SERGE AKSAKOFF, a distinguished Russian writer of the first half of the nineteenth century, gave the world a portrait of his grandfather. It is now translated with a singular felicity by Mr. J.D. DUFF, under the title, _A Russian Gentleman_ (ARNOLD), and I should like to say that I, who have suffered something from translations out of the Russian, have very rarely read one which ran with such plausible smoothness and gave so clear an impression of a charming original. STEFAN MIHAILOVITCH BAGROFF was reckoned a good sort and a just if rather uncompromising man. His character is drawn with faithful exactness and praised with simple filial appreciation. The foibles of this worthy patriarch, such as the dragging of his wife along the floor when he was excessively annoyed, so that she went with her head bound for a year thereafter, are excused on the ground of his general decency. And indeed he was a lovable old boy, and the simple and unselfconscious artistry with which the author develops his character, and that of his daughter-in-law, SOFYA NIKOLAYEVNA, delights the jaded literary palate. AKSAKOFF has a quite singular power of selecting just the incident, the phrase, the gesture, the feature of the landscape which make you exclaim with a start, "Why, I'm seeing and hearing all this!" It is such a book as an historian of the modern school would delight in, more engrossing than fiction of the most realistic type. There is incident in it too--as of the degenerate KUROLYESSOFF, a cousin-in-law of MIHAILOVITCH, who used to flog his serfs, sometimes to death, for the pleasure of seeing them suffer; while the opening pages, describing the trekking of the family out of far-eastern Orenburg into the adjoining province of Ufa, and the building of the mill and the dam, are astonishingly vivid and agreeable. * * * * * _A Maid o' Dorset_ (CASSELL) can be recommended to anyone in need of light refreshment after a course of sterner literature. Here we are back again in the world of small things; but if "M.E. FRANCIS'S" theme is trivial there is no denying the art with which she handles it. Just a quartette of characters occupies her rural stage--an old grandmother, wise with the wisdom of years, her granddaughter, a middle-aged farmer and a young gipsy "dairy-chap." To the horror of her relations the Maid o' Dorset conceives an infatuation for the gipsy, a clever rogue but no match for the grandmother. I have met a good many farmers in my time, but never one so simple-minded as _Solomon Blanchard_. It is all very Franciscan, and seems easy enough, but if you think, for that reason, that you could do it yourself, you couldn't. Its charm lies in its fragrance, and that is a quality which is not lightly come by. * * * * * OUR HELPFUL CONTEMPORARIES. "The majority of the Russian soldiers are not so naif as, after having deposed the Tsar, to set to work for the King of Prussia.