NOVELS OF THE WEEK.*

THE two stories which Miss May Sinclair has linked together under the title of Two Sides of a Question are of altogether exceptional poignancy. But this at least must be said on behalf of the brilliant writer of Mr. and Mrs. Neville Tyson, that she does not deal in gratuitous or unmitigated gloom ; the disaster is inherent in her premisses ; without indulging in what may be called editorial moralisings, she at least refrains from affecting the callousness of the professional dissector ; and the tragic effect of the whole is heightened by occasional flashes of sunshine. "The Cosmopolitan," the first of the two stories, is a highly original study of the slow emancipation of the only daughter of an amiable but shallow and selfish country gentleman. Colonel Tancred, an elderly widower, is a perfect specimen of the well-bred bore, who has complacently allowed his daughter to act as his secretary, agent, and sense- carrier until her first youth is past. Her awakening is brought about by the chance visit of an artist, an attractive man of the world, who at first misreads her filial loyalty as stupidity, but soon discovers his mistake, and while encouraging her to give play to her own strong individuality, is em- barrassed by the discovery that she has fallen in love with him. From this awkward predicament he is rescued by the manoeuvres of a vivacious widow, who captivates Colonel Tancred and affords his daughter the chance of escape from her life of self-effacement, Frida being an heiress in her own right. Five years later Durant meets Frida on her travels, metamorphosed in mind and body by her release from servi- tude, a gracious, fascinating, and accomplished woman of the world. But their roles are now reversed, the love that he once inspired is replaced by an enthusiastic interest in humanity, a never-failing delight in the beauty and wonder of the world, a passion for travel, and the consciousness of having earned the right to enjoy her freedom by half a lifetime of self-sacrifice. So she refuses to marry him, while admitting that he has no rival, and passes out of his life, forfeiting her own shortly afterwards while nursing an Indian native stricken with the plague. The second story, "Superseded," is the tragedy of an underpaid, overworked assistant-mistress, hampered by the incurable malady of shyness, shouldered aside by the young and strong in the cruel race of efficiency at a great girls' school, and wounded to death by the revelation of her secret,—the blameless hero-worship of a man fifteen years her junior. The story would be insufferably painful were it not for the delicacy and sympathy with which it is told, and the unforgettable lesson it conveys to all who are interested directly or indirectly in the higher education of women.

My New Curate, which originally appeared as a serial in the American Ecclesiastical Review, has already attained wide circulation and achieved great popularity in the States. A Transatlantic vogue is no final test of merit—witness the case of Traby—but in this case it is largely justified by the humour and humanity of Father Sheehan's narrative. The scheme is of the simplest. Father Hanrahan, for thirty years the parish priest of Kilronan, a little Munster village near the sea, is a kind-hearted, indolent scholar, long resigned to the futility of any attempts to improve his flock,—whether materially, socially, or spiritually. Between red-tape on the one hand and the Celtic temperament on the other "Daddy Dan," as he is called by his flock, prefers to move on the lines of least resistance, to acquiesce in what he considers the inevitable, and, for prac- tical purposes, to adopt the pagan precepts of his beloved Horace. In this attitude he is supported by his coadjutor, Father Laverty, whose favourite mottoes are Cui bon( )1 and "Twill

be all the same in a hundred years." Then all in a moment _

. (1.) Two Sides of a Question. By May Sinclair. London : A. Constable and CO. RS.] —12.1 My New Curate. By the Rev. P. A. Sheehan, P.P. London and Leamington: Art and Book Company. 16s.]—(3.) A State Secret, and other Stories. By /3. H. Croker. London : Methuen and Co. Ps. 13d.1— 4.) The Life Romantic : including the Love-Letters of the King. By Richard I. Onflienne. London : Hurst and Blackett. [Se.]—(5. The Lesser Boil. By Izo. Loads Duffue Hardy. London : Chatto and Windtm [6e. —(6.) Loco and Honour.

