NOVELS OF THE WEEK.*

A LITTLE while ago Mr, Pett Ridge gave us in Mord Emily a most humorous and sympathetic sketch of the gradual emergence from "Hooliganism" of a young street-arabess. In A Son of the State he has furnished a no less successful

companion study of the regeneration of a male gutter-snipe, Bobbie Lancaster is a native of Hoxton, left an orphan at the age of ten, annexed on account of his extreme acuteness by a gang of thieves and coiners, and Bent, on the breaking up of the gang a year or so later, to an industrial sohool in the country. After sundry vicissitudes and a good deal of in- subordination, culminating in a return to his old haunts, Bobbie is ultimately more than reconciled to his new sur- roundings, develops an ambition to serve his country, is admitted to a training ship, and before we part company with him has redeemed his debt to the State by a par- ticularly gallant action on foreign service. The essential features of the narrative are constantly being repro- duced in real life, as those who are acquainted with the antecedents of many of our bluejackets are fully aware. But it is no common experience to find the ascent of the gutter-snipe traced in a manner void of sentimentality or exaggerated pietism. There is no lightning change in Bobbie's character, and it is only after a good deal of stumbling that he learns to run straight, Mr. Pett Ridge indulges in a little pardonable idealism, perhaps, and he does not think it necessary to reproduce the conversation of the slums with that phonographic accuracy in which some writers consider the sum and substance of realism to reside. But of faithful and acute observation there is certainly no lack in these vivid and stimulating pages. No one can excel Mr. Pett Ridge in the art of making a street scene live before one, in

reproducing the rough badinage of the East End, or in por- traying, the urbanities of low life. As a specimen of Mr.

Pett Ridge's characteristic humour we may quote from the diverting scene in which Bobbie, after running away from the Cottage Homes, somewhat prematurely endeavours to assert his arrival at man's estate,—he being about thirteen at the time:—

" The better to live up to his new character of a regular blade, he turned into the saloon bar of a gorgeous, over-mirrored, over- painted, over-furnished public-house, and addressing a superb young lady who behind the bar read a pamphlet called An Amusing Way to Pick up Biology,' asked in a deep, effective voice for a sherry and bitters. The superb young lady, seemingly dazed with study, gave him instead a small bottle of lemonade and a hard biscuit ; Bobbie, awed by her appearance, did not dare to complain of the mistake. He endeavoured, however, to entice the large young woman into conversation by asking her bow long It was since she had left the old place, but she only answered absently, without looking up from her book, 'Outside with those • (L) A Son of the State. By W. Pat Ridge. London : Methuen and Co. red.] The Path of a Star. By Mrs. Everard Cotes (Sara Jeannette Conran). London : Methuen and Co. (69.]—(S.) Siren City. By Benjamin Swift. London : Methuen and Co. [8:3.]—(4.) A Gentleman from the Ranks- BY IL B. Finlay Knight. London : A. and C. Black. [8s.)—(5.) The Ivory Queen. By Norman Hurst. London : John Milne. [2s. 6d.)—(6.) A Florida Enchantment. Sy Archibald Clavering Gunter. London : F. V. White. [6s.]—(7.) Like Them that Dream. By W. Bridges Hint. London : Simpkin. Marshall, and Co. pa 6d.)—(8.) The Light that is Darkness. By George Trobridge. London : James Speirs.—(9.) Adventures of Ramble Stuart. By W. Shaw. London : Ingbv, Long, and Co. (es.)—(10.) The Patroness. By G. M. George. London : Butihinson and Co. Ds.]

bootlaces, please,' and Bobbie refrained from repeating his question."

Besides the hero, there are several other extremely clever studies of East-Enders, notably a wonderful little old woman called Miss Threepenny—a personage whom Dickens would not have disowned—and a tragi-comio specimen of submerged gentility known as the Duchess. The scenes in the hospital, where Bobbie is removed after an accident, have genuine pathos. Altogether, this is a book to be thankful for in the slack season.

