best of the series, but fairly up to the average.
It is a story of the last century, of smuggling and of love, and gives both with plenty of vigour and picturesqueness. The writer looks on life in a kind:3r, liberal way, and has a good word even for George IV.: "In his nature there was a great generosity which has never had its due." Possibly there was, but it was never permitted to cost him anything. He was quite capable of pardoning a romantic
criminal, such as the Antony Jasper of this tale ; but to give up one of his pleasures was quite beyond him.—" Which is Absurd ?"
by Cosmo Hamilton (same publisher), a volume of the " Autonym Library," does not compare favourably with the volume noticed above. It is a story of a great hoax. A private soldier is turned into an Earl, and flattered and toadied accordingly. All this is, to our taste at least, very nauseous indeed. Even "the sensitive, tender, and womanly" Tomkine, who loves the false Earl all through, before his elevation and after his fall, seems to us a very forward young woman. No girl with a grain of self-respect would have put up with the insolence of Pipps in the first chapter.
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