for money and the professional man is the son of the thriving tradesman. Money and appearances, plus a little polite education, make "a gentleman" to-day, and the extraordinary variety of types and the diversity of family history might embarrass a Balzac, and reduce an Anthony Trollope to a sense of inadequacy in determining what figures are really representative of their class, and typical of social currents.

So it comes about that our novelists less and less see the wood for the trees, and that they tend more and more to paint aspects of the small field before them, and not the features of the landscape. We have increasing conflicts between capital and industry, but no writer (if we except Mr. Galsworthy in "Strife") draws a typical picture of the relations between the capitalist and the factory hands, far less of the industrial system as it moulds the town dweller. We have "a woman movement," but scarcely a writer who has dissected the dislocation implicit in the 'independent woman's" life. Something in our misty atmosphere, opposed to the clear air of Paris, tends to blur the mental outlines and confuse the spiritual contours: our materialism is veiled by our idealism, our "seriousness" is affronted by sharp wit or true profundity. Mr. W. L. George, in "The City of Light," can draw sharply and clearly the features of the French dot system, but we very much doubt whether he could disentangle, in a companion picture, the skein of mental evasions of an English Mrs. Grundy. For incisive justness of insight, Miss Amber Reeves's mordant sketch, "The Reward of Virtue," of the mating of a middle-class girl with a typically mediocre and featureless "City man" must be singled out for special praise, and equally clever in its feminine wit was Mrs. Lever son's handling, in "Tenterhooks," of a

merciless portrait of masculine fatuity. The Baroness von Hutten in "Mrs. Drummond's Vocation" contrived with great dexterity to limn those volatile inclinations of "the eternal feminine," without incurring the wrathful stare of the British matron. In "Dying Fires," Mr. Allan Monkhouse dissected with unflinching exactitude a situation of domestic tragi-comedy. His ironical mining and counter-mining opened a breach in the great fortress of the life conventional, and, as such, his story is a useful corrective to Miss S. Macnaughton's charming "Four Chim. neys," a typical idyll of English country life, where both hero and heroine sacrifice love to the exigencies of family duty. One may hope that one of the ablest of our women authors, Miss Anne Douglas Sedgwick, whose striking novel "Tante" showed a marked advance in emotional depth, may shed the last remnants of her idealistic tendency, and give free rein to her psychological powers. Her stories in "The Nest" contained some delicious satire on her sex. Miss Sinclair in "The Combined Maze," dem onstrated that she had shaken off her slight, besetting obsession concerning the supremacy of the literary life; no one, in fact, is better fitted than she to hold up the unflattering glass to the little côteries in Chelsea and Kensington, where lions and minor poets and journalists foregather over the teacups. As to social pictures which open up new vistas, or focus modern people at new angles, in default of a new novel by Mr. Galsworthy, we may mention Mr. Charles Marriott, whose refined heroes' eyes are always fixed on mental horizons invisible to the Philistine. His story, "The Catfish," was perhaps a trifle fine-spun in its analysis of the influences that determine the course of a man's life, but we always look to Mr. Marriott for the stimulus of novel trains of thought. Mr. J. D. Beres

ford, in "A Candidate for Truth," stood on the firm ground of fact, and his mordant etching of the Hon. and Rev. Cecil Barker was a noteworthy addition to the clerical portrait gallery. In his last story, "The Goslings," the author has taken a blank leaf from Mr. Wells's book, but he inscribes it with picturesque characters of his own imaginative devising. Mr. Gilbert Cannan, whose "Little Brother" was too formless to convince as art, has found himself in "Round the Corner," a very clever indictment of the social muddle that Victorian optimism and selfrighteousness have bequeathed to our generation. Mr. J. P. Cameron Wilson, a newcomer, has showed courage and insight in his novel of East-end life, "The Friendly Enemy." Though Mr. Edwin Pugh and others have blazed intercrossing trails in the industrial jungle, we really know very little about vast, unexplored tracts, and the morals and manners of its inhabitants. The working-class democracy is still without any spokesman of real talent in fiction, though Mr. Stephen Reynolds, in "How "Twas," continues his realistic sketches of his fishermen friends on the South Devon coast, and Mr. Pett Ridge is indefatigable in chronicling the humorous energies of lower middle-class urban types. Mr. J. E. Patterson, in his vigorous, rather crude style, has enlightened us about the atmosphere of Essex shore life and of the Grimsby trawlers, but in "The Story of Stephen Compton" he has failed to stick to his last. In "Sincerity" Mr. Warwick Deeping has dealt conscientiously with some typical figures in the struggle for social reform in a provincial centre, but more breadth of scale is demanded for the portrayal of conflicting class interests in the social drama. Nor does "Where Are You Going To?" do Justice to the brilliant talent of Miss Elizabeth Robins, whose temptation has always

been to paint in her picturesque, striking scenes with journalistic bitumen.

"Mark Rutherford's" lamented death brings home to us how rarely any of our novelists treat with distinction or spiritual sincerity the life of religious emotion. His only successor of talent would appear to be Mrs. Gertrude Bone, whose homely canvas in "Women of the Country" and "Children's Children," though narrow in scope, is finished with exquisite precision. The novel "of local color" is apparently moribund, though Mr. Eden Phillpotts, true to his programme, has lately put forth his twentieth volume, which is one of the best of his delineations of the Dartmoor people. Mr. Maurice Hewlett's last essay in the Meredithian manner, "Mrs. Lancelot," though clever in its profiles and silhouettes of aristocratic manners in the days of the Great Reform Bill, carried his style of perfervid affectations to a perilous pitch. The novel of delight in nature has been developed in the direction of fantasy by Mr. Algernon Blackwood, whose blending of the natural and supernatural in "Jimbo" and "The Centaur" is highly original, but the author is perhaps too prone to sacrifice poetical simplicity to our public's desire for "something to happen." Romance loses by the death of Richard Middleton a talent no less poetical in its power over dream moods, and perhaps more artistic in its restraint and balance, than is Mr. Blackwood's. in point of imaginative alchemy, in its transfusion of the elements of humor, satire, allegory, and realism, into a charming amalgam of poetry and prose, Mr. James Stephens's "The Crock of Gold" must be accorded precedence.

