The title of this volume is attractive. What speculations and hopes are excited by the mere announcement, 'Diary of a Novelist!' The secrets into which curious readers have attempted to pry are about to be unfolded, the originals of the characters described are to be revealed, a real personal living interest is to surround the author's fictions ever after. What would we give to have such a diary from the pen of George Eliot or Charles Dickens! But amid such a rush of eager anticipations, we turn to the book itself, and find that no explanations are given--the authoress does not lift the veil. It is the journal of a year's most striking thoughts and noteworthy experiences. The first feeling is one of disappointment that the volume is so different from our expectations; but disappointment soon changes into hearty admiration and sincere gratitude. It is emphatically a good book. Sympathy with all that is beautiful and noble pervades the whole, and it is written with the ease of a practised hand. The rippling chat runs on through a succession of bright sunny scenes, ever and anon deepening into shady pools of profounder thought, and then again merrily hastening on its way. We are permitted to read the aims of this novelist's life, so true, pure, earnest, that we involuntarily exclaim, 'O si sic omnia!' There is also a cheerful religiousness in this diary, which will equally surprise those who think that a fiction-writer's only use is for amusement, and those who indiscriminately condemn all novels as unmitigated evils. The following sentence gives us the key-note of the book:--'I like to feel that this fair earth, which God has made, which even now, where man has not marred it, keeps the touch of his hand upon it still--breathes back its life to Him in love. And so the whole world becomes to me at once a Temple and a Home--a place for worship and for happy life: and I live in it, not alone, but sharing with all created things in the great Father's care, and joining with them in their many-voiced psalm of love and praise.' The charming sketches of natural scenery show the touch of an artist and a poet; the outline descriptions of character reveal the writer as a keen observer of human life; while her reflections on some of the tangled problems of the world tell us that she, too, has wrestled with the mighty mystery, and found peace only in trust. We notice an exuberance of enthusiasm which might be toned down with advantage to the general style. The attempt to transcribe the Yorkshire dialect is not successful; but, as we have ourselves failed in that accomplishment, we appreciate the difficulty, and only notice the fact--'a fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind.' _The Iliad of the East._ By FREDERICK RICHARDSON. Macmillan.