There is a breezy, frank, boyish air about the "Reminiscences" of our great Baritone, Charles Santley, which is as a tonic—a tonic sol-fa—to the reader a-weary of the many Reminiscences of these latter days. Santley, who seems to have made his way by stolid pluck, and without very much luck, may be considered as the musical Mark Tapley, ready to look always on the sunny side. With a few rare exceptions, he appears to have taken life very easily.
Muchly doth the Baron like Mr. Hall Caine's story of Captain Davy's Honeymoon, only, short as it is, with greater effect it might have been shorter.
The Baron, being in a reading humour, tried The Veiled Hand, by Frederick Wicks, a name awkward for anyone unable to manage his "r's." What Fwedewickwicks' idea of A Veiled Hand is, the Baron has tried to ascertain, but without avail. Why not a Gloved Hand? Hands do not wear veils, any more than our old friends, the Hollow Hearts, wear masks. Hands take "vails," but "that is another story." However, The Veiled Hand induced sleep, so the Baron extinguished both candles and Wicks at the same time, and slumbered.
I have also had time to read An Exquisite Fool, published by Osgood. McIlvaine & Co., and written by Nobody, Nobody's name being mentioned as being the author. It begins well, but it is an old, old tale—Blanche Amory and the Chevalier, and so forth—and as Sir Charles Coldstream observed, when he looked down the crater of Mount Vesuvius, "There's nothing in it."
Most interesting is a short paper on "The Green Room of the Comédie Française," in the English Illustrated Magazine for this month, pleasantly written by Mr. Frederick Hawkins,—Hawkins with an aspirate, not "'Enery 'Awkins" at present associated with "A Chevalier" in London. Mr. Hawkins tells many amusing anecdotes, and gives a capital sketch of M. René Molé. But the article would be damaged by extracts. Therefore, "Tolle, lege," says yours and everybody's, very truly,
The Baron de Book-Worms.
