Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 6.djvu/249



"There is quite a lovely little book just come out about children,—'Castle Blair!' . . . The book is good, and lovely, and true, having the best description of a noble child in it (Winnie) that I ever read; and nearly the best description of the next best thing, a noble dog," says John Ruskin, the distinguished art critic.

Castle Blair,' a story of youthful days, by Flora L. Shaw, is an Irish story. A charming young girl—half French, half English—comes from France, at the age of eighteen, to live with her bachelor uncle at Castle Blair, which is in possession of five children of an absent brother of this uncle. The children are in a somewhat wild and undisciplined condition, but they are as interesting children as can be imagined, and some of them winning to an extraordinary degree. They are natural children, in, manner and in talk; but the book differs from some American books about children, in that it is pervaded by an air of refinement and good-breeding. The story is altogether delightful, quite worthy, from an American point of view, of all Mr. Ruskin says of it; and if circulation were determined by merit, it would speedily outstrip a good many now popular children s books which have a vein of commonness, if not of vulgarity."—Hartford Courant.

"It is not too much to say that nothing more interesting or more whole some is offered this year for older boys and girls. It is a charming story, in which the author has delineated character as carefully, and with as keen an artistic sense, as if she had been writing a novel. Her book is a novel, indeed, with children and the lives of children, instead of men and women and their lives, for its theme."—New York Evening Post.

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