The frailest literary fabric, treated with the paradoxical brilliance and graceful epigram that this author has made entirely his own, could scarcely fail to find admiring readers of the class who prefer subtlety of style to a sensational motif. The story which occupies half the volume, and gives  its name to it, is a whimsical satire on the follies of chiromancy [sic]. Lord Arthur Savile, having been told by a palmist that he is destined to commit a murder, resigns himself to his fate with considerable philosophy, determined to get the matter over with all possible despatch, in order that he may marry a lovely girl to whom he is engaged, without misgivings as to the future. The interest centres in his ineffectual attempts to give various acquaintances their quietus, until the irony of fate supplies him with a victim. The tendency of the tale is certainly immoral, or would be so if the writer were ever in earnest. 'The Sphinx without a Secret' and 'The Model Millionaire' are both delightful, and exhibit Mr. Wilde at his best. They deal with abnormal phases of human nature, which, though rare, are, nevertheless, actual. 'The Canterville Ghost' is a sort of intellectual squib, a fin de siècle ghost story, illustrating the hopeless utility of the age we live in, which robs even the supernatural of its mission.