But tho' we've childer two or three, We'll mak' a bit o' reawm for thee,

Bless thee, lad!

Tha'rt th' prattiest brid we have i' th' nest. So hutch up closer to mi breast;

Aw'm thi dad.

This poem, which we have quoted almost entire, was, of course, hailed as worthy of Burns at his best. It is far from that; the diction is not only homely, but plebeian; there is no magic in its simplicity. But it is heartfelt; mars itself by no unhappy ambitions; and has a household appeal which no man, untrained in the higher walks of song, need be ashamed of feeling. It discovers a heart of soundness in a people when they can put forth from their own ranks such truthful writers of verse, and relish their productions.

Omar the Manichee.

Solomon and Solomonic Literature. By Moncure D. Conway. (Kegan Paul.)

"SOLOMON is alive" that is Mr. Moncure Conway's message to his brother Omarians, to whom he dedicates this book. For, essentially, Solomon is the genius of Free Thought.

The home of the wise king-for his existence as an actual person is not denied, though it may be held doubtful -cannot be certainly determined; for to the folklore of which he is the hero Palestine, Persia, Arabia, and India contribute. Thus the famous judgment was anticipated by the wise lady Visakha. When a similar case had perplexed the wise men of an Indian court, Visākhā said :

Speak to the two women thus: "As we do not know to which of you two the boy belongs, let her who is the strongest take the boy." When each of them has taken hold of one of the boy's hands, and he begins to cry out on account of the pain, the real mother will let go .. but the other, who has no compassion for him, will not let go. Then beat her with a switch, and she will thereupon confess the truth of the whole matter.

The visit of the Queen of Sheba finds many parallels in Oriental legend, but is not therefore necessarily deprived of its historical character. And she has the credit of contributing elements to the final personification of Wisdom. In literature the true Solomon has been garbled and glozed by insolent Jahvist editors, who made it their business to reconcile with what the Jewish Church taught as to the character of the national deity the traditional sayings of the Wise King-since they dared not altogether suppress them.

The orthodox legend being that the Lord had put supernatural wisdom into Solomon's heart and never revoked it, in spite of his "idolatry" and secularism, it followed that the naughty man could not help continuing to be a medium of this divine person, Wisdom, and that it might be a dangerous thing to suppress any utterance of hers through Solomon-unwitting blasphemy. However profane or worldly the writings might appear to the Jahvist mind, there was no knowing what occult influence there might be in them, and the only thing editors could venture was to sprinkle through them plenteous disinfectants in the way of "Fear-of-the-Lord" wisdom. In Jesus of Nazareth the Solomonic spirit was manifested once more, manifested most admirably, to the world. He was nurtured upon the Solomonic literature, and in His public teaching, as Mr. Conway by an array of parallel passages endeavours to show, reproduced it freely for the instruction of His contemporaries. His original contribution to human thought was, says our author, the idea of a good God-"a unique God in Judæa, and almost in modern Christendom." This idea could be reached only by a process of dichotomy, deriving evil and good from several sources. "Deliver us from the evil one "is the

only original clause of the Lord's prayer. As to this aspect of the teaching of Jesus, Mr. Conway writes:

We live in an age whose clergy deal apologetically with the prominence of the Adversary of Man in the teachings of Jesus. For this fundamental principle of Jesus, Jewish monotheism has been substituted. But there are many records to attest that the moral perfection and benevolence of the Deity, which is certainly inconsistent with His omnipotence or His "permission" of the tares in nature, was the only new principle of religion affirmed. . . But the Master of Christendom also has suffered at the hands of "Jahvist commentators"; for He likewise,

...

when He took up the burden of Wisdom, and rebuked the Jahvist superstition that those on whom a tower fell were subjects of a judgment, must have his stupid corrector to add: "Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish." We have attempted no more than to give a general notion of an interesting book. It will be seen that Mr. Conway's philosophy is simply Manichæism; and into that old, old controversy we have not the slightest inclination to follow him. Nor can it be said that his curious research into the sources and significance of the Solomonic literature, incidentally interesting as are its results, makes any conclusion sure. But it provides him plentifully with illustration, and it is always refreshing to watch how the discarded heresy of a past age is new furbished to serve as a novelty for the passing moment.

Ending Drake's Work.

