Literary Gossip.

Since The Pictorial World has been enlarged and raised to the dignity of a sixpenny weekly journal , it has become a formidable rival to The Graphic , and the still older Illustrated London News . The coloured engravings issued as supplements to each number are worthy of all praise , and the illustrations throughout are excellent . The news of the week are served up crisply and smartly ; the "Court and Society" items are fresh and -well selected ; and the art and

musical paragraphs clever and authoritative . There is a hi gh-toned serial story also , besides a pleasing variet y of lightly written special articles on attractive themes . The weekly " Notes by the Way , " signed " Warminster Pennell , " are particularly informing , and though chatty still scholarl y in style .

The " latest out' in journalism is The Fool , a penny weekly pictorial paper remarkable for the pungency and cleverness of its satire . Viewed in a literary and artistic light , The Fool , is a worthy departure . Its caricatures are very cutting without being at all coarse , and shams receive a merciless exposure in its paragraphs . It has a " black-board , " on which prominent " humbugs " are drawn with great skill , and engraved by a very effective new process . Another feature" The Theatrical Foolometer" is the outcome of a happy idea

, , , showing at a glance through the medium of a modified thermometer the comparative attendances at metropolitan playhouses . Altogether it is a very smart and very wise fool indeed , and should satisfy more than the components of Carlyle ' s majority . Under the title of " The Popular Shilling Library" Cassel ' s are publishing a useful and readable series of volumeshandy in shape and sizeand conveying

, , an immense amount of information to the reader . Among the best of the books already issued we may mention "Domestic Folk-Lore , " by the Rev . T . F . Thistleton Dyer ; " English Journalism , " by Charles Pebocly ; " The Religious Revolution of the Sixteenth Century , " by the Rev . S . A . Swaine ; "The Scottish Covenanters , " by the Rev . Dr . Taylor ; and " The England of Shakespeare " by E . Goadby . '

A large number of old documents have been discovered in a chest at the Chelmsford Shire Hall . They relate to obsolete Essex usages , the punishment of witchcraft , the persecution of Nonconformists , and many other cognate matters . In the chest were also a quantity of rolls of interesting local deeds , which will throw li ght on several important episodes in Essex history ; besides one or two bundles of letters to the county authorities from the Privy Council during the troubled times of the Civil Wars , the majority of them in the handwriting of prominent statesmen ; and one document bearing -the sign manual of " Sturdy Oliver . "

Mr . Edward Walford ' s Antiquarian Magazine and Bibliographer has now become throughly established , and presents month by month a cajrital contents list . Still another serial is about to be launched for the elucidation of old time matters by Mr . J . H . Fennell , of Red Lion Court , who some of our readers will remember published The AvMguary . Mr . Fennell ' s new venture will be a fourpenny monthly , and will bear the title of The Antiquarian

Chronicle and Idterary Advertiser . Unlike other periodicals of . this kind it will not consist chiefl y of recently written disquisitions and essays on ancient topics , but of old and hitherto unpublished records , and of curious gleanings On special subjects obtained from numerous sources that have been very much neglected , including rare old newspapers ancl the earliest magazines , metropolitan and local . All success to The Antiquarian Chronicle , which has a fertile field before it .