Mr. Shannon and Mr. Ricketts have sprinkled the pages with devices rare and strange in the latest and straitest school of Neo-pre-Raphaelitism, and the chief illustrations in the book are of a most absolute fancy. Nevertheless, we rather like them, for they are by no means uncomely, and they suit their text---a compliment which we are frequently unable to pay to much more commonplace in- stances of the art of book illustration. In the case of the text, also, hasty judgment is likely to be unduly harsh judgment. The pomegranates that compose the house---the grains that make up the pomegranate would have been a better metaphor---are four in number, and are all tales of the Märchen order, though one is something even more of a fabliau than of a Märchen. This is called 'The Birthday of the Infanta', and tells, to put it very shortly, how a certain little Spanish princess had an ugly dwarf who loved her, and died of a broken heart when he found out, not only how ugly he himself was, but how his beloved mistress thought of him as nothing but a fantastic toy. 'Tis an ower true tale. But we are not sure that Mr. Wilde's manner of telling it is quite the right one. The first and the last of the four, ' The Young King', and ' The Star Child', are pretty enough moralities. The third piece, 'The Fisherman and his Soul', is much longer, as long, indeed, as any two of them, and to our fancy a good deal better. It tells how a fisherman fell in love with a mermaid, and, to gain her, consented to part with his soul. Spectator.