The Downfall of Spain: Naval History of the SpanishAmerican War. By H. W. Wilson, Author of "Ironclads in Action." (Sampson Low & Co. 10s. 6d. net.) THE smoke of those battlefields has hardly cleared, the wounds yet ache which were got in them, yet their history is here before us. We do such things now, and greater things as the rising flood of Boer War books showsand we do not know that it is less reliable than the older

and slower way. Such productions are not histories, properly speaking, of course: they are mémoirs pour servir; and such is the light in which we must regard Mr. Wilson's history of the recent Spanish-American war. But though it makes no claim to the wholeness and artistic quality of history proper, in point of careful accuracy it might compare favourably with many a narrative produced on the old tardy and solid methods. Of that the name of the author of Ironclads in Action is alone sufficient guarantee. No man was more technically competent to write the story of a war mainly naval, and he has done his work well, clearly, with the most conscientious reference to first-hand authorities wherever it was possible. He apologises, indeed, for giving the ipsissima verba of important orders, and so forth; but if it irritate the facile reader, it is none the less a fault on the right side in a work meant to have value for the reference of future writers.

The war, too, was worth doing, though not, as regards scale, of first-rate importance. It was none the less an historically memorable war: at the end of three centuries it completed the work which the ruin of the Armada began. Over two centuries after Drake was in his grave the great struggle against the Spanish colonial power reached its sorry last. And the coup de grâce was administered, not by England, which commenced the struggle, but by England's revolted colonies, by a Saxon race beyond the seas, not yet planted when the Armada sailed to its doom. And when the dust of Spain's aged colonial empire rolled away, Europe beheld in its stead the apparition of America in the Eastern hemisphere. Wherefrom what consequences shall come may no man say.

The

As a war it was curious to a point almost of burlesque from some aspects. For it was the strife of two nations neither ready to fight, and with great difficulty in getting at each other. As of two men, we will say, abusing each other across a high wall, while each strains violently to get on his misfitting boots. But unreadiness was the one point the strong new country and the weak old country had in common. Spain's councils were incompetent, her navies and armies misdirected by the politicians at home. Having a fleet none too strong, she divided it—as England did her armies at the beginning of the present war. American fleet, on the other hand, seems to have been ably handled by the naval department of the Government. They had one object, and they kept steadily to it. Spain was to be beaten at Cuba, and beaten by blockade. Bar up the two chief ports-Havana and Cienfuegos-and either Cuba must be starved into surrender or the Spanish fleet must cross the seas and fight America in her own waters. So America girdled in the ports, and waited. It was a misfortune for her that her long and undefended coast-line obliged her-in order to quiet popular fear-to keep half her battle fleet inactive at Hampton Roads, when it was badly needed to complete the blockade of Cienfuegos. But it was kept ready to join the other half, under Sampson, as soon as the position of the Spanish fleet should be known.

The game succeeded. Spain had to send her fleet across the ocean; but, most foolishly, she sent only part of it. The other part, under Camara, never took part in the war at all. Cervera did what he could, with his inadequate squadron. He could only dodge for a while, and as soon as his whereabouts was known all was over. Telegraphs and swift cruisers brought the two American fleets, Sampson's and Schley's, into junction before either could be attacked separately, and set them across the mouth of Santiago, "bottling" the unhappy Cervera.

The true hero of the war was not the popular Dewey, but the abused Sampson. Dewey occupies the frontispiece of Mr. Wilson's book-in deference, we presume, to the public; for his opinion seems to be very much ours. Manila made a brilliant noise, but the war could neither be won nor lost in the Philippines. It was Sampson's patience, precision, and skill in the operations that led up to the "bottling" of Cervera, and ultimately the battle of Santiago, which decided the war.

His blockade of Cervera in Santiago was not only extremely skilful, but daring, and daring with knowledge. One device is thus described by Mr. Wilson:

On nights when there was no moon a battleship was stationed from one to two miles off the entrance to the harbour, and was ordered to throw a search-light beam up the channel and keep it there. "This," says the Admiral in his report, "lightened up the entire breadth of the channel for half a mile inside of the entrance so brilliantly that the movement of small boats could be detected. Why the batteries never opened fire upon the search-light ship was always a matter of surprise to me; but they never did."

Even riflemen firing on the search-lights might have caused serious loss and annoyance; but the Spaniards remained inactive. "What damned impudence!' " said the British naval attaché, when he watched the blockaders' proceedings-and impudence it was, but of the coolest and most calculating kind.

