Would you like to pay a round of visits to some delightful Shropshire houses, as the friend and guest of a charming woman, who knows all about what is most interesting in all of them, and has a pleasantly chatty manner of telling it? Of course you would; so would anyone. That is why I predict another success for Lady CATHERINE MILNES GASKELL'S latest house-book, _Friends Round the Wrekin_ (SMITH, ELDER). Perhaps you have pleasant memories of her former volumes in the same kind; if so, I need say no more by way of introduction; but, if not, I must tell you that her new book is very fairly described, in the words of the publisher, as "a further collection of history and legend, garden lore and character study." What the publishers modestly refrain from mentioning is the real charm with which it has been written, a quality that makes all the difference. There are also photographs of a number of wholly fascinating houses (the kind that make me wistful when I see them in the auctioneers' windows), and the author has some personal anecdote or quaint scrap of legend to tell you about each. I am quite willing to admit that the rambling book has increased lately to an extent imperfectly justified by its average quality. Too many of them confuse rambling with drivelling. But for the reflections of a cultivated woman, one who has steeped herself in the lore of a country she evidently loves, and can transcribe it with such tender and persuasive charm, there should always be room. I may add--and your own tastes must decide whether this is a flaw or a fresh merit--that Lady CATHERINE'S sympathies, political and social, are undisguisedly with the past, and that the "Education of the People" comes in, upon almost every other page, for as shrewd raps as her gentle nature will allow her to administer. * * * * *