idea of resistance to England"; and it was previously in the closest union with England that history had national salvation in store for the country. The accuracy of Mr. Lang's estimate, both of episodes and of the general trend of things, must be left to the specialist to judge. Likely, Mr. Lang will have enough of criticism, for Scots are not slow to controversy in a good, or other, cause. As to the literary qualities of the book, we may say a word. They seem to us of a very high order. Mr. Lang has the lightest of touches in the presentment of material, which he has put together with the most conscientious pains. We had not thought that a difficult and broken chronicle, filled with crabbed names, could be made so interesting in the reading. He has a keen scent for the picturesque in phrase and detail, for the colour of a scene, for the quaint homespun of a contemporary writer. A brief specimen of his easy and effective narrative will not be out of place: Of Scotland under James I. we have a curious and wellknown sketch from the pen of Æneas Sylvins Piccolomini. Sent by the Council of Basel, a very young man at the time, the future Pius II. came into the frozen north like a shivering Italian greyhound on a curling-rink. There was only a space of little more than three hours of sunlight in winter, a circumstance since altered in the progress of civilisation. He calls the king a square-built man and too fat. He was anxious to see the tree which breeds Solan geese, but it was too far north. The balfnaked poor, begging at church doors [a queer thing for an Italian to complain of], received not bread but a stone, which is greasy and burns. There is no wood in this naked region. Not till he reached Newcastle on his way south did Eneas find himself in a decently habitable region. Frightened by a storm at sea, he had made a vow of a barefoot pilgrimage to White Kirk. The weather was frosty, and the pilgrim suffered grievous things. Scotland was a country of unwalled cities: the houses, as a rule, were built without mortar, the horses were small, and curry-combs were unknown. Conversation was chiefly abuse of the English. When Regnault Girard came to bring the Daughter of Scotland to France, for her hapless marriage with the future Louis XI., he presented the queen with chestnuts, pears, and apples, and she was much pleased, for there is little fruit in Scotland. A mule was also a rare novelty, and much admired. Regnault speaks touchingly of the tears shed by James when he parted from his child. 66 Mr. Lang was ever a fighter," and in these pages he more than once trails his coat. Mr. Henley brought a hornets' nest about his ears by praising Burns from a new and unconventional point of view. Mr. Lang is hardly less audacious in suggesting some qualifications of Knoxolatry. But his attitude towards Knox is as nothing when compared with his attitude towards the Douglases. Few things in Scottish bistory have been more disguised in popular books than the conduct of the house of Douglas. The comradeship of Bruce and the Good Lord James has thrown a glamour over the later Douglasesmen princely in rank, daring in the field, but often bitterly anti-national. The partiality of Hume of Godscroft, their sennachie or legendary historian, the romances of Pitscottie, the ignorance or prejudice of Protestant writers like Kuox and Buchanan, the poetry of Scott, and the Platonic Protestantism of Mr. Froude. have concealed the selfish treachery of the house of Angus! This is Mr. Lang's deliberate judgment; nor can he, when he meets a Douglas in the highways or the by-ways of his book, restrain a passing sneer. The Douglases doubtless have their hereditary sennachie still, and we take it that anent this book there will ere long be wigs upon the green. As for us, we are indifferent to the reputations of clans or of church reformers, but we cannot away with Mr. Lang's practice of grouping his references. and minor notes at the end of each chapter. It does not really add to the comeliness of the printed page, for the reference numbers remain hung up there. And as a matter of convenience, it is detestable. LENITY to poets is not a charge of which we should feel greatly ashamed, nor is it the most heinous in the catalogue of possible sins. But criticism has its duties, and Miss Shore's volume enforces their exercise. The tyro, it is true, has his privileges; but the fact that these poems are avowedly the work of a lifetime forbids her the privileges of a beginner, though the book itself might well seem to claim them. What is it that we are apt to find in female writers with no shadowy touch of the poet's impulse, no outflow of heart and fancy which makes for verse, causing us reluctantly to deny them the attribute of classicality? Unclassicality, being a negative quality, may present itself in many ways. Most often it takes the form of diffuseness, diction inclining to conversational and journalistic