"Fighting Bob" Evans, of the Iowa, gives a detailed account of his own share in this " damned impudence," which is eminently worth quoting:

"Admiral Sampson signalled me to take the Iowa up the harbour-mouth. 'How far must I go?' I signalled back, I confess with considerable anxiety, as, besides Cervera's fleet, the forts, and batteries, there were doubtless countless torpedoes in there. Go in until you can distinguish the movements of a small rowing-boat in the harbour,' came back the answer. 'How long must I stay I again anxiously signalled. All night,' was

·

the answer. I went up that harbour until I could not only plainly follow the movements of any small boat ahead of me with my glass, but could notice the blinking eyes of the Spanish sentries as the search-light struck them. For thirty-nine nights we kept that kind of watch on Cervera."

Such men were the worthy descendants of Drake; fit to figure in bolder enterprises than it has now become to singe the beard of the King of Spain." The war, in such hands, was a foregone conclusion.

Other New Books.

THE FIRST DUTCH WAR, 1652-1654. VOL. II.

ED. BY S. R. GARDINER.

This, the second volume of this very interesting work, compiled under the auspices of the Navy Records Society, carries the story down to October, 1652, by means of a variety of documents: instructions to Sir George Ayscue, despatches from General Blake, Vice-Admiral Penn, Captain John Mildmay, Commodore De Ruyter, ViceAdmiral De With, and many letters from men with the respective fleets. On looking through these old papers one meets, on the English side, with something of the same strain of fervid piety and confident belief in particular protection by God, which characterises the other side's descendants in the Transvaal to-day. Captain Mildmay notes that, in a late encounter with the Dutch fleet, "God did much appear, in many circumstances very evidently checking the pride and arrogance of that insulting Enemy"; again, on the same occasion, "the Lord of Hosts appeared in His power, putting terror in the hearts of our enemy, and a spirit of great cheerfulness and courage in our own; wherefore let His great name have all the honour and praise, yea, magnified be His glorious name who hath owned our cause in this great dispute, and quelled the pride and arrogancy of that insulting enemy." This brief praise of the Sovereign's performance in the battle of the Kentish Knock is memorable: "The Sovereign-that great ship, a delicate frigate (I think the whole world hath not her like)-did her part; she sailed through and through the Holland fleet, and played hard upon them." (Navy Records Society.)

The author of this collection of folk rhymes, weather couplets, and old-fashioned scraps of verse, was inspired, she tells us, to bring them together by the circumstance. that many of them have not been included in other volumes for children. This is true; but it is not unlikely that quite a large proportion were deliberately rejected by other editors, on account of their extreme paucity of interest. It is not enough for a rhyme to exist to justify its inclusion in a book for children. Children want more than mere jingle and assonance and rustic sapience. Such sentiments as these are not really interesting:

'Tis time to cock your hay and corn
When the old donkey blows his horn.
'Tween Martinmas and Yule
Water's wine in every pool.

The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.

Five score to the hundred of men, money, and pins,
Six score to the hundred of all other things.
And so forth. Now and then we come to something
simple and good, as

A robin redbreast in a cage Puts all heaven in a rage;

taste is to seek. This piece of verse would be funny in Out of the Hurly-Burly, or the Detroit Free Press, or "The Belle of New York," but in a book for children it is out of place:

Little Willie from his mirror
Sucked the mercury all off,
Thinking, in his childish error,
It would cure his whooping-cough.
At the funeral Willie's mother
Smartly said to Mrs. Brown :
"Twas a chilly day for William

When the mercury went down.'

And to put the trumpery version of "Mary had a Little Lamb" (on page 51) next Blake's beautiful lines, "Little Lamb, who made thee?" is another unhappy lapse. Among the country rhymes are two that we do not remember to have seen before this from Leicestershire :

This book is published at a fortunate moment, for cavalry leaders are to the fore just now, and General N. B. Forest, the Confederate soldier, was a born cavalry general. He was a wonderful man, and his troopers were devoted to him, though his very name is almost unknown in England. He was a planter when the war broke out, and had no training in military matters; but had his genius for war been reinforced by a proper education and a systematic military training he would, probably, have been the central figure of the American Civil War. Forrest's great principle in war was "to get there first with the most men"; and one of his favourite maxims was: "War means fighting and fighting means killing." carried this out in practice, and is known to have placed hors de combat thirty Federal officers and soldiers, fighting hand to hand. General Taylor said of him: "I doubt if any commander since the days of the lion-hearted Richard killed as many enemies with his own hand as Forrest." He spared neither himself nor his men, and the one thing he would not endure was slackness or cowardice.

