This little volume is the first of the "Derbyshire Campaign Series," and will be followed by four other books dealing with the battles of the 95th in India and Egypt. The series makes an admirable start, and, with the exception of Balaclava, in which the regiment was not engaged, gives a sketch of the whole Crimean campaign. Being told from the point of view of a regimental unit, the story has more actuality than if it dealt with the whole army. By way of comparison with the present war it will be interesting to note that of the thirty-two officers who embarked in 1854 no fewer than twenty-two were killed or wounded, one receiving more than twenty wounds. Of the sergeants nineteen out of forty-six were killed or wounded within six weeks of landing, while of the rank and file 350 were killed or wounded in the three days' fighting in the autumn of 1854. Major Wylly has produced a very excellent instalment of regimental history. (Sonnenschein.)

Mr. Baillie-Grohman is well known as a climber of mountains and a shooter of big game, and any book by him commands the instant respect of all sportsmen. The handsome volume which he has just issued tells the story of fifteen years, on and off, in the hunting grounds of Western America and British Columbia. For some years Mr. Baillie-Grohman's temporary home was on the Pacific Slope, and he crossed the ocean to and from Europe some thirty times in that period. His earlier chapters deal with shooting big game and the Game Laws of America. Perhaps to the general reader the most interesting chapters will be those which tell how Kootenay emerged from its wild state, with stories of real Wild West experiences. Mrs. Baillie-Grohman contributes an informing chapter on "The Yellow and White Agony," which is, being interpreted, the Servant Question in the West. The book is illustrated with seventy-seven photographs, including pictures of the best trophies of North American big game killed by English and American sportsmen. This is a book for the country house, and for everyone who cares for free out-of-door life and untrammelled sport. (Horace Cox.)

Fiction.

Savrola: a Tale of the Revolution in Laurania. By Winston Spencer Churchill. (Longmans. 6s.)

THE situation of the republic of Laurania is not precisely defined by Mr. Churchill, but it undoubtedly lies somewhere between the Mediterranean and the Baltic, and it might fairly be called, in some respects, a ،، composite photograph" of sundry European states. Laurania had suffered for five years from a military dictatorship imposing itself by force against the will of the people, and the tale tells how, and with what bloodshed and dishonour, this dictatorship was overthrown. Savrola was the chivalrous leader of the people, and he is a fine character, though rather inclined to emit "views." The Dictator's wife, Lucile, is shamefully permitted by her husband to entangle herself with Savrola for political purposes, but she ends by loving Savrola (this is the "human interest"), and the book concludes with the flight of the lovers from Laurania, the Dictator having met his death. The various incidents of revolution the mutiny

of the army, the personal collision between Savrola and the Dictator, the street fighting, and the contest between the navy and the land forts-are described with an expert vigour and picturesqueness; but there is nothing in the book so good as Mr. Churchill's recent narrative in the Morning Post of his capture by the Boers. The satire in which the story abounds is rather forcible than keen. Thus, of newspapers, apropos of the shooting down of an unarmed mob by the soldiery:

The Courtier, the respectable morning journal of the upper classes, regretted that so unseemly a riot should have taken place at the beginning of the season, and expressed a hope that it would not in any way impair the brilliancy of the State Ball which was to take place on the 7th. It gave an excellent account of the President's first ministerial dinner, with the menu duly appended, and it was concerned to notice that Señor Louvet, Minister of the Interior, had been suffering from an indisposition which prevented his attending the function. The Diurnal Gusher, a paper with an enormous circulation, refrained from actual comments, but published an excellent account of the massacre, to the harrowing details of which it devoted much fruity sentiment and morbid imagination.

Savrola is an agreeable, " rattling" book, and an achievement remarkable enough for an author aged twenty-three. It is very obviously the work of a brilliant and original man, a man of multifarious experiences and aptitudes, a man who could shine in whatever quarter he might choose, and shine so that all must gaze on the effulgence of him. But it is not the novel of a novelist. Its real interest lies more in the personality it discloses than in the strength and beauty of the work itself.

