It is doubtful if readers will enjoy "The Remarkable Rocket" as they will the other stories. The modern _milieu_ intrudes here and there. The satire is keen and there are some clever epigrams. The Russian Princess "had driven all the way from Finland in a sledge drawn by six reindeer which was shaped like a great golden swan, and between the swan's wings lay the little princess herself"--and we think that we are going to enjoy again the atmosphere of Watteau, and are a little disappointed when we find our author saying, "He was something of a politician, and had always taken a prominent part in the local elections, or he knew the proper Parliamentary expressions to use." And the story, alas! will suggest over and over again painful thoughts which I would keep at a distance when I read these other lovely tales. Was not this sentence of evil omen? "'However, I don't care a bit,' said the Rocket. 'Genius like mine is sure to be appreciated some day,' and he sank down a little deeper into the mud." And the last sentence of all is terribly sinister. "'I knew I should create a sensation,' gasped the Rocket, and he went out." "The House of Pomegranates" was published in 1891, and is dedicated to Constance Mary Wilde. Here, in a volume which the author frankly calls a volume of "Beautiful Tales," is a very stern indictment of the social system which, in his essay "The Soul of Man," Oscar Wilde had so powerfully denounced. We know how profoundly that essay has influenced the minds of men in every country in Europe. Translated into every tongue it has taught the oppressed to resent the callous cruelty of capital, but I doubt if its author was altogether as earnest as he seems. Here, in the story of the young King, we have a lighter touch. It is as though the writer hesitated between two paths. In the year 1895 the wrong path had been taken if we may trust the record of a conversation which took place in that year. "To be a supreme artist," said he, "one must first be a supreme individualist." "You talk of Art," said I, "as though there were nothing else in the world worth living for." "For me," said he sadly, "there is nothing else." But when Oscar Wilde dedicated "The House of Pomegranates" to his wife the love of Beauty and the love of humankind still seemed to go together.