He

Every soldier under him knew it was expected that he would fight to the death if it became necessary, and he knew, moreover, that Forrest had no respect or mercy for a coward. It was his order to his officers to shoot any man who flickered, and be emphasised this order by his own conduct. There was no false sentiment in the mind of Forrest connected with war. There was an end to be reached the independence of the Southern confederation. To that consummation everything must be subordinated. To his mind the killing of one of his own soldiers now and then, as an example of what a coward might expect, was a proper means to the end. At Murfreesborough, in 1864, he shot the colour-bearer of one of the infantry regiments which stampeded, and then succeeded in rallying the men to their duty. . . . In the fight near West Point, General Chalmers relates how Forrest leaped from his horse, and seized one of his troops who was running to the rear, and thrashed him soundly with a stick, forcing him to go back in line.

Being a genius, he learned his profession as he went on, and his favourite method was to attack the flank and rear, taking advantage of every scrap of cover. To anyone interested in cavalry and mounted infantry this life of the Confederate leader will be of great value. (Harper's. $4.)

BOOKS ABOUT PLACES.

THE Northumberland County History Committee has issued the fifth volume of its great History of Northumberland (Andrew Reid & Co., Newcastle-on-Tyne). This deals with the two parishes of Warkworth and Shilbottle, and with their outlying chapelries of Chevington and Brainshaugh. As in the previous volumes, the geology, architecture, and dialect of the Coquet valley are committed to special hands. No more romantic piece of England exists than this valley of the Coquet, a stream whose name is music to the angler as its shores are a land of promise to the antiquary. The crown of the district is Warkworth, with its castle, hermitage, and church. The account of the Hermitage has been written by Mr. Cadwallader Bates, who has also told in no iconoclastic strain the story of St. Henry of Coquet Island, who died there on January 16, 1126-1127. On that day" a man on the island thought he heard two choir of angels in the air chanting alternate verses of the Te Deum. The hymn ceased, the hermit's bell rang; the monk of the island hastened to the cell and found St. Henry seated on a stone holding the bell-rope, in all the calm of sleep-life had passed away, a mortuary candle that the saint had had no means of lighting was burning at his side." The only buildings on the island now consist of a lighthouse and its attendant cottages, lamp-stores, &c.; but these have been built upon, or adapted from ancient work. The seal, the eider-duck, and the tern have been banished from this little island of fourteen acres, within living memory; but the traditions of Saxon monks and kings, of Cuthbert and of St. Henry, will cling to it always. Under its editor, Mr. John Crawford Hodgson, this magnificent county history is making good progress, and a word of highest praise is due to the Newcastle publishers for their part in this undertaking. In Nooks and Corners of Shropshire, by Mr. H. Thornhill Timmins (Elliot Stock), we have one more proof-a very interesting proof-of the fact that every patch and scrap of England is a mine of historical and human lore. Many of us will never see Stretton Dale, the Clee Hills, Bridgnorth, or Mitchell's Fold-to say nothing of the villages that dot the highways of southern Shropshire-and yet Mr. Timmins's book reflects hours of rich and happy inquiry among these quiet spots. His book is all his own, for he has illustrated it himself; and we could wish for no more pleasant and gossipy guidance than he offers. Mr. Timmins is already known by his "Nooks and Corners" of Herefordshire and Pembrokeshire, and he has the real topographical flair.- Haunts and Homes of the Pilgrim Fathers, by Dr. Alexander Mackennal (Religious Tract Society), is a handsome picture book, in which, however, the literary matter maintains its importance among a crowd of beautiful illustrations. The book is a topographical history of the home-leaving of the Pilgrim Fathers. We visit the places to which the hearts of the Pilgrims went back when they founded a new Boston, a new Plymouth, and a new Cambridge on the other side of the Atlantic, and each spot on which they set foot in their journey thither-Amsterdam, Leyden, Delfshaven, Southampton, and finally Plymouth, whence, in the Mayflower, the homeless saints sailed for their New Plymouth.-Scotland's Ruined Abbeys, by Mr. Howard Crosby Butler (The Macmillan Company), is an American architect's discriminating treatment of a subject which needed a book less formidable than the existing standard works. Mr. Butler's book is of considerable interest to the general reader and of distinct value to the tourist. Mr. Butler is his own illustrator.

Fiction.

Scruples. By Thomas Cobb.

(Grant Richards. 38. 6d.)