Mirry Ann. By Norma Lorimer.
(Methuen & Co. 6s.)

THE Isle of Man has of late been vulgarised, not only by its tourists, but also by its novelists; the days of its aloofness and simplicity can never come back. On the other hand, many years will pass before, in the remoter parts of it and in the intimacies of its village life, it loses those characteristics which make it so valuable both to the ethnographer and to the student of human nature. Miss Lorimer, to judge by her acquaintance with Manx customs and her realisation of the Manx spirit, is probably a native of the Isle of Man; but whether she is or not she has written a Manx novel which is at once sincere, poetical, and in the best sense true. She knows the hearts of the fisher folk, and she has felt the influences of Manx landscape, so forbidding and yet so full of sentiment. Those who have idled through the fishing villages that lie between Douglas and Port Erin will appreciate her various descriptions of Colby and the perception that has gone to the making of them. Here is a little night piece:

In the little island there are lingering twilights, and the days were now touching their longest. But the villagers did not wait for darkness to close their day, work began too early for that. Before the heavens had deepened for the night, and while wide-winged bats were still floundering in the sky, the house-doors were shut and the white window-blinds drawn closely down. Enough coal and light had to be burned in the winter; and if in late springtime it was still grey twilight when chapel was over, and the evening meal finished, what need was there of the unnecessary extravagance of burning lamp-oil? Here and there a light could be seen from some low window, where the geraniums and fuchsias, which shut out the bright sunshine in the daytime, were now reflected like skeleton flowers on the white blinds. At regular intervals of time Langness lighthouse from its distant point shot out its bright shaft and turned it on the village as if to show with greater distinctness the still peacefulness of the scene. Even on such an eventful day as this, if their men were at sea, bed-time came soon for the women, and the Colby street was early quiet. A new day would begin betimes, with its gossip and its sadness.

Beyond saying that the heroine is well and strongly drawn, we have no space to deal with the characters or the plot of Mirry-Ann; nor are these so important as the general atmosphere and suggestiveness of the book as a whole. Miss Lorimer has obvious limitations as a prose artist, and the slow march of her events by no means possesses that inevitability which is essential in a great novel. Mirry-Ann, in fact, is not a great novel; scarcely even a fine one; but it is distinguished for all that, and Miss Lorimer has within her the root of the matter.

The White Dove. By William J. Locke.
(Lane. 6s.)

WE would not deny that this is a novel somewhat beyond the average in conception, and much beyond the average in execution, but at the same time we do not think that Mr. Locke is travelling along the true path of development. In fact, this seems to us the least satisfactory of his four novels. It is often mawkish - and that is the whole of our charge against it. The book is a tale of two adulteries; but this accident of theme has nothing to do with the mawkishness, for the story is neither impure nor ignobly suggestive. One of Mr. Locke's characters has a phrase, "the banality of meretricious prettiness." It is of this banality that Mr. Locke is guilty. An extract will illustrate :

"Perhaps after a time, when I am dead and gone-a man must die some day, you know-you'll like to come back to the old house and devote yourself entirely to research and be independent of two-guinea fees and that kind of thing. That would be nice, wouldn't it, Ella ?" The girl's heart throbbed at the share implied, but a tenderer feeling quieted it at once.

"It would be impossible without you, Uncle Matthew," she said.

He rose with a laugh. "None of us are indispensable, not even the most futile. I'm going to dress. You'll dine here, of course, Syl? And Ella, tell them to get up some of the '84 Pommery to drink good luck to Syl."

He walked out of the room with the brisk air of a man thoroughly pleased with life; but outside, in the passage, his face grew sad, and he mounted the stairs to his dressing-room very slowly, holding on to the balusters.

The younger folks remained for a while longer in the library. Sylvester bent forward and broke a great lump of coal with the poker.

"I'm not fit to black his boots, you know."