conventions, disillusionisingly work-a-day speech in a tongue which has its separate and inexhaustibly opulent language sealed to poetic service, unsoiled by profane use. There is no virtue, indeed, per se in a pilfered richness of far-brought jargon; but at least it gives some merciful disguise to poverty of internal idea. Weak substance shows weakest associated with the loosefitting customary phrase; good substance is enfeebled when it is sent abroad in such uncostly habit. Such unclassicality is far from the educated simplicity of art or plenary inspiration-which is the finest art; far as chickenbroth from Liebig's Extract, far as distilled water from keen spring-water. It is poetry in ready-made clothing. And the separation from the significant fulness and inclusiveness of the great poets is enhanced by little femininities of expression which fatally suggest the feeble impulsiveness of the drawing-room; little dilutions of sentencestructure which recall the watered prattle of five o'clock "Compress!" we sigh irritably; "in pity of poetry, good Madam, compress!" This unclassicality, in more or less degree, we impute to Miss Shore. tea. which is an absurdity that a little attention to meaning would have avoided. For, unfortunately, it is not only in form that she falls short. The saplessness which too often affects her language clings likewise to the substance. She is a meditative singer; but to be a meditative singer is not necessarily to be a thoughtful singer. Inexperience (specially female inexperience) loves vast, vague themes, which admit an interminable rambling looseness by their very absence of limit; so that no thought, however disjointed and inconsequential, comes irrelevant. Experience is well satisfied to make the most of a prudently contracted theme. Miss Shore is not a novice, but she shares this trait with the novice ambitious of profundity. One would spell "tyro" in such a title as Death and Immortality; or, Life and Death. A whole treatise of philosophy or theo logy might be written under the title. But the reader who adventures on Miss Shore's poem will not find himself carried out of his depth; though (if he be a logician) he may be out of his patience. In the less ambitious meditative poems a copious fluency of obvious reflections mingles with a regrettable lack of thought in the expression. You lead us to the mountain-top Where the great God who formed our kind Must one ascend a mountain-top for the Almighty to discern one's tears? And if not, what does the stanza mean? She wishes to Tennyson : The God that did such sadness send and then rejoices to learn that He has "brought my mystic wishes true." What is there "mystic' " in so commonplace a wish? And when she concludes by bidding the late Laureate Twine all lost desires About this central shaft of hope, how can you twine a lost object about anything? These are trifles, but they are the trifles which make the difference between poetry and not-poetry. Nor can we say that the narrative poems, though better, reach any high standard. She concludes one poem on Woman with the words, She asks no royal grant, For she is free-born too; Give her her human rights, and see what she can do! Well, for one thing, she can write very much better poetry than Miss Shore has succeeded in writing. Better Miss Shore might write if she had a mind. "It is the mind," as Lamb said, "that is wanting." Heart and sensibilities she has in plenty; but for poetry a little more is needed, which Miss Shore has not yet attained. Our Confounded Superiority. Three Men on the Bummel. By Jerome K. Jerome. (Arrowsmith. 3s. 6d.) Such books as this are the despair of the reviewer. They do not, in fact, call for reviewing at all. They are written, they are published, the first edition consists of twenty thousand copies—and that is all that need be said. Their sole object being to make you laugh, if they succeed their existence is justified, and if they fail they are naught. To be quite frank, this particular book has not made us laugh at all, and therefore, as we have said, for ourselves it is naught. But as against this inability on our own part must be placed the testimony of a family of our acquaintance-collectively and individually quite as capable as we are-who have been reading Mr. Jerome's work in its serial form, and have laughed themselves weary over it, the test of our own laughter falls to the ground. It might, however, answer the purpose of a review to inquire a little into the reasons why we ourselves have been unable to laugh. The chief and embracing reason is, of course, that we did not find it funny; but the case may be explored rather more fully than that. What, as a rule, does make us laugh? Well, we like a comic writer to have a gift of surprise. Mr. Jerome advertises the end of his joke from the very start. We like a comic writer to leave something to ourselves. Mr. Jerome leaves nothing. This is perhaps a sufficient