INTO a little pool of London society drop a beautiful girl of sentiment, conscience, and no sense of humour; what sort of a splash will occur? That is Mr. Thomas Cobb's problem, if so serious a word may be used in connexion with so light-hearted a story. And Mr. Cobb has cast his pebble with unerring aim, and caught the bubbles deftly. In Carpet Courtship and in Mr. Passingham he sported pleasingly upon the surface of life, but he has done nothing so deft as the present work. It is not a novel; it is a short story; there is no development of character, only a swift play of characters already formed; and the time is limited by days. The cleverness of the thing lies in the conflict of emotions felt by quite ordinary people under perfectly ordinary conditions. Of leading characters we have six: Strachan, a good and simple baronet; Venables, a young British officer with nothing of the man of the world about him but his clothes; and Wray Waterhouse, a modern pocket edition of Don Quixote. Then we have Joan Venables, the pretty aunt of the officer; Amabel Cathcart, a bit of a minx who makes things hum; and Pauline Cathcart. The question that will agitate the reader is who shall marry whom; for they are all in love in quite a gentlemanly and ladylike manner; and with Mr. Cobb's skilful stirring of the social pool, and Pauline's scruples, and Waterhouse's Quixotism, and Joan's innocent intrigues, and Amabel's flirting, one is apprehensive of mésalliance to the end. It is impossible to avoid "casting" Mr. Cobb's story, since his method lies by way of dialogue-swift, easy, apposite dialoguewhich never turns aside to say a good thing because the author had jotted it down in his commonplace book, but carries the story forward with each sentence. The story is dramatic, because Mr. Cobb has learned that the art of writing drama is the art of throwing good things into the waste-paper basket. Therefore, without detailing the development of the plot, it is impossible to give an example of the adequacy of the dialogue. However, take this as instance of its easy naturalness: Joan Venables, the pretty aunt, is talking to Bernard Venables, the youthful officer, about Amabel the minx; says the youthful officer:

"I can't stand her going on as she did last night. Everyone noticed it. I'm not going to put up with it. It's just a little too thick."

"You have only yourself to please, my dear boy."
"I don't please myself," he muttered.

"Have you asked Amabel?"

"I haven't exactly asked her," said Bernard. "Wouldn't it be as well before your final renunciation ?" Joan suggested. "Take my advice: ask her plainly whether she will be your wife."

"You see, I've tried ever so many times," he answered ruefully.

66 Tried ?"

artist is to view all the parts of existence with a special temperament, it is to possess a clue to the meaning of things which others are unaware of; to have an unwritten law of one's own by which to test all the manifestations of life and conduct. The power of the artist is a It is this " light cast everywhere." light cast everywhere," this continual poetising of reality without distorting its truth, which makes The Engrafted Rose notable among the fiction of the day. Mrs. Brooke's somewhat melodramatic theme turns upon the fortunes of the old aristocratic-barbarian family of Clarels, who had lived for centuries at a seat called Marske. (All the place-names

and surnames in this novel have a fine northern soundClarel, Marske, Hawmonde, Liedes, Thirntoft, Twelves, Brackenholme, Ronaldsbiggin.) We see the working of the Clarel blood in three people: Clement Clarel, who sold his happiness and that of others to enable him to transmit the family traditions unimpaired; Bryan Hawmonde, a distant cousin, whose existence is a prolonged defence of his own individuality against the "herd of ancestors within him; and Rosamunda Thoresbye, who, changed at birth by an unscrupulous midwife, lived for twenty years under the impression that she was the daughter of eminently just and respectable mill-owning parents.

Mrs. Brooke succeeds better with her women and older men than with her young men. Bryan Hawmonde, meant to be an elaborate figure, is analysed before he has been constructed, and his friend Earnshaw, who marries Rosamunda, scarcely seems alive.

The chief blot on the book lies, not in the theatrical prologue, which is managed with all necessary skill, but in the chapter recording Rosamunda's gipsy-like adventures after she has learnt the secret of her birth. These adventures never occurred, they are utterly wrong—a trick played upon the author by an imagination which, approaching the end of a heavy task, had become slightly hysteric and unstable; but whatever the faults of The Engrafted Rose, impotence is not among them; even its cruditiesand they are not few-have interest.

The Cambric Mask. By R. W. Chambers.
(Macmillan & Co., Ltd. 6s.)

SINCE Mr. Chambers has produced a considerable quantity
of serious and excellent fiction, we must regard this some-
what exiguous and crudely-tinted "romance"
as the
product of his lighter hours. The tale tells how a company
of lawless night-riders (who rode their horses swathed in
sheets) tried to frighten a determined man out of a remote
part of a remote county of the "Empire State "; how,
incensed by his obstinacy, they nearly murdered him;
and how in the end, aided by the lovely daughter of one
of their number, the determined man, Sark by name, won
his immunity and a wife. The local colour is consistently
well done. Several chapters are thrilling, and we do not
object to these. We do object, however, to the facetious
and sentimental chapters, which predominate. They are
unworthy of the author of The King in Yellow.