Mr. Buchanan has chosen an admirable setting for his new story. It is on Canvey Island, that low, desolate strip of mud and grass opposite Benfleet, between Gravesend and the Nore, that we meet "Anniedromedy," as she is called by her foster-parents. "Half mermaid and half able seaman is our gel!" says old Endell, the fisherman. To young Somerset, the artist, she is the Goddess of Canvey Island. A story of love, a birth-mystery, art, water, and moonlight. (Chatto & Windus. 6s.)

Stories by the author of The Silence of Dean Maitland. The first, which gives the book its title, tells how a young doctor drank, and maltreated his wife; and how, in the end, she took to drink, was attended by her husband (now reformed) and died forgiving him. (Heinemann. 6s.) NEMO. BY THEO. DOUGLAS.

Those who accept occult phenomena, and those who associate them with imposture, will alike be interested in this strong and well-constructed story by the author of Iras: a Mystery. The characters of the unscrupulous old conjurer, "Professor" Bannerman, and his frail and psychologically gifted daughter, Mary, are well drawn. Mystery, excitement, humbug, and detection keep the story thoroughly alive, and the love interest is never dropped. (Smith, Elder. 6s.)

Fourteen stories by the author of A Fellow of Trinity. The first three are military, and each is prefaced by a quotation from "The Absent-Minded Beggar." In "The Loyal Hussar," a young lover hearing, on the day that his banns have been published for the second time, that there has been another reverse in South Africa, gives himself up as a deserter in order to rejoin his regiment at the front. It is not, we believe, a sure way, but apparently he was successful. Of what happened after that the author is silent. (Digby, Long. 3s. 6d.)

MR. STEEVENS's journalistic method was in danger of tiring by its brilliance. His hail-storms of observation were magnificent, but their very fascination had their own monotony. The fact is, that the new and sensitive journalism which he originated, and which gave him his opportunities, employed only those faculties which were of instant market value. They left in abeyance so much that should have warmed, softened, modified, and given enduring import to his hot impressionism. Acting in strict and dutiful concert with his employers, Mr. Steevens collected raw material with unexampled quickness, and sent it to London, duly made up, with elfish skill and promptitude. But it was made up for to-morrow's use; it was a brilliant contribution to the breakfast-table. Mr. Steevens would

have claimed no more. And yet more may be unhesitatingly granted. There is reason to think that the man who, at thirty, had developed certain literary powers so far, would have developed those other powers and qualities which were needed to give his writings the form and significance of literature. Emotion, reflection; revelation of personality, and not merely of personal faculties; spiritual, as distinct from physical, keenness of vision; these, and the ripeness which comes at its own pace, would have touched Mr. Steevens's powers to deeper issues. But it was not to be.

It was not to be; and with gratitude and interest we accept the last expression of Mr. Steevens's genius as a descriptive writer. There is little in the book before us that calls for new remark. Still we notice that it is precisely when things are "humming" that the writing is best. Steevens was a little at loss when dulness reigned. He would not relax his method, look within himself, and indulge other powers than those he was sent out to exercise; duty forbade, the conditions forbade. But when the bugles blared with purpose, what vigour, what efficiency Mr. Steevens never did anything better than his account of Elandslaagte, unless it was his account of Omdurman. Perhaps Omdurman gave him the finer opportunity, for nothing like that host advancing in white linen and the love of Allah has been seen or heard of by living men. But now take the battle of lead and waterElandslaagte:

It was about a quarter to five, and it seemed curiously dark for the time of day. No wonder-for as the men moved forward before the enemy the heavens were opened. From the eastern sky swept a sheer sheet of rain. With the first stabbing drops horses turned their heads away, trembling, and no whip or spur could bring them up to it. It drove through mackintoshes as if they were blottingpaper. The air was filled with hissing; underfoot you could see solid earth melting into mud, and mud flowing away in water. It blotted out hill and dale and enemy in one grey curtain of swooping water. You would have said that the heavens had opened to drown the wrath of man. And through it the guns still thundered and the khaki columns pushed doggedly on.

