Scene: chiefly Donegal, _c._ 1761-1779. A strong and intense story. Interesting not only for its powerful plot, but for the admirably painted background of scenery and manners, and for its studies of character. It depicts in strong colours the tyranny of Protestant colonists and the hate which it produces in the outcast Catholics. One of the main motives of the story is a forced marriage of a peculiarly odious kind. In connexion with this marriage there is one scene in the book that is drawn with a realism which, we think, makes the book unsuitable for certain classes of readers. The hero fights on the American side in the war of Independence, and takes a share in Nationalist schemes at home. ⸺ THE GLADE IN THE FOREST. Pp. 224. (_Maunsel_). 1_s._ Cloth. 1907. Seven short stories, chiefly about Donegal, five of them dealing with peasant life, of which the Author writes with intimate and kindly knowledge. “The Grip of the Land” describes the struggles of a small farmer and the love of his bleak fields that found no counterpart in his eldest boy, who has his heart set on emigration. Compare Bazin’s _La Terre qui Meurt_. All the stories had previously appeared in such magazines as the CORNHILL and BLACKWOOD’S. ⸺ ROBERT EMMET. (_Macmillan_). 6_s._ Map of Dublin in 1803. 1909. An account of the Emmet rising related with scrupulous fidelity to fact and in minute detail. The Author introduces no reflections of his own, leaving the facts to speak. His narrative is graphic and vivid, the style of high literary value. The minor actors in the drama—Quigley, Russell, Hamilton, Dwyer—are carefully drawn. Though he gives a prominent place in the story to Emmet’s romantic love for Sarah Curran, Mr. Gwynn has sought rather to draw a vivid picture of the event by which the young patriot is known to history than to reconstruct his personality. =HALL, E.= ⸺ THE BARRYS OF BEIGH. Pp. 394. (_M’Glashan & Gill_). [1875.] Scene: banks of Shannon twenty miles below Limerick. Story opens about 1775. =HALL, Mrs. S. C.= Born in Dublin, 1800. Brought by her mother (who was of French Huguenot descent) to Wexford in 1806. Here she lived, mixing a good deal with the peasantry, until the age of fifteen, when she was taken away to London, and did not again return to Wexford. Wrote nine novels, and many short stories and sketches. Besides the works noticed here, she and her husband produced between them a very large number of volumes. See his _Reminiscences of a Long Life_. Two vols. London. 1883. A reviewer in BLACKWOOD’S describes her work as “bright with an animated and warm nationality, apologetic and defensive.” She died in 1881. ⸺ SKETCHES OF IRISH CHARACTER. Pp. 443. (_Chatto & Windus_). 7_s._ 6_d._ With Sixty-one Illustrations by Maclise, Gilbert, Harvey, George Cruikshank, &c. [1829]. 1854 (5th), 1892, &c., &c.