Mr. Oscar Wilde's little volume might be called a collection of skits; and this attitude of the gentleman towards matters in general is a familiar one. Yet a subjectivity of method on his part, which all who were happy enough to see him in this country a few years ago [10] will somewhat painfully remember, nearly disappears in his stories, leaving his method freer and himself a more agreeable satirist than might have been supposed. We detect little of the rebuking knee-breeches or the exemplifying forelock here, while there is an abundance of wit and invention. 'The Canterville Ghost' and 'The Sphinx Without a Secret' are easily better than the two remaining sketches; in the former, the irreverent treatment by an American family of an English ancestral ghost is the happy subject of a happy treatment. The story which gives the book its name is a stiffish dose of trying to be funny, but its opening chapter is worth reading for as clever a picture of a social function as we have lately seen. The volume is charmingly bound and printed, only the title-page of each story betraying any eccentricity, and so we may feel that we have got off as easily as could be expected.