explanation. But to go on, we like, in a narrative of the adventures of fellow-creatures on a holiday, to be a little bit interested in the minds of those fellow-creatures. Mr. Jerome has invented three of the least interesting figures that we can remember. And, finally, we like humour to be fresh. Mr. Jerome's mechanism is the mechanism of Mark Twain (which has been stale these twenty years), and he lacks any of that great humorist's inspiration. Now, all this looks like a large indictment of Mr. Jerome; but we want it to be clearly understood that we consider it really an indictment of ourselves. Through an unfortunate familiarity with the books of a different class of writers, and a regrettable prejudice in favour of half tones, we have spoiled our mind for Mr. Jerome's peculiar qualities. It does not give us the least pleasure to realise this; on the contrary, when we remember the exultant faces of two boys who related to us-breathlessly, one helping the other-the substance of the previous instalment of Three Men on the Bummel in the paper in which it appeared, we are filled with sorrow, almost with shame, because our effort to pump up a little enthusiasm over the jest (it related to the discomfort of patent bicycle saddles), and to simulate something that should pass for laughter, was so ghastly a failure that all the happy spirits died out of the expression of those appreciative readers, and we saw, and saw it with the utmost concernfor they consider us somewhat in the light of a dictator on books-an air of misgiving take its place, as though the doubt as to whether this sort of thing really was so funny as they had thought were creeping into their minds. Mr. Jerome may rest assured that we said nothing to spoil his welcome in that house. And it is because we do not want to do so in any other house that we have endeavoured to explain the situation so minutely. A Cape Politician. The Life and Times of Sir John Charles Molteno, K. C.M.G., First Premier of Cape Colony. By P. A. Molteno. 2 vols. (Smith, Elder & Co. 288.) Ar first sight it would seem strange that the life of a Colonial politician, even one who possessed a claim to remembrance in that he was the first Prime Minister of Cape Colony, could not be told in less space than two stout volumes which, between them, contain little short of a thousand pages. To tell the truth, we live so fast nowadays that Sir J. C. Molteno and all that he did, or might have done, are already in a fair way to be forgotten; and, therefore, it is not surprising that Mr. P. A. Molteno should think it his duty to bring the fact of Sir J. C. Molteno's existence, personal and political, once more before the public. But the mystery vanishes with reading. The book is not so much a life of a former Premier of Cape Colony as a long and violent attack on two great men who have passed away-Lord Carnarvon and Sir Bartle Frere--who were before their time, and, consequently, were misunderstood and abused in their lifetime, and whose honoured graves are no protection from the spite of lesser men. What is valuable in this "life" could have been told in a quarter of the space, and this revival of forgotten controversies will have but little interest for the public. Mr. P. A. Molteno is not always accurate in his facts and in his suggestions of fact. Careful reading shows that he is aware that Sir Bartle Frere did not annex the Transvaal; but the impression left on the mind of one who came fresh to the subject would undoubtedly be that the Transvaal in 1877 was a flourishing and not a bankrupt State, and that Sir Bartle Frere was prompted by original sin to swallow it up. p. 200 of Vol. II. Mr. Molteno says: "It has been contended that Sir Bartle Frere was not a consenting party to the annexation of the Transvaal." Mr. Molteno must, however, be aware, as he has presumably followed South African questions, that the present Sir Bartle Frere not long ago called attention in the public press to an article written by his father in a magazine nearly twenty On years ago, in which the ex-Governor of the Cape specifically declared that the annexation of the Transvaal was decided upon before he went out to South Africa, and that he was only connected with it after the event. A writer who takes upon himself to deal with the politics of that period should have known this fact even without Sir Bartle Frere's article, and certainly without the reminder by that statesman's son. If Mr. Molteno does know of it, he has been successful in concealing his knowledge. But to turn to the nominal subject of the book. Sir J. C. Molteno was an Englishman of Italian descent, his father being in the Civil Service at Somerset House as Deputy Controller of Legacy Duty. The future Premier went out to the Cape in 1831 at the age of seventeen, and, after a few years' experience, started in business on his own account. Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is the short account of Mr. Molteno's life in the great Karroo, which was in those days much what the back country of Rhodesia is now. In 1843 he bought a farm at Nelspoort, at the foot of the Nieuwfeld Mountains, situated on the Salt River. The place is now on the railway, about halfway between Cape Town and De Aar Junction, of which so much has been heard of late. Not much over half a century ago, this part of Africa harboured a greater variety and a greater number of the largest animals in the world than any other continent. The abundance of food thus available led to a corresponding variety of carnivorous animals and birds of prey, the former being led by the king of beasts-the lion himself, while next to him came the fierce leopard locally called a tiger, owing to its cunning, its vindictiveness and strength; below these came numerous leopards in a descending scale of size, with wild dogs, wild cats of every kind, wolves, hyenas, and jackals. The lion was just emigrating from this district when Mr. Molteno arrived. His shepherds appeared before him in a scared condition, and reported having seen one in the long reeds of the Salt River Vlei soon after he had settled in this part. It may be easily imagined what formidable difficulties the presence of these wild animals presented to the stock farmer. The larger game began to move away before man, and the defenceless sheep took its place, and was called upon to supply food to the vast number of carnivora which were in occupation of the country. The lambs were carried off in numbers by the jackals, the wolves and hyenas made away with the grown sheep, the tiger would descend from his rocky fastness and in one night would indulge his love of slaughter and his thirst for blood by destroying twenty or thirty of your most valuable sheep, merely drinking their blood at the throat, and leaving them otherwise untorn. At another time, desiring a change of diet, your promising foal was carried off, and your calves were dealt with in a similar manner. In 1854 Mr. J. C. Molteno represented Beaufort in the Cape Parliament, and formed his first Cabinet in 1872. He remained a principal figure in Cape politics until 1882, when he finally retired and was made a K.C.M.G. on the recommendation of Lord Kimberley, who was then Colonial Minister. Sir J. C. Molteno died on September 1, 1886, at the age of seventy-two. He had lived long enough to be above the bitterness of party feeling. His death was the occasion of a unanimous and sincere expression of sorrow from the whole of the country, and from all political parties, who felt that they had lost a great and good man, indeed "the most representative man that the country had yet produced, whose name will ever be associated with the history of the Colony, and whose public career may always serve as a model for men, possibly possessed of more superficial brilliance, but who will never outshine him in the sterling qualities of political honesty, sound judgment, and common sense" (Cape Argus). This certainly does not exceed the bounds of panegyric. Sir J. C. Molteno was an honest, cautious, and conscientious politician, without much foresight or imagination. The vast changes which have taken place of late in South Africa were beyond his prescience, and his mind seemed unable to grasp more than the Cape Colony as it was when he knew it. His biographer has written his life from the same narrow point of view. As will be seen from the quotations, Mr. Molteno does not lay claim to any literary merit, or to any graces of style, and the book is emphatically not one to be taken up by the man wishing to learn the actual state of things in South Africa. It is an arsenal of controversial matter, intended first for the glorification of Sir J. C. Molteno, and secondly for the vilification of Lord Carnarvon and Sir Bartle Frere-if, indeed, the order should not be reversed. Still, it may be of some value to the future historian as giving the point of view of a certain set of politicians in South Africa, and for the sake of understanding that standpoint some will perhaps consent to wade through a mass of irrelevant matter. Had the book been the work of a judge and not of an advocate, the occasional passages in which Mr. Molteno hits the nail on the head would have had a greater chance of receiving attention. Some Lessons for England. Lessons of the War with Spain, and other Articles. By Alfred T. Mahan, D.C.L., LL.D., Captain United States Navy. (Sampson Low. 10s. 6d. net.) CAPTAIN MAHAN's aim in publishing these articles, collected from various American periodicals, is, as he says, to aid in the formation of an intelligent public opinion. And this not merely by pointing out the chief lessons which the American people ought to draw from their recent war with Spain. He thinks that the public should have a better acquaintance with the leading principles of warfare, which, as he says, are few and simple; and that the