The- Old House. By Cecile Tormay. (Philip Allan.. 8s. 6d.
net.)—This novel would appear to have lost very little in transla- tion of the spirit of another land and another age which informed the pages of the original. The Hungarian author has staged her story of an old burgher family and their house on the banks of the Danube and in the days before Buda and Pest had embraced the hyphen. The book gives an excellent impression of old Hungary, and the tragic note of the Ulwing's personal history is reflected in the stirrings of revolution and unrest -which then already threatened to disperse for all time that spirit of erudite simplicity and deep mysticism which once characterized the - great centres of Germanio thought. Mlle. Tormay's touch- is a very tree one, so true indeed that when she appears to fail the reader is inclined, justly or unjustly, to lay the blame on the translator. Her whole- treatment of tho old house " motif " and of the evolution of Anne Ulsving's character, as she passes through disillusionment to complete self-surrender, is worthy of the best traditions. She has borrowed, to adorn her old house, airs and sunshine which must once have haunted old dwellings imagined by the brothers Grimm ; while as to the conception of Anne Ulwing, it is enough to say that there are moments in the development of her per- sonality when she seems to find her creative counterpart in the Eugenie Grandet of Balzac. The English translation of Mlle. Tormay's second novel, Men Between Skm,e8, which Messrs. Allan hope to publish next spring, should be awaited with considerable interest.
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