OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
Mr. Fisher Unwin is, my Baronite writes, still engaged in the important work, some time ago undertaken by his house, of publishing The Story of the Nations. The last volume issued is the thirty-fifth, in which Mr. Greville Tregarthen deals with the History of the Australian Commonwealth. Australasia is a mere chit among the nations of the world, and story, God bless you, it has hardly any to tell. It has never been at war except with the aboriginal settlers, who were, at the outset, so lost to all proper feeling as to resent the incursion of the white man, occasionally carrying their prejudice to the absurd extent of eating him. But this is ancient history in a record which, beginning a little more than a hundred years ago with a convict settlement—it was on January 26, 1788, the British flag was for the first time unfurled in Sydney Bay—has already spread out lusty limbs over a vast Continent. The Story of the Nations forms a library of itself, and this last volume is not the least fascinating of the series.
The Baron, while greatly admiring and certainly grateful for the Diamond editions of all the best works, and Diamond editions should reproduce only those that can be classed among the "brilliants," of which two or three specimens at a time can be carried easily in the pocket of an ulster, begs to remind Messrs. Routledge, the republishers of Dickens's works in a very pocketable form, that much of our journeying is done by such gaslight as railway companies supply, and therefore, as this is not always of the most powerful kind, a book in small type, however clear the type may be, is unreadable. That is what the publishers have to consider. This excellent little pocket volume of, for example, The Cricket on the Hearth, is of no use to the Baron when once out of the pocket. True, the publishers may say "it is intended for the pocket only"; but if this be the case, then the pockets that would suffer would be those of the publishers, not those of the reading public. The Baron's hints are well worth consideration. For travelling, the publishers might provide and sell a small case containing the Diamond edition and a portable candle-lamp by which to read it. Only this would rather add to the expense, and with every volume one does not wish to be obliged to carry a candle-lamp. Therefore, bigger and clearer type. That's all. Try it, and if it does not succeed, blame the hitherto blameless
Baron de B.-W.
CRUELLE ENIGME; OR, TWOS INTO ONE WON'T GO.
The Problem of the Day:—How to get this year's sleeves into last year's jacket.