way to induce a better acquaintance in the public is to place before them narratives of warlike operations disencumbered of the detailed technicalities in which military and naval writers delight to array their works. The Lessons of the War with Spain is Captain Mahan's endeavour to supply such a narrative-what he calls a skeleton account of the operations leading up to the destruction of Cervera's fleet, with comments elucidating the principles, naval and military, on which they were based, or which they illustrate. It certainly fulfils his intention; its lucidity should make it understandable to any intelligent unprofessional reader, though perhaps an occasional danger of confusion might have been avoided by relegating to notes some of the incidental digressions in which the writer indulges, however timely and useful in themselves. The book should be hardly less valuable to us than to Americans. If the excesses of the American " "yellow press (on which Captain Mahan is very severe) are avoided among us, it is none the less true that public opinion needs enlightening on many points. One lesson to which he calls attention has been driven home to ourselves recently. It is the ruinousness of preparing only or chiefly for defensive war. Sums of money are sunk on "home defence" which would better have been spent in preparing an expeditionary force, in strengthening our attack. For (apart from wars of the Boer type) the most effective, quickest, and least costly way of preventing invasion or attack by the enemy is to maim and occupy him by attack on his own resources. Mere defence, as the writer emphasises, leaves the enemy free to select his point of assault, while the passive side has to consider and guard every possible point of injury in a large extent of vulnerable spots; it leaves his sinews of war intact, even though his blows be baffled, and thereby lingers out the hostilities, which energetic attack might conclude at once-as happened with the American attack on Spain. A cognate lesson is the neglect of coast defence, of fortifications. For lack of this, the American blockade of Cuba was never secure against attack, as it should have been. Cienfuegos and Havana both required blockade; but only the blockade of Havana could be secured by an adequate squadron of battleships. That of Cienfuegos could at any time have been raised by the appearance of a Spanish warship. And why? Because Schley's Flying Squadron, which ought to have been before Cienfuegos, was locked up in Hampton Roads, to calm the fears of the undefended and panic-stricken coast-towns. Only when Cervera's whereabouts was known could the authorities bring the Flying Squadron into action. Captain Mahan thinks that England's dependence on other nations for food supply makes coast defence less important to her, and reduces her to depend chiefly on her fleet. But it may be questioned whether the possible panic of our great coast-towns might not produce a more or less paralysing effect on a portion of our fleet, obliging it to be kept in home waters when it was seriously needed elsewhere. Another point is the value of battleships which can act together as a fleet, having, at any rate approximately, the same speed and the same offensive power. Not speed, but combined weight of guns and ability to steam and manœuvre together is the desideratum. Therefore, he advocates building a number of battleships of a certain medium type and practically equivalent speed, rather than sink the money on a few ships of large size. In connexion with this, and to be noted because there is a popular delusion to the contrary, is his emphatic declaration that battleships do not become useless because they are "obsolete"-that is, because ships of superior design are built subsequently. In the first place, such "obsolete" ships can be used, like irregular troops, for secondary purposes, setting free the newer ships for the more important duties proper to them-an invaluable function. Secondly, and more important yet, it is the view of naval authorities that the first line of battle, even though victorious, would be crippled and used up during the encounters and accidents of the opening war. Final victory would then rest with the nation which had the most "obsolete" ships to fall back upon; to fill the gaps in its first line, or, if necessary, to form a new fleet. Then the value to England of her numerous so-called "obsolete" battleships would become evident, and probably turn the scale decisively. Of the many other lessons drawn by Captain Mahan from the war we do not speak, though most valuable for a right understanding of hostilities by the public. We have contented ourselves with a few which appeared most directly applicable to England, and for the rest we refer the reader to his exceedingly valuable and able book. Mr. P. F. Warner (who is known to his friends and to ardent cricketers as "Plum") is the Middlesex amateur. After every English season, more or less, for some years he has added to the cricket of the summer-so insatiable are the sons of the game!