From Capetown to Ladysmith: an Unfinished Record of the South African War. By G. W. Steevens. (Blackwood. 3s. 6d.)

The infantry came among the boulders and began to open out. The supports and reserves followed up. And then, in a twinkling, on the stone-pitted hill-face burst loose that other storm-the storm of lead, of blood, of death. In a twinkling the first line were down behind rocks, firing fast, and the bullets came flicking round them. Men stopped and started, staggered, and dropped limply, as if the string were cut that held them upright. The line pushed on; the supports and reserves followed up. A colonel fell, shot in the arm; the regiment pushed

on.

Unwillingly we break the red-hot chain of narrative, and seize a later, the supreme, moment:

Fix bayonets! Staff officers rushed shouting from the rear, imploring, cajoling, cursing, slamming every man who could move into the line. Line-but it was a line no longer. It was a surging wave of men-Devons and Gordons, Manchester and Light Horse all mixed, inextricably subalterns commanding regiments, soldiers yelling advice, officers firing carbines, stumbling, leaping, killing, falling, all drunk with battle, shoving through hell to the throat of the enemy. And there beneath our feet was the Boer camp and the last Boers galloping out of it. There also-thank Heaven, thank Heaven!--were squadrons of Lancers and Dragoon Guards storming in among them, shouting, spearing, stamping them into the ground. Cease fire!

How sure and vivid, too, is the after-picture of the old wounded Boer on the dark hill-side :

We found Mr. Kok, father of the Boer general and member of the Transvaal Executive, lying high up on the hill-a massive, white-haired patriarch, in a black frockcoat and trousers. With simple dignity, with the right of a dying man to command, he said in his strong voice: "Take me down the hill and lay me in a tent; I am wounded with three bullets."

Few Englishmen read those sentences in the Daily Mail without misgiving, none without pity.

Mr. Steevens's more humorous and dramatic vein is seen in the chapter "In a Conning Tower." They were drinking draught beer when the boom of a gun was heard. The captain picked up his stick and said "Come." They climbed up a ladder of rock and looked abroad.

"That gunner," said the captain, waving his stick at Surprise Hill, is a German. Nobody but a German atheist would have fired on us at breakfast, lunch, and dinner the same Sunday. It got too hot when he put one ten yards from the cook. Anybody else we could have spared; then we had to go."

We come to what looks like a sandbag redoubt, but in the eyes of heaven is a conning-tower.

Left-hand Gun Hill fired, sir," said a bluejacket, with his eyes glued to binoculars. "At the balloon "-and presently we heard the weary pinions of the shell, and saw the little puff of white below.

"Ring up Mr. Halsey," said the captain.

Then I was aware of a sort of tarpaulin cupboard under the breast work, of creeping trails of wire on the ground, and of a couple of sappers.

The corporal turned down his page of Harmsworth's Magazine, laid it on the parapet, and dived under the tarpaulin.

Ting-a-ling-a-ling! buzzed the telephone bell.

The gaunt, up-towering mountains, the long, smooth, deadly guns and the telephone bell!

If anything could add to the sadness of Mr. Steevens's death it is the sharp-set life that one meets in the best of these pages. Life, quick life, abounds, and vision such as one cannot associate with the darkness of death. There is a grim oddness in his remark, when he caught sight of Table Mountain in this his last journey-" more like a coffin than a table." A thousand regrets linger round this book, and hopes that almost refuse to die with him who inspired them. But the closing memorial chapter, written by Mr. Vernon Blackburn, recalls alike the certainty and the seriousness of our loss.

Things Seen.

Imperialism.

