In a pleasant little book called _Essays on Idleness_, the authoress, AGNES REPPLIER, speaking of her cat, observes, "It were ignoble to wish myself in her place, and yet how charming to be able to settle down to a nap, _sans peur et sans reproche_, at ten o'clock in the morning." Surely instead of "_sans peur_" she should have written "_sans purr_," as far more applicable to a cat asleep. "HERE is a work that I prize indeed!" quoth the Baron, surveying with unmixed pleasure two handsome volumes, readable from every point of view of type, handiness, and matter that is of substance and spirit, being a re-issue of the immortal _Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_, by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. "Mind you," he continues, tenderly regarding them, "though this I admit is an _édition de luxe_, yet do I far and away prefer the simple volume without illustrations. Why illustrations? Why try to impose on us, as by artistic authority, the faces, forms, and the situations that we would infinitely prefer to idealise? Without the faculty of imagination no one can enjoy this work, pictures or no pictures: possessed of the faculty, what need of the illustrations, save so far as they may carry out our own notions of the author's meaning? If they do not, then we quarrel with them. But many thanks for these two volumes, brought out by Messrs. GAY AND BIRD (delightful association of adjective and substantive, as we have had afortime occasion to remark); for among all hooks, whether at this Christmas Season, when they come in quite with a Charles-Lamblike and Washington-Irvingesque flavour, or at any other time, these be most welcome to the constant lover of old Literary Friends. YULETIDEIAN BARON DE BOOK-WORMS." * * * * * [Illustration: A CONDUCTOR OF HEAT.] * * * * * A GAME OF CHANCE. (_From an Imaginative French Source._) War had broken out between France and Great Britain. In the Mediterranean--owing to several French ironclads having got through into the Black Sea and being unable to get out again--the French fleet was shut up in Toulon harbour by a powerful English squadron. It was just at this time that some curious events were taking place in the neighbouring seaside resort of Sablettes-les-Bains, recently purchased by an English company, which was running the place as a kind of compromise between Boulogne and Monte Carlo. "_Messieurs, faites vos jeux!_"--was heard the monotonous refrain of the burly "Croupier," who, with face rather pale, and a preoccupied air, was presiding over one of the numerous games of "_Petits-Chevaux_," combined with "_Rouge et Noir_" which were proceeding in the gorgeously-upholstered and magnificently-lighted "_Salle des Papas Perdus_" of the "_Cercle des Etrangers_" of this Paradise of the Middle Sea.