JOURNAL, 21st July. Sin Hersert Maxwett is undoubtedly right in deprecating the excessive reading of fiction; but even in this there is nothing new, for the maxim is at least as old as Aristotle, that the excess of virtue becomes vice. But he is also right in another point, that if the victim of the fiction habit will only pull himself together, and attack something more serious, he will find treasure turn up in the most unlikely places, The little bit of treasure he gave as a sample was a chestnut of the most hoary antiquity; but we can recommend to the self-reformer a most improbable mine and quite a new one, the Board of Trade Journal for June, 1893. Its full title, we confess, promises the quin-essence of dryness: The Boardof Trade Journal of Tariff and Trade Notices and Miscellaneous Commercial Infor-motion. Edited by the Commercial Department of the Board of 'I'rade. Tariff and Trade Notices! It reminds one of having to wait an hour at a little railway station in Scotland and being reduced to reading the time tables for amusement. And as if that were not enough, it is edited by a whole department, and it is certain that nothing not strictly informing, nothing that the most determined Gradgrind could reprobate, could survive the blue pencils of a whole commercial department. Yet the little flower struggles into life on the dungeon wall; and there is amusing reading now and then in the Board of Trade Journal. Turn to page 669: "Warning to Exporters of British Goods to:'Turkey." Here, with. all. the decorousness befitting a blue book, which
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.