By M. E. Carr. London : Smith, Elder, and Co. .]—(7.) Scoundrels and Rival Claimants.. By Sarah Tytler. London : Digby, Long, end Co.

Co. By Coulson Bernaban. London : Ward, , and Co. 13e. 6d.4—(6.) (9.) The Shadow of Gilskind. By Morice Gerard. London : Horace arehall and Son. po. 6d.] Father Dan's life is revolutionised by the appointment of a new coadjutor, Father Letheby, a new broom if there ever was one, a mercurial young athlete, overflowing with energy—bodily and mental—and full of schemes for reforming and refining his parishioners. The story thereupon resolves itself into a detailed and sympathetic account of the reciprocal action of these two minds, showing how the younger extricates the elder from his rut, revives his ambitions, rekindles his interest in literature, while on the other hand Father Dan exerts a humanising and restraining influence on his fiery coadjutor. The curate works wonders, often achieving what the priest had deemed impossible, but he also often runs his head against stone walls or flounders into difficulties from which only Father Dan can extricate him. The two chief characters are admirably contrasted, and, indeed, all the village worthies and disreputables are drawn from the life. For the love interest we are dependent on the courtship of Bittra, Campion, the daughter of a wild, ill-conditioned landlord, by a Coast- guard officer who is converted from agnosticism to Roman Catholicism. These characters—especially Captain Campion —seem to us to savour somewhat of melodrama. Again, while preserving a judicious political neutrality, Father Sheehan's theological bias is too frankly revealed to suit all tastes. But only vehement partisans can fail to recognise the liberality and magnanimity of the writer's sentiments, or his sincere yet discriminating affection for his countrymen. The book is marked, moreover, by a width of culture, and dis- tinguished by an eloquence and charm of style, which greatly enhance the intrinsic merit of the story.

Mrs. Croker's ten short stories may not be regarded as an altogether efficient substitute for a full-length novel from her cheerful pen, but they make none the less a pleasant alterna- tive to the form of entertainment in which she has achieved a well-deserved popularity. "A State Secret," the tale which gives its name to the collection, recounts the unexpected good fortune which befel two orphan girls of good family, reduced to drudgery to earn a bare living. They befriend an eccentric old French lady in a Dublin boarding-house, and on her death are rescued from their troubles by her bequest of a magnifi- cent emerald necklace. The story is extremely thin in texture, but the telling of it is excellent. Much more striking is the curious sketch of the unrecognised Earl's daughter —changed at nurse by her foster-mother—married to a Kerry labourer and perfectly content with her environment; while in the humorous vein we have a delightful story to illustrate the villainy of the travelling Irish tinker. Mick Sullivan, a Kerry farmer, sells his old donkey to a tinker for "two shillings in money, a toasting fork, and a terrible big skillet." Later on he buys at Killorglin Fair for three pounds five the identical ass, which has been dyed brown and so carefully "faked" up that his former owner did not recognise him. The tragic end of a miserly peasant is cleverly drawn in "The Little Blue Jug," and we have a batch of lively Anglo-Indian tales to complete the volume. Mrs. Croker is always good company: there is no padding in her simple, easy style, as there is no pessimism in her outlook. We may be allowed, however, to utter a friendly protest against the pro- fusion of unnecessary commas which disfigures the punctua- tion of these pages, the startling inaccuracy of the fragments of French dialogue on p. 15, and the misspelling of the names of sundry well-known places in the "Kingdom of Kerry."

Mr. Le Gallienne's new novel, The Life Romantic, treats of the futile philanderings of a young gentleman of indepen- dent means, but cruelly handicapped by the impossible name of Pagan Wasteneys. One of his flames is Mrs. Daffodil Mendoza, presumably the wife of an opulent Semite, with whom he converses ecstatically in "a two- wheeled heaven," which is Mr. Le Gallienne's name for a hansom. Another is Myrtle Roma, "one of those beautiful women that are thrown up by a decaying adulterous aristocracy," whose mother had been "the heroine of one of the most beautiful scandals of the period." A third was a mysterious sylph named Meriel, whom he met gathering new- born mushrooms on a September morning. The author gives us extracts from their correspondence, under the title of "The Sad Heart of Pagan Wasteneys," in which it transpires that the lover addressed his mistress as "Very little child" and

"Impossible dear fairy." Fourthly and lastly there was little Adeline Wood, a bachelor-girl who earned her living by book.

binding. She was the one woman who was really good for Wasteneys, but the fascination of the sylph-like Meriel—who was also an accomplished violinist—stood in the way.