SUDDENLY through the open window came the joyous sound of fifes, cheers, and the rhythmic tramp of trained feet. Idly I turned to the window, and there were the men in khaki swinging down the street. The sun shone out, the fifes set the blood galloping, the people shouted, and the dark houses were alight with waving handkerchiefs. Overhead - strong, stern, fatherly-loomed St. Paul's, and as the men in khaki came swinging round her walls enthusiasm caught me and lifted me out of myself. I swept the world and saw everywhere the children of the old home waving their strong arms, shouting, and hurrying forward to the sound of the Imperial clarion. Patriotism, Imperialism-in a flash I saw all they meant! My temperate blood grew hot, my pulse raced, and leaning from the window I shouted, and cheered, and cried with the rest. The fifes died in the distance, the men in khaki swept westward, the crowd scattered, the omnibuses moved on, and I turned back into the room. A book was lying on the table, a little book, a collection of Coleridge's Table Talk. I opened it at random, and my eye fell upon this passage:

The true key to the declension of the Roman empirewhich is not to be found in all Gibbon's immense work may be stated in two words: the imperial character overlaying, and finally destroying, the national character. Nevertheless, that afternoon I bought a khaki necktie.

The Lighted Window.

IT had been a day of bitter weather-snow, sleet, frost, and a cutting wind, and the sight of my fellow creatures had given me sad thoughts. All mankind seemed to be stunted and warped. The men and women who had flitted past me, shoulders rounded, heads bent, proclaimed in every movement: "See to what mankind has come. We are spoiled by the hard life of cities." And as the cab in which I was seated crawled through the dark streets the procession of these figures passed and repassed before my mind's eye, and I thought hungrily of the ample, simple, joyous life that is our birthright, if we but knew how to claim it.

The rumbling of the cab lessened. I jumped out into the dark, unpropitious night-the night of hurrying, degenerate figures. The cabman, very old and grey, jerked his head towards the horse. It stood staggering, and he himself was frozen with the cold. I paid him, but his numbed hand could not hold the money. It dropped and disappeared in the snow. I gave him more money, doubling it within his listless hand. He swung himself off the box without speaking, coaxed the animal to move homewards, and I, turning away, came full face to a lighted shop window. Straightway that bitter day, and the poor travesties of humanity who had hurried through it, were forgotten. The window was full of glasscovered trays, and in the trays gleamed rainbow hummingbirds; moths with diaphanous outstretched wings; butterflies of exquisite workmanship; radiant shells; and iridescent beetles gold and green, green and gold, and of perfect form. That shop-window in a dark London street was sheer loveliness. It proclaimed what all created things should be; what those hurrying, bent, undersized figures might be if man could but read the laws of life and follow them with wisdom. I turned away from that lighted window in the dark London street, but the hurrying, undersized figures no longer clouded my vision. I saw

through them and beyond. And those brave words of Philaster's drummed through my brain.

Oh that I had been nourished in these woods
With milk of goats and acorns, and not known
The right of crowns nor the dissembling traios
Of women's looks; but digged myself a cave
Where I, my fire, my cattle, and my bed,
Might have been shut together in one shed;
And then had taken me some mountain-girl,
Beaten with winds, chaste as the hardened rocks
Whereon she dwelt, that might have strewed my
bed
With leaves and reeds, and with the skins of beasts,
Our neighbours, and have borne at her big breasts
My large coarse issue!

Paris Letter.

(From our French Correspondent.)

M. EDOUARD ROD is always a serious and healthy writer. You must not look for wit or humour in his books, still less for eloquence or charm. A prudent reserve is his great characteristic; sincerity and simplicity are his best qualities. His new book, Au Milieu du Chemin ("In Life's Middle Way"), is another of his sober studies of the consequences of passion. It breathes of troubled conscience, of an implacable rectitude, and an unsleeping preoccupation with truth. The hero is the inevitable man of letters so dear to the heart of a writer essentially a man of letters himself. He takes his profession gravely, as M. Rod does, but without enthusiasm; is like his creator, dull, sober and sincere. In analysing the position modern life and judgment have made for modern writers, he has the' wisdom to pronounce it excessive: he qualifies poets and novelists as "the workmen of the illusions of the heart and the senses.

