Is A House of Pomegranates intended for a child's book? We confess that we do not exactly know. The ultra-aestheticism of the pictures seems unsuitable for children---as also the rather 'fleshly' style of Mr. Wilde's writing. The stories are somewhat after the manner of Hans Andersen---and have pretty poetic and imaginative flights like his; but then again they wander off too often into something between a 'Sinburnian' ecstasy and the catalogue of a high art furniture dealer. Children may be very much attached to bric-à-brac (though of this we have our doubts), but the more natural among them would certainly prefer Hansel and Grethel's sugar-house to any amount of Mr. Wilde's 'rich tapestries' and 'velvet canopies'. Would they not probably yawn over the following?—

The Countess d'Aulnoy's charming tales, it is true, abounded in sumptuary detail, but with her it formed the stage-scenery for her dwarfsand fairies. Again, Mr. Wilde's diction seems to us hardly suitable to children. Joys are 'fierce and fiery-coloured'; the King, watching his little daughter at play, thinks of her dead and embalmed mother, and (this unpleasant suggestion reminds us of Dorian Gray) 'the odours of strange spices, spices such as embalmers use, seemed to taint---or was it fancy?---the clear morning air'. Eyes are of all kinds: 'dark wood-land eyes', 'mauve-amethyst eyes', 'eyes of bossy gold'. A young boy spends a whole night 'in noting the effect of the moonlight on a silver statue of Endymion'. But all Mr. Wilde's stories, whether intended for children or not, have a deep meaning which 'he who runs may read'. This underlying allegory is their chief beauty. 'The Young King' touches on Socialistic economics; 'The Birthday of the Infanta' has a masterly touch of pathos; while 'The Fisherman and his Soul' is perhaps the most far-reaching and most elaborate effort. In this latter there are capital descriptions of the wonders of the sea, as good as some of those in Kingsley.