Besides, Meriel inspired him to write a quantity of songs and sonnets, in one of which he sang :—

"But, sometimes, when the life I may not kill Grinds pitiless iron on the screaming nerve, I cry for woman as ether, woman as wine, Lest Death's black poppies in my hair I twine."

Unsolaced by the ministrations of a mad novelist, a gipsy clairvoyante, and a Wesleyan preacher, Pagan Wasteneys journeys to the Riviera to slay his enchantress with a toy revolver.—He had previously thought of a whip, but "she was too strong for that. No small mortal whip would serve." —But on reaching his journey's end he went butterfly- hunting instead, threw away his revolver, had a refresh- ing bathe, composed two poems, wrote them out, enclosed them in an empty wine-bottle, and, returning to England, married the bookbinder. The best that can be said of this astonishing performance is that its sentimentality is rather

less rancid than that of The Quest of the Golden Girl. For

the rest, this exaltation of the mannikin hero, these puerile and mawkish amorosities, this sophisticated effusiveness, arouse the passions of a Bludyer in the most gentle reviewer,

they justify the worst excesses of Philistinism, and force the reader, surfeited with a diet of sugar-plums and creme de menthe, to welcome vulgarity, violence, squalor, and coarseness.

To describe the conduct of Archibald Mainwaring as "the lesser evil" seems stretching a point in his favour. To the plain man his behaviour seems as bad as it could possibly be. But perhaps the title of Miss Iza, Duffus Hardy's new novel has reference to some other point in the story. Mr.

Mainwaring deliberately commits bigamy in the third chapter of the book, the rest of which is chiefly occupied in a recital of the extremely disagreeable experiences which befal gentle-

men who are blackmailed. The Lesser Evil is readable, but hardly reaches the standard of merit attained in earlier stories by the same author.

Miss Carr has made a judicious choice in the scene of Love and Honour, which is laid in the Court of Jerome during his

tenure of the throne of Westphalia. But while her story is interesting and original, it may be fairly objected that she has not succeeded in creating a true historical atmosphere for her characters. They speak and act like people of to-day, and we may be very sure that the stiff Court balls of the beginning

of the century were not enlivened by sentimental tele-it-Wes in conservatories. As for the plot, we can only say that it is

far from pleasant, being entirely concerned, as indeed the title warns the reader, with a struggle between love and honour. If love does not win, at any rate honour goes entirely to the wall, with the most tragic consequences for the principal characters. Miss Carr—who we notice is described in the publisher's advertisement as a new writer—has originality and no little literary skill, but we cannot feel certain that she has yet discovered the true field for the exercise of her undoubted talent.

The heroes of Mr. Coulson Kernahan's Scoundrels and Co. are at any rate thorough in their undertaking. Their adven-

tures are blood-curdling and ingenious, and may be recom- mended with confidence as an effective means of whiling away the hours of a railway journey.

Miss Tytler gives in Rival Claimants a pleasant picture of England at the end of the eighteenth century and of the War

of American Independence. She writes with her habitual ease, and her latest book, if it will not enhance the reputation achieved by its many excellent predecessors, may be read

without effort or ennui. , Though differing in style from the book by the same author noticed in these columns last week, The Shadow of Gilsland is a bright and readable little story. Mr. Morke Gerard does

not aspire to subtle characterisation or the elucidation of intricate problems. He prefers to give his readers plenty of brisk incident narrated in a lively and readable manner, and if his personages are more like well-trained puppets than men

and women, one must nOt be too exacting in short books packed full of -movement.