"Not only do our works harm," he meditates, when brought face to face with the distressing fact that a betrayed girl has committed suicide, prompted by a similar dénouement in one of his own novels, which was the last book she read,

it is our life, we ourselves, what we are, what the talent we have has made of us, or the fashion of the hour that has seized us. For we occupy a place prodigiously disproportionate to the efficacy of our social role; we are Hattered far beyond our merit, unless we should be abused far beyond reason. In each case there is too much noise made about us. At a time when talent is the portion of the man in the street the little each one of us has lays claims to the rights of genius; and the imbecility of the public hastens to grant them. And so each of us grows to regard himself as the axle of the world, and gargles his throat every evening with the day's compliments, is occasionally made drunk by his own immortality as a plausible illusion. And both our life and soul suffer from these excesses. We end by disdaining the common law of men, which alone is good. We take pride in not resembling them or, at least, in possessing something which they lack, a gift that lifts us above them. We want to live after our own fashion with the sentiments, the pleasures, the passions that we guard from the control of usual experience, because they are our own. What errors thus do we commit without suspecting the consequences! What deformities art and poetry cause our being to undergo, even in our very acts

M. Rod excels in a delicate and suggestive examination of conscience. Converted to nationalism under the influence of the eminent Brunetière, the discoverer of Bossuet, who has persuaded him that the entire world, to be logical and sincere, must become Roman Catholic, M. Rod jeers at his old religion, Protestantism; but he may thank that abandoned creed for the one quality that lifts him above the crowd of cheap novelists of the hour. It is because of that individualist training, which excites the anger of M. Brunetière, that M. Rod's heroes go wrong and suffer

and become strong in their own sincere and conscientious way. Their nobility lies in that personal delicacy of moral nature which forbids them facile errors and vulgar plea

sures.

This, to-day, in France, suffices to constitute originality. In the end Clarence, the applauded dramatist, has decided he must regularise his relations with a divorced woman, whose faithful lover he has been for years. His arguments at last convince the lady, who, having suffered through marriage, loathes the institution.

We shall grow old without having anything that gives force to life when maturity comes: home, family, sure friends. We shall grow old separated in the eyes of everybody, while alone malicious voices will pronounce our two different names together. Never shall we be entirely the two beings that make but one, the strong single trunk from whence spread the branches of the future. Each will follow his way. For the moment our ways are mingled. But dare we assert that the chances of the journey will not separate them? So many can rise up at any moment. To-morrow, in an instant, the unexpected may start up between us, and neither our love nor our will suffice to abolish it.

The chain of marriage is such a simple necessity that almost all men accept it without discussion. The book is a moral and sensible one, above all a convincing sermon on the irrefragable necessity for the subservience of the so-called exceptional being to the common laws that have fashioned society, and by which alone society can be maintained.

The Liberal party in France (that is, the old sect of Dreyfusards) gained a triumph last week in the election of M. Paul Hervieu. All the forces of nationalism were brought to bear against him, but in spite of the efforts of that singular pair, MM. Coppée and Lemaître, Hervieu was elected, to the grief and discomfiture of Nationalists, Catholics, and Royalists. M. Bourget, whose conversion has cast him upon the bosom of Brunetière, forgets his old masters and his old loves, Taine and Zola, and now wars against intellect and individuality, and, of course, voted against M. Hervieu. For the Academy has, alas! become an arena of politics instead of a temple of literature.

M. Auguste Filon's new book, Sous la Tyrannie, is a feeble satire upon Republicanism, and the no less feeble portrayal of life under the Second Empire. Gambetta is naturally a lively and obvious prey of the Imperialist caricaturist. But Gambetta has been turned to such vivid and excellent account by Daudet that we were in no need of M. Filon's insignificant portrait. Had Daudet not written Numa Roumestan M. Filon's false great man might have seemed to us a clever seizure of a type. The story is well written, but not exciting. The sordid-minded poet, histrionic, lying and hypocritical, excellent man of affairs, is doubtless a squalid caricature of Victor Hugo.

