n to ring the
joy-peals for a New Year so lustily, so merrily, so happily, so gaily,
that he (like poor old _Trotty Veck_) leapt to his feet, and broke the
spell that bound him.

* * * * *

"Yes, that is still the true Spirit of the Chimes," mused _Mr. Punch_,
as he took pen in hand to open up his new Volume. "And that's the
spirit I hope to keep up right through the twelve months of just-born
Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-two, which I trust may be--with my willing
assistance,

A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL OF YOU!!!"

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

One of the Baron's Critical Faculty sends him his opinion of our Mr.
DU MAURIER's latest novel, which is also his first. And here let it be
published _urbi et orbi_ that there is no truth whatever in a report
which appeared in an evening paper to the effect that Mr. DU MAURIER,
however retiring he may be, was about to retire or had retired
from _Mr. Punch's_ Staff. The _St. James's Gazette_ has already
"authoritatively" denied the assertion; and this denial the Baron
for _Mr. Punch_, decisively confirms. Now, to the notice of the book
above-mentioned. Here it is:--

[Illustration]

"There has been a certain deliberateness in Mr. DU MAURIER's incursion
into literature that speaks eloquently for his modesty. He is, to our
certain knowledge, at least 40 years old, and _Peter Ibbetson_, which
Messrs. OSGOOD & CO. present in two daintily dressed volumes, is
his first essay in romantic writing. Reading the book, it is hard to
conceive this to be the fact. The work is entirely free from those
traces of amateurishness, almost inseparable from a first effort. The
literary style is considerably above the average modern novelist; the
plot is marked by audacious invention, worked out with great skill;
the hero is a madman, not in itself an attractive arrangement, but
there is such admirable method in his madness, such fine poetic
feeling in the conception of character, and the ghosts who flit
through the pages of the story are so exceedingly human, that one
feels quite at home with _Peter_, and is really sorry when, all too
soon, his madness passes away, and he awakes to a new life, to find
himself an old man. Apart from its strong dramatic interest, _Peter
Ibbetson_ has rare value, from the pictures of Old Paris in the last
days of LOUIS-PHILIPPE, which crowd in charming succession through the
first volume. Mr. GEORGE D