But

Turning to the psychological novel, Mr. Joseph Conrad, in ""Twixt Land and Sea," has shown yet again he is a past master in creating magical ef

fects of tragic and sombre beauty out of daily life's most ordinary mirage. He has the secret of the great Russian novelists' high poetic realism, and nobody can approach him in weaving the warp of reality with the woof of romance. It is disappointing that Mr. Percival Gibbon should not have followed up his "Margaret Harding" by another convincing study of the relations of the black man and the white in the Dark Continent; his "Adventures of Miss Gregory" is too obviously a concession to the taste of magazine readers. Among recruits to the small band of story-tellers of native life overseas, we may single out Mr. Leonard Wolf's "The Village in the Jungle" for its touching record of struggle of a simple folk against the forces of nature. Sir Hugh Clifford, and a newcomer, Mrs. Bridget Maclagan, must be mentioned for the truthfulness of their descriptions of the East. Of special brilliancy and charm was Mr. H. De Vere Stackpoole's story of ancient Athenian life, "The Street of the Flute Player," though the historical novel seems doomed to languish, despite a charming story of Elizabethan Ireland, "The Wooing of Estercell" by Mr.Ernest Rhys, and Miss Marjorie Bowen's sustained efforts in her series of romances of the Dutch Republic.

But to return to exponents of the psychological novel proper, Mr. Oliver Onions must be named as standing by

The Nation.

himself in his dissection of a criminal's motives and self-exculpation, working under the strain and pressure of defensive vigilance. His "The Debit Account" was artistically an advance upon "In Accordance with the Evidence," and "The Story of Louie" is also clever, though over-detailed. Another psychological novel of much ability with a philosophic trend is "James Hurd" by Mr. Prowse, whose subtle probing of the moral problem of euthanasia shows the influence of Mr. Henry James. Miss Ethel Sidgwick's "Succession" continues her absorbing microscopic analysis of the family history of a youthful French musical genius; and excellent work by Mr. Frank Harris, Miss Sheila Kaye Smith, Mr. Compton MacKenzie, Mr. Marmaduke Pickthall, Miss Violet Hunt, Mr. Grant Richards, Mrs. Henry Dudeney, Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, Miss M. P. Willcocks, Miss Letts, Mr. Richard Curle, Mr. H. A. Vachell, Mr. W. P. Maxwell, Mr. A. H. Holmes, "George A. Birmingham," and Mr. Maurice Drake must also be chronicled. Of the new original forces, Mr. H. D. Lawrence would appear to be the most considerable. One surmises that the younger generation, while growing impatient of the close and scrupulous observation of life that is the basis of the realistic novel, does not yet see its way back to romance, and Mr. Hugh Walpole's "Fortitude" illustrates its difficulty.

The Westminster Gazette.

Maurice Hewlett.

To their "Little Cousin Series" which is intended to give to young readers, through stories and character studies, a more vivid idea of conditions of life in different countries, L. C. Page & Co. have added "Our Little Austrian Cousin" by Florence E. Mendel, with half a dozen or more illustrations by Diantha Horne Marlowe. From the same publishers comes "Little Rhymer," a book of clever verses and amusing pictures by Nell Thornton; and "Jenny's Bird-House," by Lillie Fuller Merriam, a book for the youngest readers.

L. C. Page & Co. make two midsummer additions to their books for young people. "Peggy Raymond's Vacation" by Harriet Lummis Smith, is the second volume in the "Friendly Terrace Series" and carries the four girls of the earlier story and several of their friends, suitably chaperoned, into a summer cottage for two months of diverting and sometimes exciting experiences. "The Pioneer Boys of the Mississippi," by Harrison Adams, is the third volume of the "Young Pioneer Series." There are hunting adventures, there are real Indians, and there are enough stirring experiences to hold the attention of the boy reader from the first page to the last. Both books are illustrated.

James C. Mills is the author, and John Phelps of Detroit is the publisher

of a volume on "Oliver Hazard Perry and the Battle of Lake Erie" which will serve a useful purpose, in this centennial year, in reviving the memory of the brave young commander who was the chief figure in that memorable and decisive battle. The author sketches the career of his subject both before and after the battle, but he devotes most of his space to a full and graphic narrative of the battle itself. He writes with spirit and enthusiasm and so vividly as to bring before the reader's eye every incident of the battle. The interest and value of the book are enhanced by the reproduction of several rare engravings, among them a picture of the battle and one of Perry transferring his flag to the Niagara. There is also a fine picture of the splendid memorial at Put-in Bay.

Has any statistician estimated the number of entirely different Irelands described by Irish authors since the days of "Castle Rackrent?" Has any author, Irish or otherwise, ever so described a single handbreath of Irish soil, without being told by more Irishmen than it pleased him to count that he was a teller of falsehoods, and that the truth was not in him? If such there be, assuredly the fairies danced around his cradle, four-leaved clovers spring up in his footsteps, and horseshoes hang themselves over all his doors and windows. Nevertheless, the George H. Doran Company calls G. A.