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own way. They have tried archery, and have not made it a particular success. Nothing could be more picturesque than the costumes, and no weapon is so graceful as the bow, and, with a blue sky overhead, and trees and blossoming shrubberies as a background to the toilets of the lady-archers, the scene is all vividness and animation. Certainly, croquet could produce no effect like this; but, when one looks into it, it is chiefly "effect." It is easily seen that everybody shoots badly, and that the more graceful the "drawing-up" is, the more likely the arrow is to go widely astray. Few of the arrows hit the target, and those generally by chance; and walking sixty yards in the sun to look up the stray ones, while compelled to dodge and hide behind trees to avoid a chance shot, becomes, after two or three experiences, a bitter and toilsome process. Archery requires long and steady practice and resolute determination, and, after some years of good, hard work, one may or may not be a fair shot; and even in the latter case the game has offered few really delightful hours to look back upon.

Tennis is a more stirring and attractive game, but it is one in which a certain degree of skill is necessary from the outset, for feebleness and mediocrity in any one of the four players put any real enjoyment out of the reach of the other three. In archery one's misses are one's own, but in tennis a failure is a source not only of private humiliation, but of public disgust. Nobody wants a bad "server," either for or against, and the result very soon is that the "survival of the fittest" leaves very few players in the field. Some English girls, disheartened at tennis, have taken to cricket, but, as much the same robustness, facility, and alertness are required on the "field" as in the "court," probably with much the same result. Croquet has in itself the essential features as an out-of-doors game which the others lack, and its restoration to popular favor is most desirable from all points of view. We shall be glad to see some of the vacant, little-used tennis-courts covered once more with arches and stakes, and all the middle-aged, corpulent, and delicate-chested coming to their own again with their old zest and appreciation. But we have a suggestion to make, and that is that they make good use of their long-coveted opportunity, and rob the revival of the game of its terrors for the young by making it attractive. Let it come back with fitting costume; let it be free from grumblings about "something wrong with the mallet or the ground," and, above all, from displays of ill-temper. In short, let the game be revived without its drawbacks. S. N.

Without any graces of style, and with no especial skill in the way of treatment, Mrs. Pitman has yet given us a useful little biography of Elizabeth Gurney, who became Mrs. Fry, and has set her character, her aims, and her work distinctly before the reader. Elizabeth Fry is of all famous women the one who least needs an interpreter or an apologist, or offers in any of her actions or characteristics problems for criticism. Her efforts had the good fortune to be amply effective. She was exempt from the dangers which half-visions and vague ideals bring; she made no mistakes and lavished none of her strength on trivialities. Although brought up under the influence of Quakers, she suffered few of the cramping restrictions which narrow the