(under the hanging sword, to his host)._ "DELIGHTFUL WEATHER WE'RE
HAVING FOR THE TIME OF YEAR--WHAT?"]

* * * * *

BOOK-BOOMING.

(_WITH GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS TO THE LEADING MASTERS OF THIS
DELECTABLE ART._)

Messrs. Puffington and Co. beg to announce the immediate issue of
_Charity Blueblood_, by Faith Redfern. Speaking _ex cathedra_, with a
full consciousness of their responsibilities, they have no hesitation
in pronouncing their assured conviction that this novel will take its
place above all the classics of fiction.

Here is not only a Thing of Beauty, but a Joy for Ever, wrought
by elfin fingers, fashioned of gossamer threads at once fine and
prehensile. Yet so Gargantuan and Goliardic that the reader holds his
breath, lest the whole beatific caboodle should vanish into thin air
and leave him lamenting like a Peril shut out from Paradise.

But this is more than a Paradise. It is a Pandemonium, a Pantosocratic
Pantechnicon and a Pantheon as well. For here, within the narrow
compass of 750 pages (price 7s. 11¾d.), we find all the glory that
was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome; the Olympian serenity of
HOMER, the pity and terror of ÆSCHYLUS, the poignancy of CATULLUS, the
saucy mirth of ARISTOPHANES, the sanity of SHAKSPEARE, the _macabre_
gruesomeness of BAUDELAIRE, the sardonic _rictus_ of HEINE and the
geniality of TROLLOPE. All this and much more.