There is only one drawback to Mr. +Murdoch's Misaki idyl, Ayame San, the very pretty Japanéie book whose receipt from Messrs. Kelly & Walsh we acknow-lodged on Saturday. Enjoyable and well-written us the story is, it gives the reader a faint idea that it was written for the photographs, and not vice versd. Te might well be, for the photographs are so gond and so well printed by Ogawa, that they deserve it.
If it is a romance, how can the heroine be photogexphed? For it dues not profess to be spirit photograph. If the reader is not troubled by this doubt, he will thorotighly enjoy the story. Tt is full of logs! colour, of course; but more than that itis full of incident, of humour, and of character painting. The artist hero is not perhaps 8 strongly drawn xs his friend, the irrepressible Irishman who is evidently the author's real pet; but the heroine, the pretty and courageous Ayame San, is charmingly drawn, and her old father, the artist with the old samurai spirit still'alive in him, i A very good conception. The villains, Ishida Shozo and his son the M.P., and Furukawa, are as villainous as any one could wish, and Mr. Murdoch has had the moral courage to make the story end happily. One thing is certain, that whoever begins to read the story, and gets once interested in the pretty Ayame San, will not put the book down until he has finished it; and when he has finished it he will have a very good insight into the social life of the Readers do not need to be told now what a prominent position Mr. J. arrie has taken in the literary world at home. In The Little Minister, which we noticed briefly on Saturday, he is at his boat. To have read A Windoro in Thrums will add a little to the enjoyment of this book, but it will yet stand by itself. Mr. Barrie has invention, inspiration, humour and pathos; ie knows his subjects through and through, and he paints them with so sure a touch that we know them almost as well. It is difficult to understand how an author could have dared to think of marrying an Auld Licht minister to an Egyptian woman; Mr. Barrie not only dares it, but carries it through so well, that though two of the elders go to Mr. Carfrae to get him to return with them and preach the Auld Licht kirk of Thrums vacant, he finds when he arrives that, instead of banishing Gavin, all he had to do was to re-marry im and kirk him, both of which he di sitting in his coach, as many can tell The conversation of the Thtums people is so full of humour that it may be read over and over agai "Take tent o' yoursel', my man,' said Long Tammas sternly, or you'll soon be whaur you would neifer the warld for cup o' that cauld water.'
'Maybe you've ower keen an interest in the devil, Tammnas,' retorted the atheist, "but, any way, if iv' heaven for climate, it's Hell for compan little, Not only di Nor can we hel Lord Rintoul a he lose his beautiful but The last thing I heard of him was that he had been offered the Lord-Lieutenantship of a county, and had accepted it long letter, in which he began by poi out his unworthiness, This undid him, for the Queen, or her Councillors, thinking from his first page that he had declin the honour, read no further, and appointed another man."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.