Apparatus_, and in attempting to discover how on earth to use it,
whether as a game, or a puzzle, or a ready-reckoner, the Baron's hair
is turning from grey to white. There are numbers, and sections, and
tons, and small figures and large figures, and slips, and strips, and
numbers in black ink, and others in red ink, and though it must of
course be the very simplest and easiest thing in the world when you
once know all about it, yet it is just the sort of book (yet it isn't
exactly a book) that might have deeply interested the Hatter and the
March Hare, and LEWIS CARROLL'S Snark Hunters, and suggested many deep
questions to the inquiring mind of _Alice in Wonderland_. As a really
humorous production, capable of affording amusement for many a weary
hour, it may be safely recommended to parties in country houses during
an exceptionally rainy season.

THE BARON DE BOOK-WORMS.

P.S.--My faithful "Co." has been reading _The Lazy Tour of Two Idle
Apprentices, No Thoroughfare_, and _The Perils of Certain English
Prisoners_, the joint work of CHARLES DICKENS and WILKIE COLLINS, and
now published for the first time in a single volume. He says that the
book is instructive, inasmuch as it shows the growth of its authors'
collaboration. When the writers started _The Lazy Tour_ they were, so
to speak, like the gentleman seated one day at the organ, "weary and
ill at ease;" they grew more accustomed to one another during _The
Perils_, and attained perfection in _No Thoroughfare_. This last novel
shows no traces of dual workmanship, and might have been the outcome
of a single pen. My "Co." has but one fault to find with Messrs.
CHAPMAN AND HALL (Limited)--he says that the stories deserved better
illustrations.