in any one person's life_ is rather amusing. There is an American story
of a young couple who had to be married by telephone, as the bridegroom
lived in Nebraska and the bride in New York, and they had to go on
separate honeymoons; though, perhaps, this is not what Mr. Conway meant.
But what can be said for a sentence like this?--'The established
favourites in the musical world are never quite sure but the _new comer_
may not be _one among the many they have seen fail_'; or this?--'As it is
the fate of such a very small number of men to marry a prima donna, I
shall be doing little harm, _or be likely to change plans of life_, by
enumerating some of the disadvantages.' The nineteenth century may be a
prosaic age, but we fear that, if we are to judge by the general run of
novels, it is not an age of prose.

A Cardinal Sin. By Hugh Conway. (Remington and Co.)




TO READ OR NOT TO READ


(Pall Mall Gazette, February 8, 1886.)

Books, I fancy, may be conveniently divided into three classes:--

1. Books to read, such as Cicero's Letters, Suetonius, Vasari's Lives of
the Painters, the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, Sir John
Mandeville, Marco Polo, St. Simon's Memoirs, Mommsen, and (till we get a
better one) Grote's History of Greece.