here much more than is desirable. But what is fine in it is something no one could have taught her--the sympathy with ambitious youth, the struggle for fame on the part of the hero, his uncle's stern nature, and the cleverness with which some of the lesser characters are drawn: all these things, which are to be found beneath the facile sing-song of the prose and the perpetual exaggeration of everything good as well as of everything bad, are surely the proof of rare original power. Her very excellence at times serves but to make the reader impatient with her faults, which more than anything are _vulgar_; and genius and vulgarity do not agree well. But her good qualities are best seen in some of her short stories, and most of all in those collected in a single volume entitled _Leaf in the Storm, and Other Stories_, the others being entitled "A Dog of Flanders," "A Branch of Lilac," and "A Provence Rose;" all of which first appeared in _Lippincott's Magazine_. These are free from the faults of taste which so generally mar her work, although at times the reader comes on exaggerated touches which lessen rather than intensify the pathos; but on the whole it is impossible not to admire, and to admire warmly, the author's power. Ouida here shows her true feeling, and feeling is not over-abundant in contemporary fiction. There is plenty of acute observation, clever description and more or less good-natured satire, but all these things are slight and meagre by the side of strong and genuine feeling. The greatest novel-writer will combine both, and will not sacrifice one to the other; but only too often Ouida throws aside actual and imaginary probability for the sake of melodramatic effect. Of these short tales just mentioned, the one giving its name to the book and "A Branch of Lilac" are especially to be mentioned with respect, and they justify almost any amount of wrath on the part of the reader with the author's excessive abuse of her gifts. In her reaction against conventionality and everything that is humdrum she continually falls into worse pitfalls, but here she is really tragic and really pathetic. In three of these tales she draws the sufferings of struggling genius, which she is fond of describing, though she has never done it so well as here; and in two of them, "A Dog of Flanders" and "A Provence Rose," she combines in the story unusual ingredients, one being told by a rose that witnesses the incidents, while in the other the dog's feelings are set forth at great length. This is always a difficult thing to do; and it is to be noticed that in both disguises we find Ouida under other names, but yet there is enough that is touching in the treatment to dispel harsh criticism. This is not the only time that Ouida has introduced this transmigration of souls into her books, for _Puck_ is a story told by a dog, but unfortunately the dog has the author's ineradicable preference for low company, and a sort of nineteenth-century Moll Flanders has an