M. SIMON wrote a
thoughtful and interesting article on _L'Education des Femmes_, and M.
FRANCISQUE SARCEY, a very amusing paper on _Le Timide au Theatre_. The
number for February (it is only a bi-monthly publication) has a paper on
_L'Influence_ (not the influenza) _des Femmes en France_, the only fault
of which is its length; and GYP gives a satirical sketch called _Nos
Docteurs_, which hardly seems in keeping with the family character of
the _Revue_. The March Number is now out, and can be procured at
HACHETTE'S. It is one of the best French serials.

A delightful book is _Yorkshire Legends and Traditions_, collected and
recounted by the Rev. THOMAS PARKINSON. He who writes of fairies and of
witches should of course possess some potent spell--(how many members of
the School-Board, had they lived a couple of hundred years ago, would
have been punished as witches for teaching "spelling," it is pleasant to
imagine)--and Mr. PARKINSON'S great charm is his apparent belief in the
wonders he relates. Even when he occasionally alludes to "popular
superstition," you feel it is only a phrase introduced evidently out of
consideration for the unphilosophic prejudices of his "so-called"
Nineteenth-Century readers, who pride themselves on being HUXLEYS in the
full blaze of scientific light, and yet would shrink from passing a
night in a haunted room, or, if alone, would go a mile out of their way
to avoid an uncanny spot. The greatest mistake made by narrators of the
marvellous is attempting to account for the unaccountable. This book is,
I believe, one of a series now being published by ELLIOT STOCK, of
Paternoster Row, a stock which Your Own Baron recommends as a safe
investment, for the book alone is a good dividend, the interest being
kept up all through; and it is satisfactory to hear that, as the other
counties of England, and perhaps of Ireland and Scotland, are being
dealt with in a similar manner, there is a good reserve-fund of
information and amusement.

Mr. RUNCIMAN, in _The Fortnightly_, brings a serious indictment of
plagiarism against Mr. RIDER HAGGARD, which it strikes me he would be
unable to sustain in a Court of Common Sense before MR. PRESIDENT PUNCH,
unless it were first laid down as a fixed principle, that a writer of
fiction must never have recourse to any narrative of facts whereon to
base his Romance.

THE BARON DE BOOK-WORMS.

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