At Delphi of old they sometimes hit the gold;
Punch's oracles nought to equivocal mist owe.
No riddle or rebus contents the new Phœbus,
So all wise men twigged when he tipped 'em Sir Visto!
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
The particular Baronitess to whom the Baron handed over The Holy Estate (a novel in three volumes, by two authors, W. H. Wilkins and Frank Thatcher, published by Hutchinson & Co.), says that in explanation it is called by its authors "a study in morals," but where the morals come in or come out it would be difficult to say. Apparently, in the majority of the characters, there is a singular lack of any virtuous quality. A young innocent girl marries a gay soldier and goes out to India. Here she finds herself placed in a land where principles are decidedly at a discount. Her husband turns out, to put it mildly, a blackguard (with a big, big "B"), and his friends are of the same fascinating type. In a typical, melodramatic, "Adelphi villain," there is something almost wholesome as compared with the modern bad man of "Yellow-Book" fiction, who is simply revolting. [By the way, interpolates the Baron, the latest Yellow Book is comparatively quite decorous and without an Aubrey-Beardsley illustration!!] Of course, the hero and heroine of The Holy Estate have to pass through the fiery ordeal of Indian Society; how they come out of it the reader may discover. But as pessimism is the artistic order of the day, they are not allowed to finish well and "live happy ever afterwards." My Baronitess adds, with a frown, "It cannot be called pleasant reading, nor is there in it any sign of the genius of a Daudet or a Zola which might be accepted as, in some sort, a literary excuse for its being brought into existence."
(Signed) The Baron de Book-Worms.