The work of an ideal young priest in Ballyvora, a kind of Sleepy Hollow where all is stagnation, poverty, and decay. The picture of these squalid conditions of life is one of photographic and unsparing exactness. Yet with loving insight the Author shows the peasant’s quiet happiness, beauty of soul, and downright holiness of life in the midst of all this. There is no plot, the book is a series of pictures loosely strung together. There is a chapter on Lisdoonvarna. ⸺ DONAL KENNY. (_Washbourne_). 1910. (N.Y.: _Benziger_). 1.10. Donal tells his own story—his mother’s early death, followed by his father’s rapid fall into habits of drink; his own early struggles; his love for Norah Kenny; his search for traces of her real identity; and the happy ending of it all. Displays all the Author’s knowledge of Irish life in sketches of priests and people. Especially good is the character study of the faithful old nurse, Nancy, with her quaint sayings.—(_Press Notice_). ⸺ THE CURATE OF KILCLOON. Pp. 282. (_Gill_). 3_s._ 6_d._ 1913. Labours, sorrows, and consolations of a young priest in a very out of the way country parish. He had been very distinguished at Maynooth and seemed thrown away on such a place as Kilcloon, but he finds that there is work there worth his doing—temperance to be promoted, the Gaelic League to be established, industries to be fostered. The story has the same qualities as the Author’s former books, and in fact differs little from them. =GWYNN, Stephen.= Born in Donegal, 1864. Eldest son of Rev. John Gwynn of T.C.D. Is a grandson of William Smith O’Brien. Educated St. Columba’s College, Rathfarnham, and Oxford, where he read a very distinguished course. Since 1890 he has published a great deal—literary criticism, translations, Irish topography, journalism, novels, politics. Has been Nationalist M.P. for Galway City since 1906, and is one of the most active members of the Irish Parliamentary Party. ⸺ THE OLD KNOWLEDGE. (_Macmillan_). 6_s._ 1901. A book quite unique in conception. Into the romance are woven fishing episodes and cycling episodes and adventures among flowers. There are exquisite glimpses, too, of Irish home life, and the very spirit of the mists and loughs and mountains of Donegal is called up before the reader. But above all there is the mystic conception of Conroy, the Donegal schoolmaster, whose soul lives with visions, and communes with the spirits of eld, the nature gods of pagan Ireland. ⸺ JOHN MAXWELL’S MARRIAGE. (_Macmillan_). 6_s._ 1903.