We unblushingly confess that we were strongly prejudiced against this sumptuously-printed book by four full-page illustrations, for which, we believe, Mr. Ch. Shannon is responsible. If a tolerably thick tissue paper be placed over an ordinary woodcut the general effect of them will be fairly realised ; but when, by painful investigation, we get some glimmering of what the blurred and indistinct things aim at we search in vain for a single line or form that is beautiful, and for any meaning that is not idiotic. More preposterously perverse stuff was never printed and miscalled 'design' and 'decoration.' Some smaller illustrations, which we take to be by C. Ricketts (we sincerely trust we are not attributing these productions wrongly to the two coworkers), though not always quite right ore beautiful, always command our respect, and generally our admiration. They are somewhat too reminiscent of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, but they are most careful and painstaking, and the artist has always had a beautiful ideal in his mind. From the full-page rubbish no good can by any possibility come : from the artist who designed these small woodcuts very great things may reasonably be hoped. Over and over again we took up the book, but only to put it down again as those 'designs' sickened us. But we have mustered courage at last to try the text, and we find the stories really beautiful. But for whom are they written ? They take the guise of fairy stories—they deal with an impossible world, where dead thorns blossom, and men cut away their souls and live with mermaiden in the deep blue sea, and souls go wandering by themselves picking up wonderful lore, and all the laws of gravity and time and space and matter are nought—a world on which grown people sometimes cast a backward glance, half-pitying, half-envying their childhood selves which could believe all the fairness real. But the meanings infused into these fairy stories go deep, and touch matters of most grave and serious import. 'The Young King,' for instance, touches the problems of labour, the tyranny of wealth, of ague, and fever, and plague, and such grimly earnest and real things. We admire most the very pathetic story of the Infanta's Birthday—sad in its ending, but in workmanship daintily and delicately fine. All through the book shows real literary craftmanship of a high order.