-by joining an autumn or winter eleven for playing in other regions of the earththe West Indies, America, Oporto, Canada, and South Africa-and it is the records of these tours which are given in his book. It was, perhaps, well to have them in this permanent form, for though many pages are necessarily rather small beer, and each bears a striking resemblance to the last, yet Lord Hawke, Mr. Warner's captain (to whom the book is dedicated) has done, by projecting these tours, so much for the cult of cricket in Greater Britain that a chronicle of the achievement is a valuable contribution to the history of the game. Mr. Warner's volume, however, has another value-it is vivacious and unaffectedly amusing. Many authors strive in vain all their life for these two gifts-vivacity and amusiveness. Mr. Warner steps lightly in, and, holding the pen with not a tithe of the seriousness that belongs to his grasp of the bat, succeeds in capturing both. The book is the reflection of a happy, wholesome, public-school athletic temperament. (Heinemann.) BRUGES: AN HISTORICAL SKETCH. BY WILFRID C. ROBINSON. If we cannot say that Mr. Robinson has produced that history of Bruges which has hitherto been sadly to seek, in English at all events, he has unquestionably given us an attractive and exceedingly well-written book. It is not to be expected that everybody who writes about Longfellow's "quaint old Flemish city" should catch its atmosphere and fix its aspects with the consummate art of the late M. George Rodenbach—we know, indeed, of no book which suggests the tender melancholy and paints the dreamy existence of the half-dead city like Bruges la Morte." It is a wonderful story of commercial splendour, sturdy fighting, utter decay and abject misery, which Mr. Robinson has to tell and tells so well, and there are some novel points in his volume which deserve attention. He calls in question, for instance, the statements of the old writers as to the enormous population of Bruges relatively to its area, and, much as he loves it, he seems to suggest that it can never have been the premier city of Christendom. We should have been glad to see less actual history-which is already familiar enough --and more about the literary and artistic associations of the We read of it in Dante. Caxton abode there for at least three years; it is highly probable that Sir Thomas More wrote part of his Utopia there; so literary was it, indeed, early in the sixteenth century, that to Justus Lipsius it presented itself as the flower and Athens of the Low Countries. With its Memling and Pourbus in art, its Simon Stévin in mathematics, its Breidel and De Coninck as warriors and statesmen, Bruges possesses a roll of fame which even its neighbour, Ghent, with its Van Eyck, its Charles V., and its John of Gaunt can hardly beat. But to-day it is as the "Ville Musée," with its sweet savour of antiquity, its contemplative streets, and the placid tranquillity of its life, that we all know and delight in it. (Bruges: Louis de Plancke. 4s.) town. During his connexion with the Good Government Clubs, which were organised in New York for the purpose of defeating Tammany Hall, the author of this book discovered that the world is out of joint, and he came to the laudable resolution to set it right. He found-what, indeed, he might have found at an earlier date-that very few people possess a working code of first principles, but simply vegetate in what has been aptly called "the furnished lodging of tradition." He accordingly worked out a systematic view of life so as to enable people to labour in unison toward a common ideal, and the result is the little volume before us. The author covers a wide field, too wide, in fact, for the dimensions of his book. He travels, metaphorically speaking, from China to Peru, and has something to say about everything, but unfortunately he gives many openings for the guns of opponents. Thus he states, on the authority of John Fiske, that the infant brain is comparatively free from the convolutions which differentiate an educated brain from an uneducated one, and on the strength of this he argues that Nature brings a man into the world with a comparatively blank scroll upon which education can inscribe its law. But this is doing great injustice to that profound thinker, John Fiske, who contended that an infant's mind is not a blank sheet, but rather a sheet written over with invisible ink, and that the brain has definite tendencies even at birth. Again, we are asked to believe that Mr. Herbert Spencer would have us contemplate with philosophic calm the miseries of the world, and quietly look on while struggling humanity fought it out according to the Queensberry rules. This is worse than sheer nonsense, and a very superficial acquaintance with Mr. Spencer's teaching would have