In reference to Unwin's Colonial Library, we learn that Mr. Unwin is adding to this series a novel by Miss Mabel Barnes-Grundy, author of "A Thames Camp" entitled "The Vacillations of Hazel." The London " Morning Leader" says of the Book:—" Heather-land—Thirty years ago there was no quainter or more picturesque district, and none richer in archaeological interest, in the whole of England than the little peninsula that runs into the sea between the mouths of the Dee and the Mersey. A huge slice of it has new become a mere residential suburb of Liverpool; railways and tunnels and bridges have opened it up. It now owns a golf links and an Eiffel tower and other attractions, and excursionists of all kinds overrunit. But even yet especially on the Dee-side, it retains much of its beauty, and, in places, its out-of-the-world charm. In this delightful spot Miss Mabel Barnes-Grundy has laid the scene of her vivacious story, " The Vacillations of Hazel." Heatherland, where the capricious but fascinating little heroine has her home, is probably Heswall, from which one looks out of velvet greenery "across the sands of Dee," Here we find Hazel, a bright, imaginative, impulsive creature, living with her mother and her sister Angela, the last a prosaic, vigorous, virtuous, and unsympathetic Philistine. Hazel's escapades, her narrow escape from a " cultured" London literary man, and her awakening tothe fact that she was in love with her old friend and comrade who adored her, make avery pleasant and enjoyable story. The author's triumph is perhaps in her drawing of the character of Aunt Menelophe, a dear old worldly-wise lady, with a sense of humour even stronger than that of Hazel, who acts as fairy godmother. The Vacillations of Hazel" isa delightful book-Mr. Unwin is also issuing a Colonial edition of George Gissing's "By the Ionian Sea," a book which contrasting almost startlingly with the powerful but gloomy studies of London life which made the author's fame is by many critics reckoned his best work. It consists of chapters of narrative, description, and reflection, the results of a ramble in that part of Southern Italy which is least visited by tourists. Across the mountains of Calabria, then from Taranto to Reggie, along the lovely shore which once was Magna Grecia, the writer wandered as it pleased him in solitude thinking of the old world and observing the life of to-day. Full of poetical feeling and refined classical scholarship, it is a piece of literature which has enduring value.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.