ing over this capital short story, which is
as ingenious as it is genuinely droll. It belongs to the same genus
as the _Danvers Jewels_, though, in this latter, the idea of the
character of the narrator is more humorously conceived than is Mr.
SIMS's Baronet who acts as an amateur detective. The Baron highly
recommends this story, as he also does a short tale in _Blackwood_,
for this month, entitled, _A Physiologist's Wife_, by A. CONAN DOYLE.

The Baron's attention has been turned to five little volumes of _Love
Tales_, English, Irish, Scotch, American, and German. They form a
companion set to _Weird Tales_, published also by PATERSON & Co., and
a pocketable size, most useful for travellers.

_A propos_ of Travellers, why does not some English firm bring out a
series of Guide-books, of the size, and written in the style of the
_Guides Conty_, which, for travelling in France, are far and away
the best Guide-books I know. The _Guides Joanne_ are of course good,
steady, trustworthy Guides, but they don't attract the traveller's
attention to out-of-the-way places, and to the "things to do," in the
same pleasant way as do the writers in the _Guides Conty_. Where to
go, when to go, how to go, how to make the most of a short visit, what
to ask for, what to look for, what to take, and what to avoid, these
are details for which the _Guides Conty_ go in. They might be better,
perhaps, in the way of maps, but this is a fault of all Guides.
Wishing, when at Havre, to visit Merville-sur-Mer, and the celebrated
Corneville, with whose _cloches_ we are all acquainted, in vain I
searched the ordinary maps, and at last found quite a microscopical
place, and without the "Sur Mer," as there wasn't room for it in a map
of either the _Guide Joanne_ or _Conty_, I forget which. Why it seems
to be generally ignored I don't know, but in this respect it is a
fellow-sufferer with Westgate-on-Sea, whose name is on no sign-post
that ever I've seen in the Island of Thanet, though it may by this
time figure on some recent maps. The village of "Garlinge," which
is on the inland side of the L.C.&D. line, is to be found on every
direction-post and on every map, and the fashionable Westgate is, so
to speak, nowhere. BARON DE BOOK-WORMS.

P.S.--Just attempted to read RUDYARD KIPLING's _On Greenhow Hill_, in
this month's _Macmillan_. No doubt very clever, and will be greatly
admired by Kiplingites, but, for me, time is too valuable and life too
short to