An empty purse! It's true we often say This weary world of ours knows nothing worse, And yet I send you, on this festive day, An empty purse.
Do not consign to an untimely hearse The friend who treats you in this heartless way. Don't let your pretty lips invoke a curse, But let me wish you happiness, and may You guess the reason from this little verse Why at your feet to-day I humbly lay An empty purse.
The worst thing about Mrs. HENNIKER'S new Novel, published by HURST AND BLACKETT, is its title. There is a _London-Journal_ish, penny-plain-twopence-coloured smack about _Foiled_ which is misleading. My Baronite says he misses the re-iterated interjection which should accompany the verb. "Ha! Ha! Foiled!!" would seem to be more the thing--but it isn't. The story is a simple one, wound about an old theme. It is well constructed, and admirably told. All the characters are what are called Society people; but Mrs. HENNIKER has studied them in the drawing-room, not from the area-railings, and reproduces them on her page with vivid strokes. Some of her acquaintances will probably feel uneasy when they read about _Lord Huddersfield_; whilst others will be quite sure that (among their sisters), they recognise _Mrs. Anthony Gore_. Those not in Society of to-day will find reminiscences of _Becky Sharp_ in _Mrs. Gore_; whilst big-boned, good-natured, simple-hearted _Anthony_, pleasantly recalls _Major Dobbin_. The book is full of shrewd observation, and fine touches of character-drawing, with refreshing oases of flower-garden and moor in Yorkshire and Scotland.
Those who like a good "gashly" book should, my Baronite says, forthwith send for _Lord Wastwater_ (BLACKWOOD). The plot is so eerie, and its conclusion so incredulous, that the practised novel-reader, seeing whither he is being led, almost up to the last page expects the threatened blow will be averted by some more or less probable agency. But Mr. (or Miss) SYDNEY BOLTON is inexorable. _Lord Wastwater_ is dead now, and there can be no harm in saying that the House of Lords is well rid of his impending company. He would have made a sad Duke.
A little more than a year ago, in celebration of the seventieth birthday of HENRIETTE RONNER, there was published a volume containing reproductions in photogravure of some of the works of that charming painter. Madame RONNER knows the harmless, necessary cat as intimately as ROSA BONHEUR knows the horse or the ox. She has painted it with loving hand, in all circumstances of its strangely-varied life. No one knows, my Baronite says, how pretty and graceful a thing a cat is, till they study it with the assistance of Madame RONNER. CASSELLS afford opportunity of making this study by presentation of a new and cheaper edition of the volume, with cats in all attitudes purring round an interesting essay on themselves, and their Portraiture, contributed by Mr. H. M. SPIELMANN.