are beautiful in tone and style and color; and though sadly tender and tenderly sad in sentiment, their philosophy is sweet, not bitter, and they end by breathing a note of hope.

All Mrs. Burnett's Italian sketches remind one of those in Ouida's incomparable "Bimbi," in that they have the same background, the same wealth of local color, the same picturesqueness of language and ideality of sentiment. They are not merely stories of Pietros and Paolos who are made to dwell by the Arno, but might as well live in Schenectadythey depict real Italian children who create their own sunny atmosphere in the mind of the reader.

"Illustrissimo Signor Bébé" is a delicious piece of portrait painting-in our eyes the most exquisite thing in the book. This magnificently autocratic little personage may have been difficult to live with, although his doting relatives would assuredly have denied the soft impeachment, but he is altogether adorable in print. The sketch is done in a whimsical spirit with the lightest possible touch; the light yet sure touch that rests and delights the reader, who feels that an artist is wielding the brush, one who can paint larger canvases as well as these dainty bits of porcelain.

Mrs. Burnett tells us that she had no personal acquaintance with this baby potentate. She saw his photographs from time to time (he was an infant professional beauty, and suffered from the camera accordingly), and she also heard innumerable anecdotes of his war

like career from adoring friends. He is no shadow figure, however, but a vivid reality, "Joli comme un petit Amour avec ses longues boucles blondes et ses grands yeux noirs." We see his military salutes, his sword, his stilettos, his sash, and the inharmonious petticoats which ruffled his martial spirit so sadly; and we feel sure that he would have wheedled us into giving him undeserved "diplomes de sagesse," as he did the long-suffering schoolmistress who superintended his education.

But it is well-nigh impossible to choose one story from out the twelve and praise it above the others. Your little daughter will plead for "The Tinker's Tom" until you wish that Mrs. Burnett had never seen him; for while your pleasure will last through the seventh reading, it will not quite support you to the twentyseventh. Somebody else's little daughter will beg for "The True Story of an Old Hawthorn Tree," and I, for one, am open to an engagement to read it to her as many times as she cares to hear it. In fine, most people will like all the stories, and some will like a certain one better than all the others, for there are elective affinities between people and books as there are between human beings.

Mr. Reginald Birch is always quite in sympathy with Mrs. Burnett's work, and he has given us in this volume a series of pictures drawn with the spirit and grace which characterize him, and which is demanded of any artist who presents Mrs. Burnett's little heroes and heroines to the physical eye.

T

HERE is, at least, one prophet who is not

without honor even in his own country and among his own people; for nowhere in the world is the author of "Dorothy Q." more honored than in "the three-hilled rebel town," which he has loved and sung so well, and where he spends the sweet evening of a tranquil life, dwelling among his own people.

One winter morning not long ago the writer stopped a hackman on Beacon Street, and asked if he could tell him where a certain Doc

DOROTHY Q. Together with A BALLAD OF THE BOSTON TEA-PARTY and GRANDMOTHER'S STORY OF BUNKER HILL BATTLE. By Oliver Wendell Holmes. With portrait of Dorothy Q and 100 illustrations by Howard Pyle. Crown 8vo, $1.50. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

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tor lived. Oh, you mean the old man-the poet? He lives a good way higher up on the sunny-side," was the answer; and the writer, guided by the cheery address, went on to his first face-to-face meeting with the author he had so long known, the grandson of "Dorothy Q.," who had the happiness to be known as a poet even to the hackmen but a few blocks from his home.

The three poems contained in the dainty little volume issued in all the attractiveness of beautiful paper, printing, and binding from the Riverside Press by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., among their Christmas books, and exquisitely illustrated by Howard Pyle in his most sympathetic spirit, are at once an ex

planation and a justification of the fact that the author of "Dorothy Q." has honor among his own people. His own people have been the beloved theme with which his clear harp has been vibrating so long. And filled in his inmost heart with their beauty and charm, he has been enabled by his genius to interpret them to the great heart of humanity. Perhaps few of the world's prophets have ever lived so long and uninterruptedly "higher up on the sunny-side," and certainly few have ever thrown so steadily a sunny reflection to the great outside crowd that throng the more shaded ways. If that old liturgy which prays deliverance not only "in all times of our tribulation," but also "in all times of our prosperity," is to be held a guide, then is praise as justly due that the seductions of a career of ease spent amid the roses and lilies of life have never hushed the cheery song which

has floated out over his garden close so long to delight all hearts, as if the song had been forced in that more common nursery of work and toil. In Doctor Holmes's presence, one almost insensibly finds himself lingering at the breakfast-table, dawdling over the teacups, or following the long path in the delightful company of love and philosophy; but on this occasion we must step back with him to our grandfathers' days. The three poems brought together here all deal with the Colonial time. The first, which gives the title, is a ballad of the poet's great Grandmother, Dorothy Quincy, written upon an old portrait of her. It will, as it was intended to do, "gild with a rhyme" her household name and make her

"Live untroubled by hopes and fears Through a second youth of a hundred years.”

The next poem is "A Ballad of the Boston Tea-Party," when the tea was brewed

"Which kept King George so long awake His brain at last got addled."

It brims with the wit and humor and is sweet with the sentiment which have made the Autocrat's work so universally loved. Here is its last taste :

"And freedom's teacup still o'erflows
With ever fresh libations

To cheat of slumber all her foes

And cheer the wakening nations."

The last and, perhaps, the most important is "Grandmother's Story of the Battle of Bun

ker Hill," a stirring ballad which carries under the martial strain of its ringing verse, like a loveletter under a hawk's wing, a love-story that just peeps out at the last, in that shy fashion which makes the hardly hinted at romance of the Autocrat one of the sweetest in the world. It is these delicate threads which run through all he has wrought that give Dr. Holmes's work its peculiar texture.

Mr. Pyle's exquisite pictures follow the sev eral stories with absolute fidelity, and the lovers of "Dorothy Q." and of her companions in all lands must feel grateful that a pencil so sympathetic and delicate has been found to picture the very spirit which the poet has breathed in his verse.