_Penelope_ was the heroine. She was in what are called reduced circumstances, and was moreover encumbered by sisters who were not quite all that could have been wished in the way of niceness. One day _Penelope_, looking through an iron gate, saw a beautiful garden, full of flowers; and the master of the garden, himself unseen, saw _Penelope_, and loved her. So she accepted the invitation of his voice and went into the garden and found that the master was a young man so disfigured by a recent accident that he had to wear blue spectacles and a shade. However, he loved her and she didn't mind him, so that after a time they became engaged, which was pleasant enough for _Penelope_, who had henceforth the run of the garden and leave to take home roses and things to the not-nice sisters. Do you want to be told how presently these began to tempt _Penelope_, urging her to insist that her lover should unmask, and what happened when she yielded? Or have you seen already that the story here called _A Garden of the Gods_ (Alston Rivers) is just a modern version of one that we all used to be told in the nursery? Moreover, Beauty and the Beast had been used once at least in this fashion before Miss Edith M. Keate happened on the idea. But that does not make the present any the less an amiable, quietly entertaining story, if a little obvious. The characters have never anything but a very distant resemblance to life; and their speech is for the most part that of a lady novelist's creations rather than of human beings. But those who demand "a good tale," with beauty properly distressed till the last page, and there beatified with the knowledge that "the darkness that surrounded her was scattered for ever," will find some highly agreeable pasturage in _A Garden of the Gods_.