The Gentleman's Magazine

read to-day, they will not be offended because there is more of the same to-morrow. Let me say for the bulk of these contributions that I am not printing them because they are serial, but because they are what they are in texture and character-because they have seemed to me to be calculated to secure for the magazine the continued good opinion and favour of its readers. And the policy appears to be justified by the result. Of the novels I need not speak, because it is the fate of a novel in a periodical to run from number to number; but turning to the other items: "The Token of the Silver Lily" has, I have reason to believe, a large number of admirers not one of whom has wished that the poem were shorter or ended sooner; every witness in favour of Red Spinner's "Log" professes pleasure at the fact that there are more entries in it for transcription; readers of Leigh Hunt's Letters have expressed no desire for the rounding off of the series before they reach the epistles of Jerrold and Dickens; in a similar spirit the monthly readers of the Journal of a Chaplain of Ease appear to look forward for additional Leaves, and I do not think the lovers of good and pleasant living at home and abroad will cry "Hold, enough!" at the end of Fin Bec's first little batch of gossip "Under Foreign Mahogany."

Mr. Francillon's novel, "A Dog and his Shadow," ends in the June number of this volume, and appears to have been universally accepted as a worthy successor to the well-favoured "Olympia," though it is a study in a widely different field of art. Twelve months ago, with the first batch of the MS. before me, I ventured to predict that the hero, "Abel Herrick," would stand out a conspicuous figure in the realms of fiction, and I think he has justified my anticipations. Of Mr. Robert Buchanan's first venture in prose fiction I need not say a word. It was accepted as

a great work before the half of it had appeared in print. "The Shadow of the Sword" has six months more to run. Readers sometimes ask for short stories, and in the interval between the conclusion of "A Dog and his Shadow" and the commencement of the next serial novel a short series of stories, each complete in the number of the magazine in which it appears, will be given. Mr. Justin McCarthy will lead off with a novelette entitled "Love in Idleness," which will open the July number; and in August will appear "In Pastures Green," a sketch of English life by Mr. Charles Gibbon. The numerous admirers of "Dear Lady Disdain" will be glad to learn that besides the short story in the July number Mr. McCarthy is writing a new novel, the first chapters of which will be given in the Gentleman's Magazine for January next.

Mr. Senior's "My Ocean Log from Newcastle to Brisbane," the first part of which in the May number appears to have given universal satisfaction to the readers of the "Waterside Sketches," whereof it may be said to be in some sort a continuation, will run down, probably, to the middle of the autumn, but the MS. has not yet all reached me. The parts already in print were posted at Singapore, where the Queensland steamship in which the author sailed lay for a week before concluding its voyage to Brisbane. Of the virgin rivers and undescribed scenery of Queensland Mr. Senior has promised to send me Red Spinner sketches so soon as he shall have had an opportunity of casting rod and line upon antipodean waters.

The last part of "The Token of the Silver Lily" will be given in the July number. I believe this is an almost unique instance of a poem in blank verse printed in long instalments in a periodical, continued through seven months, and looked for by readers to the last with the

interest and eagerness usually elicited only by an engros

sing prose story.

In those "Leaves rom the Journal of a Chaplain of Ease," which Mr. Torrens has been contributing during several months, readers who have been familiar with the current of social life in London society during the last thirty or forty years will now and then identify the characters and incidents, more especially in those papers which are devoted to personal sketches. There are many more Leaves yet in the Chaplain's Journal.

Before Midsummer, and while yet the long winter seems hardly to have taken final leave of us, it would be cruel to make allusion to any other festival than the festival of summer which we hope lies before us; but I will venture so far as to say that in due time there will be a successor to the "Streaked with Gold" and the "Like a Snowball" of 1875 and 1874.

THE EDITOR.