Here, as we turn every page, we expect to meet _Rosalind_ and _Jeanie Deans_, _Tom Jones_ and _Aramis_, _Mr. Micawber_ and _Madame Bovary_, _Eugenie Grandet_ and _Colonel Newcome_, _Casanova_ and _Casablanca_, _Consuelo_ and "CAGLIOSTRO," and, if we do not meet them, we encounter new and more radiant figures, compared with whom the others are as water to wine. Here, with its bliss and agony, its cacophony and cachinnation, is Life, such as you and I know it, not life in absolute _déshabillé_, but enveloped in the iridescent upholstery of genius, sublimated by the wizardry of a transcendental polyphony. Here, soaring high above the cenotaph in which the roses and rapture of our youth lie entombed in one red burial blent, we see the shimmering strands of St. Martin's Summer drawn athwart the happenless days of Autumn, with the dewdrops of cosmic unction sparkling in the rays of a sunshine never yet seen on land or sea, but reflecting as in a magic mirror that far off El Dorado, that land where Summer always is "i-cumen in," for which each and all of us feel a perpetual nostalgia. Here, in fine, gentle reader, is a work of such colossal force that to render justice to its abysmal greatness we have ransacked the vocabulary of superlative laudation in vain. SWINBURNE, compared to the needs of the situation, is as a shape of quivering jelly alongside of the Rock of Gibraltar. And here, O captious critic, is a Wonderwork which not only disarms but staggers, paralyses and annihilates all possibilities of animadversion, unless you wish to share the fate of Marsyas, by pitting your puny strength against the overwhelming panoply of divine and immortal genius. * * * * * "A bricklayer's labourer was remanded yesterday on a charge of stealing, as bailee, two matches, value £3, the property of the Vicar of ----."--_Provincial Paper_. We fear there has been bad profiteering somewhere; even in London they have not touched that price. * * * * * "Howells' new violin conato (E flat), which followed, is sincere music ... whatever there is it is possible to bear."--_Times_. The fololwing of a conata, like the bombination of a chimæra, apparently puts some strain upon the attention of an audience. * * * * * _LE FRANÇAIS TEL QUE L'ON LE PARLE._ It was on my journey to Paris that I ran across little Prior in the train. He too was going, he said, on Peace Conference work. His is a communicative disposition and before we had fairly started on our journey he had unfolded his plans. He said the Conference was bound to last a long time, and as a resident in a foreign country he had a splendid opportunity to learn the language. He meant, he said, to get to know it thoroughly later on. He then produced his French Pronouncing Handbook.