prevented the author from giving expression to such a baseless calumny. (Longmans.) Fiction. Sophia. By Stanley Weyman. MR. WEYMAN's twelfth novel gives an elaborate and life- On the huge low wooden bed from which the coarse blue and white bedding protruded, two bodies lay sheeted. At their feet the candles burned dull before the window that should have been open, but was shut; as the thick noisome air of the room, that turned him sick and faint, told him. Near the bed, on the farther side, stood that he sought; Sophia, her eyes burning, her face like His paper. prey then was there, there, within his reach; but she had not spoken without reason. Death, death in its most loathsome aspect lay between them; and the man's heart was as water, his feet like lead. "If you come near me," she whispered, "if you come a step nearer I will snatch this sheet from them, and I will wrap you in it! And you will die! In eight days you will be dead! Will you see them? Will you see what you will be?" Aud she lowered her hand to raise the sheet. He stepped back a pace, livid and shaking. "You shedevil!" he muttered. "You witch!" "Go! Go! she answered, in the same low tone. Or I will bring your death to you! And you will die! As you have lived, foul, noisome, corrupt, you will die! In eight days you will die-if you come one step nearer! She took a step forward herself. The man turned and fled. Let us add that there is much quiet goodness in the book, and a continual striving towards naturalism and an avoidance of outworn conventions. The Kings of the East. By Sydney C. Grier. (Blackwood & Sons. 6s.) In this novel Miss Grier continues the adventures of the Mortimer family among European politics. "Count Cyril" now figures as the central impulse of a movement for the transformation of Palestine into a true Hebrew realm. "What a future would lie before the country which had the support of all the Jews in the world!" exclaims the Count, with his incurable grandioseness of idea. Lady Phil, his niece, is passionately wooed by a king, but ultimately, in a manner highly conventional, marries an excellent young Cambridge person of the name of Mansfield. The whole book, under an outward aspect of freshness and diversity, conceals a steadfast and immovable conventionality. Lord Caerleon's letter to his brother in Chap. II., for example, is a piece of pure convention-as conventional as a "stage-letter." And what shall be said of a passage like the following? "I should like to say a word or two to that fellow," muttered Mansfield, indicating by a backward glance the oracle of fashion. "I earnestly hope you won't. In the first place, he would not understand your German, and your righteous indignation would therefore be wasted. In the next, I would rather not kill him if I can help it." Kill him? How?" "With a sword, my dear youth. Excuse me, but you are really so refreshingly young. Is it beyond your powers of imagination to conceive that if you insulted him he would forthwith challenge me?" "I can look after my own quarrels, Count," very haughtily. "In that case I should very soon have a funeral to look after in the British cemetery," was the calm reply. The fact is, Miss Grier's recipe for the manufacture of cosmopolitan novels is growing effete with use, She is a clever craftsman-constructs well, writes well, and wears the cloak of omniscience with ease and grace. Her work is readable, and agreeable enough so long as you maintain towards it an attitude of polite interest. But if you demand from it more than you would demand from an acquaintance it will fail you, because it has nothing more than this to give. Notes on Novels. [These notes on the week's Fiction are not necessarily final. Reviews of a selection will follow.] HILDA WADE. BY GRANT ALLEN. This series of episodes was appearing in a magazine at the time of Mr. Grant Allen's death, and it is understood that he considered it his best work of fiction. It is a story of advanced medical science, in which Hilda Wade's womanly intuition in reading character, temperament, and physical signs, places her almost abreast of the great Prof. Sebastian. Hilda Wade and Sebastian are soon pitted against each other in a deep private concern affecting the memory of Hilda's father. Both characters are powerfully drawn. (Grant Richards. 68.) Mr. Capes has here printed stories contributed by him to a number of magazines, and six others which appear for the first time. The miscellaneous character of the collection is indicated in the sub-title: "A Book of Romances, Fantasies, Whimsies, and Levities." Mr. Capes's now familiar style is very apparent, dip where one will: "Now, as they stood a moment, watchful of each other, the apple in the peasant's throat flickered of a sudden; and immediately a rising moan, a very strange little ululation, began to make itself audible, and the man lifted his chin, as if to give some voice in him freer passage." (Blackwood. 6s.). |