The book is a quaint mixture of good and bad writing. We find, for instance, a sentence like this: "He rolled up his pajamas [sic], stepped out of his crash bath-slippers, and stole to the front door, upon cavorting bent, beaming bucolic beatitude." And a little further on, some admirable bits of landscape painting; as thus: "Out of the splendid azure of the west great white clouds crowded, squadron on squadron, standing gallantly on their course before the wind; and silvery flaws swept the water where the wind's wing-tips, trailing, brushed the blue surface of the lake."

The Cambric Mask is far too faulty to have any real value, but we should imagine that the history of its composition might be interesting.

Notes on Novels.

[These notes on the week's Fiction are not necessarily final. Reviews of a selection will follow.]

ARDEN MASSITER.

BY DR. WILLIAM BARRY. In this novel, by the learned author of The New Antigone and The Two Standards, we have a gorgeous arrangement of motives and colour-Socialism, Catholicism, love, asceticism, and Italian skies and ruins, all ending in a quotation from Sophocles in Greek. (Unwin. 6s.) THE KINGS OF THE EAST. BY SYDNEY C. GRIER.

A clever "romance of the near future," by the author of Like Another Helen. The motive is the re-peopling of Palestine, and in the opening chapters we see a syndicate forming for that purpose under the masterful "Count Mortimer "-an Englishman and a Gentile. His diplomacies make the story, which develops all kinds of interests, and is pervaded by an amusing cynicism. (Blackwood & Sons. 68.)

A story of an innocent man-Dr. Munro-condemned to penal servitude for life, and the sleepless efforts of his friend, Captain Tom Vernon, to prove his innocence. A detective story, worthy of its author's reputation. (Macqueen. 6s.)

THE GREEN FLAG, AND OTHER STORIES
OF WAR AND SPORT.

BY A. CONAN DOYLE. These thirteen stories are sufficiently described by their title. In "Captain Sharkey," a story of privateering in the years following the Peace of Utrecht, we have some snatches of verse.

So it's up and it's over to Stornoway Bay,

Pack it on! Crack it on! Try her with the stun-sails!
It's off on a bowline to Stornoway Bay,

Where the liquor is good and the lasses are gay,

Waiting for their bully Jack,

Watching for him sailing back,

Right across the Lowland Sea.

(Smith, Elder & Co. 6s.)

THE SON OF THE HOUSE.

BY BERTHA THOMAS.

This novel, by the author of The Violin Player, deals with Mammon. A vulgar glove-maker's fortune is the rock on which a family of three splits up. The son of the house is relied on by his mother to complete those social ambitions which her vulgar husband had only partially gratified, but Oswald develops views about the responsibilities of wealth which unite his mother and his brother Ralph in opposition to him. Ralph steals his sweetheart, and his mother puts him into a lunatic asylum. But Oswald is reserved for better things. An interesting story with a variety of character. (Chatto & Windus. 6s.) FORTUNE'S YELLOW.

BY ELLA MACMAHON.

The Evangeline is Longfellow's Evangeline, and the story is laid in Longfellow's Grand Pré, and it tells how Yvonne de Lamourie suffered exile with the rest of the villagers. The Acadian apple-orchards and linen caps of the girls give charm to the background of the story, while the rivalry of England and France occupies, so to speak, the middle distance of the drama. (Lane. 6s.) THE ADVENTURE OF PRINCESS SYLVIA.

BY MRS. C. N. WILLIAMSON.

The fictional-monarchical vein once more. Sylvia is wooed at Richmond by Maximilian, Emperor of Rhaetia, and to Rhaetia the story quickly moves. There are baronesses, and burgomasters, and chamois and chancellors; also telephones. (Methuen. 6d.)

More criminal mystery and melodrama by the author of The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, who has dared to make a Bishop's palace the centre of a murder case, and has found a supernaturally clever detective in the Bishop's chaplain. The broader humours of cathedral town life are not missed. (John Long. 6s.)

THE DISENCHANTMENT OF NURSE DOROTHY.

BY FLORENCE BAXENDALE.

"A worm eats at the root of the common hospital system, and causes suffering to patients and nurses alike. the microbe of over-work." The story seems to be written to establish this proposition, but Dorothy suffered more from a house-surgeon's love than from a matron's tyranny. (Skeffington. 3s. 6d.)