The most interesting book, one of the Baron's Retainers ("blythe and gay,") has read this year is, _The Life of Laurence Oliphant_. If it were not written by a reputable person, and published by so eminently respectable a house as BLACKWOOD's, there would be difficulty about accepting it as a true story of the life of a man whom some of us knew, as lately living in London, wearing a frock coat, and even a tall hat of cylindrical shape. Such a mingling of shrewd business qualities and March madness as met in LAURENCE OLIPHANT is surely a new thing. A man of gentle birth, of high culture, of wide experience, of supreme ability, and, strangest of all, with a keen sense of humour--that such an one should voluntarily step down from high social position at the bidding of a vulgar, selfish, self-seeking, and, according to some hints dropped here and there, grossly immoral man, should, at beck of his fat forefinger, go forth to a strange land to live amid sordid circumstances, and with uncongenial company, to work as a common, farm-labourer, to peddle strawberries at a railway station, passes belief. With respect to Mr. HARRIS, one feels inclined to quote _Betsy Prig's_ remark touching one who may, peradventure, have been a maternal relation. "I don't believe," said _Betsy_, "there's no sich a person." But there was, and, stranger still, there was a LAURENCE OLIPHANT to bend the knee to him. Not the least striking thing in a book of rare value is the manner in which Mrs. OLIPHANT has acquitted herself in a peculiarly difficult task. No man would have had the restraining patience necessary to deal with the HARRIS episodes as she has done. The Assistant Reader has been refreshing himself with _Lapsus Calami_, by J.K.S., published by MACMILLAN and BOWES. It is a booklet of light verse, containing here and there some remarkably brilliant pieces of satire and parody. The first of two parodies of ROBERT BROWNING is unsurpassable for successful audacity. The last poem in the book is "An Election Address," written for, but apparently not used by, the present POSTMASTER-GENERAL, when he was Candidate for Cambridge University, in 1882. He says of himself, after confessing to a dislike for literature and science,-- "But I have fostered, guided, planned Commercial enterprise; in me Some ten or twelve directors, and Six worthy chairmen you may see." All the pieces are not so good as those cited--that would be too much to expect--but "get it," say BARON DE BOOK-WORMS & Co. * * * * * MORTUARY. ANDREW LANGUAGE--no, LANG!--who the classics is pat in, Suggests to our writers, as test of their "style," Just to turn their equivocal prose into Latin, As DRYDEN did. Truly the plan makes one smile! Reviewers find Novelists' nonsense much weary 'em. Writers of twaddle Take DRYDEN a model-- Turn your books into some great "_dead_ language"--and _bury_ 'em! * * * * *