nd. It is a novel, and one of the best
published this season; and all the better for being in one stout
handsomely-printed volume. The plot is constructed with rare skill,
the writing is good, and the people all alive. If it is WICKS's first
work (and the Baron never heard of FREDERICK before) he should go on
making candles of the same kind. Their illuminating power is rare.

"_What shall we play at, and how shall we play it_?" The satisfactory
answer to these two questions, specially important at Christmas time,
will be found in Professor HOFFMANN's _Encyclopaedia of Card and Table
Games_, published by ROUTLEDGE. Here you will learn the mysteries of
"Go-Bang," "Reverse,"--and after learning the latter, you, if Nature
has blessed you with a tuneful voice, will be able to sing with GEORGE
GROSSMITH (if he'll let you), "_See me Reverse_." The motto for the
Professor's book should have been the emphatic exclamation of the
street Arab, "My heye! such games!"

This is the sixth year of _Hazell's Annual_. Whatever information you
require it will be difficult not to find in _Hazell_, clearly and
not at all Hazelly expressed. A youthful friend whose pun, says the
Baron, I hereby nail to the counter, on seeing this book on my desk,
observed, "Yes, I'm nuts on HAZELL." The Baron frowned, and the youth
withered away, as ALICE did--not the one who went to Wonderland, but
an elder ALICE, whom our old friend "BEN BOLT" remembers.

SAMPSON LOW, & CO. publish "_Wild Life on a Tidal Water_," by P.H.
EMERSON, who gives the adventures of a house-boat and her crew on
Breydon Water in Norfolk; the photo-etchings are by EMERSON and
GOODALL, "and therefore," says the Baron, "All-good."

Look into _Harper's_ for January; among the harpers, listen to M.
DE BLOWITZ harping on the journalistic string--good; and, his talent
having served him to a pretty tune, 'tis well he should harp on it in
_Harper's_. The Baron hopes that M. DE B. has spent a Harpy Christmas.
Allow the B. DE B.-W. to draw his friends' attention to "A Military
Incident," and two other short papers, in _The Cornhill_. BARON DE
BOOK-WORMS.

P.S.--The Baron says he is not going to be let in for a disquisition
on the merits of various Pocket-books; but, if asked which he
affectionates most as a genuine book of pockets, and _for_ pockets, he
puts his finger to the side of his nose, and wisely replies--"Walker."

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SURVIVAL OF THE FITTES