Marie Derville:  A Story of a French Boarding-school.  From
    the French of Madame Guizot de Witt, by Mary G. Wells. 
    Philadelphia:  J.B.  Lippincott & Co.

French fiction when playing off innocence or when intended for uncontaminated ears attains a blank intensity of virtue that our own literature cannot hope to rival.  The French “juvenile” still guards that beauteous ignorance of slang or of other small vice which the American schoolboy regards as poverty of resource or incapacity, and which he has put off with his frocks and his Parent’s Assistant and his Sanford and Merton.  But Marie Derville, when its accent of Berquin is allowed for, is a varied and interesting tale, affording many a glimpse into that country guarded about with such jealous walls—­middle-class childhood in France.  Marie is the child of a sea-captain who goes to China, disappears for many years, and comes back at last, after a narrow escape from massacre, saying, “How strange it was to find myself on the eve of becoming a martyr—­to die for the Christian religion when one is so poor a Christian as I!” His wife and two or three of Marie’s grandparents meantime unite to conduct a boarding-school on the sea-shore, the history of which enterprise forms the bulk of the tale.  Here the American reader learns with surprise that the French little girl, who is never actually seen otherwise than perfect and doll-like, is really subject in private to a few of the faults common to Miss Edgeworth’s heroines, such as selfishness, gluttony and laziness.  But the story of the school is on the whole sunshiny and prosperous, and Marie Derville’s young readers will follow with delight the career of these prim little beings, so much more governed than themselves, as they go picnicking on the sea-beach for mussels, make flannels for the cholera-patients of a fishing village, or learn to recite the fable of “The Country Rat” without making it all one word in their hurry.  The story is very healthy and happy, and the translation excellent.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

The Teacher’s Companion to the American Drawing-slates and Cards.  With
Cards.  By Walter Smith, Art Master, South Kensington, London, State
Director of Art Education in Massachusetts.  Boston:  Noyes, Holmes &
Co.

Keel and Saddle:  A Retrospect of Forty Years of Military and Naval
Service.  By Joseph W. Revere.  Boston:  James R. Osgood & Co.

Helps over Hard Places.  For Boys.  Second series.  By Lynde Palmer. 
Illustrated.  Troy, N.Y.:  H.B.  Nims & Co.

Cyclopedia of the Best Thoughts of Charles Dickens.  By F.C. 
DeFontaine.  Nos. 2-5.  New York:  E.J.  Hale & Son.

Liza:  A Russian Novel.  By Ivan S. Turgenieff.  Translated by W.R.S. 
Ralston.  New York:  Holt & Williams.

The Witch of Nemi, and other Poems.  By Edward Brennan.  London: 
Longmans, Green & Co.