dactic from sheer excess of prosperity. When the Rev. Mr. John Watson (Ian Maclaren) wrote "Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush," the book went straight to many hearths and many hearts. It was not an epoch-making work by any means, but its homely pathos and humor insured for it an immediate hearing, and most comfortable returns. The critics united in its praise, and the publishers gave us at once to understand how many copies had been sold. Why, then, did Mr. Watson, to whom the gods had been so kind, lift up his voice in a few short months to say supercilious things anent all schools of fiction save his own? The world is wider than Scotland, and local coloring is not humanity's one need. It will be long ere we believe that the art of story-telling began with "A Window in Thrums," or that "Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush" marks its final development. Let us rather remember with gratitude that Mr. Barrie, an artist too versatile to be intolerant, has recorded, in place of delicate self-analysis and self-congratulation, his sincere reverence for Scott, and Dickens, and Thackeray, and Fielding, and Smollett, "old-fash-
