves his right to be a hero in the Conquest of Mexico.  Of a more modern date is A Chapter of Accidents, which deals with the Bombardment of Alexandria.  The young fisher-lad has to go through many chapters of adventure before he reaches a happy ending. A Rough Shaking, by GEORGE MACDONALD, is a capital boys’ book, while The Light Princess, and other Fairy Stories, by the same author, will please the Baron’s old-fashioned fairy-book readers at Christmas-time.

Whoever possesses the Henry Irving Shakspeare,—­started originally by my dear old enthusiastic friend the late FRANK MARSHALL, and now concluded by the new volume of plays, poems, and sonnets,—­possesses a literary treasure.  The notes are varied, interesting, and all valuable.  The illustrations exactly serve their purpose, which is the highest praise.

MR. SMALLEY’S Letters are not to an Inconnue.  They were written to his paper, the Tribune, and have redressed the balance between the Old World and the New by furnishing New York from week to week with brilliant, incisive, and faithful pictures of life in London.  The initials, “G.W.S.,” appended in their original form, are as familiar throughout the United States as are those of our own “G.A.S.” in the still United Kingdom.  Mr. SMALLEY goes everywhere, sees everything, knows everybody, and his readers in New York learn a great deal more of what is going on in London than some of us who live here.  Most public men of the present day, whether in politics, literature, or art, have, all unconsciously, sat to “G.W.S.”  He has a wonderful gift of seizing the salient points of a character, and reproducing them in a few pellucid sentences.  The men he treats of have many friends who will be delighted to find that Mr. SMALLEY’S pen is dipped in just enough gall to make the writing pleasant to those who are not its topic. Personalities is the alluring title of the first volume, which contains forty-two studies of character.  It is dangerous kind of work; but Mr. SMALLEY has skilfully steered his passage.  Written for a newspaper, London Letters (MACMILLAN & CO.) rank higher than journalism.  They will take their place in Literature.