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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)

Our moorland novelists are of two schools. One of them depicts the dwellers
on these heights as a superior race, using a vocabulary half Biblical, half
minor-poetic, in which to express the most exalted sentiments; the other
draws a picture of upland domesticity comparable to that found in a cage of
hyenas. Mr. HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE, though he is too skilled an artist to
overdo the colouring, inclines (I am bound to say) so much towards the
former method that I confess to an uneasy doubt, at times, whether any
human families could maintain existence on the same plane of nobility as,
for example, the _Holts_ in his latest romance, _Lonesome Heights_ (WARD,
LOCK). These _Holts_ were a race of farmer-squires, and in the book you see
their development through two generations: the masterful old man and his
twin sons. This is all the tale; a simple enough record, but full of the
dignity and beauty which make the reading of any story by this author a
refreshment to irritated nerves. Towards the end some space is devoted to
the fight to abolish child-labour in the dale mills; there is also a
scandal, and the fastening of blame upon the wrong brother; no very great
matter. It is for such scenes as that of the death of old _Holt_, and his
last words to the horse that has thrown him, that _Lonesome Heights_ will
earn its place on your library list.

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_The Dice of the Gods_ (HEATH, CRANTON) is not, as the title suggests,