Father Christmas is already sending out his Cards for the Coming Festivity, now six weeks ahead. His representatives all "decorated," and still ready to receive any amount of "orders," are Marcus Ward, the Raphael Tuck family, C. W. Faulkner, C. Delgado, and many others, whose excellent works are known to all, and by none more appreciated than by the youthful Baronites and Baronitesses.

"Blackie and Son!" says a Junior Baronite; "why, that must he the publishers of Christy Minstrel works!" but they are soon undeceived. Such delightful books! their very bindings are suggestive of cheerfulness, and seem to invite inspection. We will take a peep inside, like Jack Horner, and pull out the best plummed story. Three by G. A. Henty, who knows how and what to write for youths of adventurous spirit. His three are:—

Through the Sikh War. Indian affairs are always of interest to the young Britisher, "who will," quoth the little Baronite, "seek and find all he wants in this book."

St. Bartholomew's Eve might be a tale of curiosity, but it is history, and deals with the valour of an English boy during the Huguenot Wars. Being a hero, he does not get killed in the massacre, but lives to fight another day.

A Jacobite Exile is a tale of the Swedes. Hardly necessary, perhaps, or as Shakspeare puts it, "Swedes to the Swede,—superfluous." To the English reader, therefore, it is not a superfluity.

Then here is The Penny Illustrated. It is called "Roses" and whatever any reader may require, here he will find it "all among the roses." The rearer and cultivator of these "Roses" is John Latey, whose "Rose of Hastings" is among the best of the contributions. "We can't do better than provide ourselves and our families with this specimen of a Flowery Annual," quoth,

The Baron de Book-Worms.

1,000,000 A. D.

["The descendants of man will nourish themselves by immersion in nutritive fluid. They will have enormous brains, liquid, soulful eyes, and large hands, on which they will hop. No craggy nose will they have, no vestigial ears; their mouths will be a small, perfectly round aperture, unanimal, like the evening star. Their whole muscular system will be shrivelled to nothing, a dangling pendant to their minds."—Pall Mall Gazette, abridged.]