Mr Oscar Wilde's joke does not greatly amuse one. This little book has not the picturesque quality of 'The Picture of Dorian Gray,' which at times was, perhaps, garish. Nor is the humour of the dry and keen sort which flashes like rapiers—property rapiers, perhaps in the essays such as 'The Art of Lying.' There is plenty of humour, indeed, in 'The Canterville Ghost,' and how the American leasees of a baronial mansion dispossessed the ghost of Sir Simon de Canterville, who had murdered his wife in the 13th century, harassing him into giving up the ghost actually by rubbing out th eblood stains from the floor with Pinkerton's Champion Stain Remover, and offering him Rising Sun Lubricator to ease his chains from clanking, and so on. However, Mr Wilde's humour is of the exotic kind, and it is a long time ago since it ceased to be natural. Clever he must always be, but such a book as 'Lord Arthur Savile's Crime'will neither lay hold on the imagination or ticle any but the most passing sense of humour.