for liquorice-water isn't a real good practical side-splitter, the Baron would like to be informed what is? Then we come upon a delightful little picture of "The Pet of the Hospital"; and so she ought to be, for a prettier pet than this nursing Sister it would be difficult to find. What becomes of her? Does she marry a "Sawbones," or run off with a patient? Anyhow, she must be a "great attraction," and if anything were to happen to the Baron, and he couldn't be removed to his own palatial residence, he would say, "Put me in a cab, drive me to the Furniss Hospital, and let me be in Pretty Pet's Ward."

The Baron has just been dipping into Mr. JUSTIN HUNTLY McCARTHY's "Pages on Plays" in The Gentleman's Magazine. JUSTIN HUNTLY expresses his opinion that "The Dancing Girl will almost certainly be the play of the season; it will probably be the principal play of the year." "Almost certainly" and "probably" save the situation. The Baron backs The Idler against The Dancing Girl for a run. In the same Magazine Mr. ALBERT FLEMING has condensed into a short story, called Sally, material that would have served some authors for a three-volume novel.

It is a pleasure for the Baron to be in perfect accord on any one point with the Author of Essays in Little, and in proportion to the number of the points so is the Baron's pleasure intensified. Most intending readers of these Essays, on taking up the book, would be less curious to ascertain what ANDREW LANG has to say about HOMER and the study of Greek, about THÉODORE BE BANVILLE, THOMAS HAYNES BAYLEY, the Sagas, and even about KINGSLEY, than to read his opinions on DICKENS and THACKERAY, placing DICKENS first as being the more popular. The Baron recommends his friends, then, to read these Essays of ANDREW's, beginning with THACKERAY, then DICKENS; do not, on any account, omit the delightfully written and truly appreciative article on CHARLES LEVER; after which, go as you please, but finish with "the last fashionable novel," wherein our M.A., in his Merriest-Andrewest mood, treats us to an excellent parody.

The Baron has appointed an extra Reader, and this Extra-Ordinary Reader to the Baron has just entered upon the discharge of his duties by reading Monte Carlo, and How to Do It, by W.F. GOLDBERG, and G. CHAPLIN PIESSE (J.W. ARROWSMITH). He reports in the following terms to his loved Chief:—This book achieves the task of combining extraordinary vulgarity with the flattest and most insipid dulness—not a common dulness, but a dulness redolent of low slang and dirty tap-rooms. The authors seem to plume themselves on their marvellous success in reaching Monte Carlo, which, with their usual sprightly facetiousness, they call "Charley's Mount." They are good enough to tell such of the travelling public as may want to get there, that the train leaving Victoria at 8.40 A.M. reaches Dover at 10.35. Stupendous! These two greenhorns took their snack on board the steamer (Ugh!), instead of waiting until they reached Calais, where there is the best restaurant on any known line. Instead of going by the Ceinture, they drove across Paris. The greenhorns arrive at Monte Carlo, and then settle on their quarters. Anyone but an idiot would have settled all this, and much more, beforehand. One gentlemanly greenhorn, who wishes us to think that "il connait son Paris," talks of "suppers of Bignon's" (which must be some entirely new dish), and informs us that, "at the Hôtel de l'Athenée, the staff esteem it rather a privilege, and a mark of their skill in language, to grin and snigger when sworn at in English." Oh, sweet and swearing British greenhorn! now I know why the French so greatly love our countrymen. But why, oh why do you imagine that you have discovered Monte Carlo? For the details of the journey, and the instructions to future explorers, are set out with a painful minuteness which not even STANLEY could rival. As for Monaco, dear, restful, old-fashioned, picturesque Monaco, whither the visitor climbs to escape from the glare and noise of Monte Carlo, the greenhorn dismisses it scornfully, as having "no interest." How much does this ten-per-center want? He "waggles along the Condamine;" he mixes with many who are "pebble-beached;" he speaks of his intimates as "Pa," "The Coal-Shunter," "Ballyhooly," &c., and declares of the French soldier that "the short service forty-eight-day men don't have a very unkyperdoodlum time of it." There's wit for you, there's elegance! Then he becomes Jeromeky-jeromistically eloquent on the subject of fleas, throws in such lucid expressions as "chin music," "gives him biff," "his craft is thusly," and, altogether, proves himself and his fellow-explorer to be a couple of the slangiest and most foolish greenhorns who ever put pen to any sort of paper. I can imagine the readers who enjoy their stuff. Dull, swaggering, blatant, gin-absorbing, red-faced Cockneys, who masquerade as sportsmen, and chatter oaths all day. "Ditto to you," says the Baron to his Extra-Ordinary Reader, and backs his opinion with his signature,

THE BARON DE BOOK-WORMS.

MORE IBSENITY!

Dear EDITOR,—Noticing that the author of The Doll's House was to have another morning, or, to use an equally suitable epithet, mourning performance devoted to his works, I made up my mind, after bracing up my nerves, to attend it. The 23rd of February (the date of the proposed function) as the second Monday in Lent, seemed to me, too, distinctly appropriate. By attending the performance—IBSEN recommends self-execution—I sentenced myself to three hours and a half of boredom, tempered with disgust. I cannot help feeling that whatever my past may have been, the penance paid to wipe it out was excessive, and therefore rendered it unnecessary that I should attend a second performance announced for last week.

Rosmershölm is in four Acts and one Scene—a room in Rosmer's House. Act I. Rector Kroll, who is the brother-in-law of Pastor Rosmer, calls upon the latter, to ask him to edit a paper in the Conservative interest. Kroll (who, by the way, is a married man) before seeing the widower of his dead sister, has a mild flirtation with Rebecca West, a female of a certain age, who has taken up her abode for some years in the Rector's house. And here I may observe that the Rector's housekeeper, Madame Helseth, presumably a highly respectable person, although she has excellent reasons, from the first, for believing that the relations between her Master and Rebecca are scarcely platonic, accepts the domestic arrangements of the Rosmer ménage with hearty acquiescence, not to say enthusiasm. Rosmer interrupts the Rector's tête-à-tête with the fascinating Rebecca, and declines the proffered editorship, because he is a Radical, and an atheist. End of Act I.,—no action to speak of, but a good deal of wordy twaddle. In Act II. we learn that the late Mrs. Rosmer has committed suicide, because she was informed that the apostate Pastor could only save his villainy from exposure by giving immediately the position of wife to her friend Rebecca. She has had this tip on the most reliable authority,—it has been furnished by Rebecca herself. Then the Pastor asks Rebecca to marry him, but is refused, for no apparent reason, unless it be that she has tired of her guilty passion. In Act III. Rebecca admits to the widower and his brother-in-law that she has deceived the deceased, and prepares to decamp. In the final Act the apostate Pastor declares that he has been in love with Rebecca from the first, loves her now, but is not sure that she loves him. To set his mind