Story of a Woman's Courage_, by FREDERICK WICKS. The Baron being,
as he is bound to admit, almost human, was warned off the book by
its title, which seems to suggest something in the tract line. The
Publishers' name (BLACKWOOD) is, however, an invariable stamp of
good metal. So the Baron picked up the book, was attracted by the
remarkably clever illustrations, and finally, beginning at the
beginning, he read to the end. It is a novel, and one of the best
published this season; and all the better for being in one stout
handsomely-printed volume. The plot is constructed with rare skill,
the writing is good, and the people all alive. If it is WICKS's first
work (and the Baron never heard of FREDERICK before) he should go on
making candles of the same kind. Their illuminating power is rare.

"_What shall we play at, and how shall we play it_?" The satisfactory
answer to these two questions, specially important at Christmas time,
will be found in Professor HOFFMANN's _Encyclopædia of Card and Table
Games_, published by ROUTLEDGE. Here you will learn the mysteries of
"Go-Bang," "Reverse,"--and after learning the latter, you, if Nature
has blessed you with a tuneful voice, will be able to sing with GEORGE
GROSSMITH (if he'll let you), "_See me Reverse_." The motto for the
Professor's book should have been the emphatic exclamation of the
street Arab, "My heye! such games!"

This is the sixth year of _Hazell's Annual_. Whatever information you
require it will be difficult not to find in _Hazell_, clearly and
not at all Hazelly expressed. A youthful friend whose pun, says the
Baron, I hereby nail to the counter, on seeing this book on my desk,
observed, "Yes, I'm nuts on HAZELL." The Baron frowned, and the youth
withered away, as ALICE did--not the one who went to Wonderland, but
an elder ALICE, whom our old friend "BEN BOLT" remembers.