Correspondence.

Stevenson's Beginnings.

H. L.

SIR, The following notes on the original publication of Treasure Island may help to resolve Mr. W. E. Henley's doubts.

The editor and proprietor of Young Folks' Paper, to whom Mr. Henley refers in his article in the North American Review, was Mr. James Henderson. Mr. Henderson is not dead, as Mr. Henley "rather thinks," although Young Folks' Paper is long since defunct. The paper was started some thirty years ago as a juvenile offshoot from the same proprietor's prosperous Weekly Budget, and it bore originally the title Our Young Folks' Weekly Budget. At the time when "Treasure Island" appeared in its columns it had

become known as Young Folks. In subsequent stages of its career it passed successively under the names of Young Folks' Paper and Old and Young.

It was Dr. Japp, I believe, who introduced Stevenson to Mr. Henderson. This was early in the year 1881. Mr. Henderson offered to take a story from the young Scotsman, and, as indicating the kind of story he desired for Young Folks, he gave to Stevenson copies of the paper containing a serial by Charles E. Pearce-a treasurehunting story, entitled "Billy Bo's'n." In his "My First Book article in the Idler, Stevenson seems to suggest that "Treasure Island was already formed and planned in his mind prior to the time at which it was thought of as a serial for Young Folks; but there is evidence that in Billy Bo's'n" he found and adopted many suggestions and incidents for his own narrative.

As a result of his introduction to Mr. Henderson, Stevenson wrote his story of Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver, and sent it in with the title of "The Sea Cook." Mr. Henderson did not like the name "The Sea Cook," and took an editor's privilege of altering it to "Treasure Island." The first instalment was published on October 1, 1881. Stevenson's name was not on it: it was set forth as being by Capt. George North, to convey the idea that it was the work of a mariner. It was not considered of great importance in the paper, for it occupied a second place to a serial called "Don Zalva the Brave," by Mr. Alfred R. Phillips, one of the "masters" whom Mr. Henley refers to as being "in no wise model citizens." Only the first instalment was illustrated-by a rude woodcut representing Billy Bones chasing Black Dog out of the "Admiral Benbow." The subsequent seventeen instalments were foisted into the paper in driblets of two or three columns of small type.

Mr. Henley is right in his belief that "Treasure Island" was as a serial a comparative failure. It certainly did not raise the circulation of Young Folks by a single copy. Far different, however, was the effect of "The Black Arrow." This story was written designedly, and again at the suggestion of Mr. Henderson, in the style of historical narrative which had proved so popular in the stories of Mr. Alfred Phillips. It appeared in Young Folks from June 30 to October 30, 1883, by "Captain George North" again, and was enormously successful with boy readers, raising the circulation of the paper by many hundreds of copies a week.

I had myself the privilege of being editor of Young Folks' Paper at the time when Stevenson was living in Bournemouth, and I remember writing asking him for a new serial story in 1885. He agreed to write one, but demanded higher terms than those which had satisfied him in the cases of "Treasure Island" and "The Black Arrow." "You must pay me not less than thirty shillings a column," he wrote. The columns, I may say, contained each about 1,200 words. There was no haggling over terms such as these. Mr. Henderson, indeed, at once offered a considerably higher price for the work. The required story was frequently delayed, but at last it appeared as "Kidnapped," and ran serially in Young Folks from May to July, 1886.

He

In preparing "Treasure Island" for book publication, Stevenson did not alter much. Here and there he struck out a paragraph, here and there he added one. softened down the boastfulness of Jim Hawkins's personal narrative, and Dr. Livesay, who was originally somewhat frivolous and familiar in his language, he made more staid, as became one of his profession. In only one instance was a chapter heading altered-"At the Sign of the Spy Glass" being substituted for "The Sea Cook."-I am, &c., ROBERT LEIGHTON.

40, Abbey-road, N.W.