of the best of wedding presents. It is a complete handbook to an earthly
Paradise, and its author may be regarded as the Murray of matrimony and
the Baedeker of bliss.

How to be Happy though Married: Being a Handbook to Marriage. By a
Graduate in the University of Matrimony. (T. Fisher Unwin.)




HALF-HOURS WITH THE WORST AUTHORS


(Pall Mall Gazette, January 15, 1886.)

I am very much pleased to see that you are beginning to call attention to
the extremely slipshod and careless style of our ordinary
magazine-writers. Will you allow me to refer your readers to an article
on Borrow, in the current number of Macmillan, which exemplifies very
clearly the truth of your remarks? The author of the article is Mr.
George Saintsbury, a gentleman who has recently written a book on Prose
Style, and here are some specimens of the prose of the future according
to the systeme Saintsbury:

1. He saw the rise, and, _in some instances, the death, of Tennyson_,
Thackeray, Macaulay, Carlyle, Dickens.

2. _See a place_ which Kingsley, _or_ Mr. Ruskin, _or_ some other master
of our decorative school, _have_ described--_much more_ one which has
fallen into the hands of the small fry of their imitators--and you are