The scene of Mrs. Cotes's new novel, 271e Path of a Star, is laid in Calcutta, but apart from the opportunities which the choice gives her of picturesque descriptions, there is little that is characteristically Anglo-Indian, still less that is Indian, about the motive of her story or the dramatis personm engaged in its development. The central figure is an actress. Hilda Howe by name, a magnetic creature with an " opulent " personality, a gift of interpretation which enables her to redeem the tawdry sensationalism of a modern Scriptural play, and an auda- cious affectation of speech. "I expect things of myself," she says; "I hold a kind of mortgage on my success : when I foreclose it will come, bringing the long, steady, grasping chase of money and fame, eyes fixed, never a day to live in, only to accomplish, every moment straddled with calculation, an end to all the byways where one finds the colour of the sun." Hilda, who combines culture and vulgarity in about equal parts, hypnotises an Anglican priest, and in turn is so far influenced by his example as to abandon the stage for a while and enter a nursing sisterhood. They are both extricated from this impasse by the knife of a bazaar fanatic, who stabs the priest, and Hilda, after assuring the latter on his deathbed that she would have married him, returns to the stage. As though one abnormal love episode were not enough, we have the infatuation of a wealthy young Calcutta merchant for a beautiful Salvation Army " captain " of suburban origin, who adopts the native costume, and ultimately jilts the merchant for a singularly unattractive and unrefined " colonel " in the Salvation Army, The book is clever—the author's name is a guarantee for that—but most unsatisfying, and the style is marred throughout by a sophistication and allusiveness which we do not remember to have noticed in any of the earlier works of the author.

Siren City is an unequal. and in some respects disappointing and disagreeable, novel, but at any rate it marks the emergence of Mr. Benjamin Swift from that phase of aggressive disciple- ship which repelled many readers of his earlier ventures. The "Siren City " is Naples, whose Circnan magic Mr. Swift portrays with remarkable skill. where Rebecca Morpeth, the beautiful and ingenuous daughter of a wealthy Puritan banker, loses her heart to a handsome Italian Count. Maddaloni is a picturesque but profoundly selfish young man, head over ears in debt, inextricably enmeshed in the toils of the moneylenders, and full of wild schemes for restoring the fortunes of his family. His suit is favoured by Mrs. Morpeth, an amiable simpleton, but vigorously opposed by the banker. Maddaloni visits the Morpeths in London, receives his conge from the father, and at the prompting of Rebecca elopes with her. Her disillusionment is rapid and complete, The banker proving obdurate, and cutting off supplies, Maddaloni loses no time in letting his wife know that he only married her for her fortune, and is at the mercy of an unscrupulous Neapolitan usurer and his still more ruth- less assistant, a young man named Tizio, who pursues the luckless Rebecca with odious attentions, intrudes on her privacy, and nearly drives her distracted, Finally, Maddaloni is detected in a lottery swindle and sent to prison ; Rebecca is rescued by her friends, and on the death of her husband marries Captain Roland, a highly eligible and amiable young Guardsman. There are many strong points about the book. The suppressed meditevalism of modern Italy is forcibly depicted, Mr. Swift makes effective use of the machinations of the Camorra to enhance the horrors of Maddaloni's downfall, and the vulgar and malicious curiosity with which she is greeted on her return to London is illustrated with a good deal of cynical humour. Above all, an immense improvement is noticeable in Mr. Swift's style, thanks to his abandonment of the fantastic extravagance and forced rhetoric which disfigured his previous novels. Some

affectations, however, still remain. No English usurer would address a young married lady as " chuck "; why, then, seek to render the familiarity of a modern Neapolitan by the use of such a word ? The sketches of London fashionable life are cleverly done, but here also some solecisms are observ- able. It is difficult to imagine, for example, a well-bred Guardsman making a confidant of a vulgar butler in order to ascertain the sentiments of his lady love.

Captain Martin, V.C., the central figure of Mr. Finlay Knight's story, a " ranker " who has obtained' a commission, is not a gentleman by birth, and in some ways is ill at ease in the country house of the Lepels, where the scene of the story is laid. He has saved the life of young Lepel in India, and has been invited to spend his long leave at St. Ebbs, the ancestral home of Mrs. Lepel, an heiress and the widow of a nonentity. Mrs. Lepel is little over forty, and Martin falls in • love with her. Unfortunately her daughter Georgie, a hoyden of eighteen, loses her heart to Martin, and complica- tions arise, culminating in the death of the unlucky Georgie from pneumonia. During her daughter's illness Mrs. Lepel discovers her secret, and in consequence throws over Martin, though she had promised to marry him. The women are not as well drawn as the men, and the double Jove affair is a little unpleasant. But A Gentleman from the Banks makes lively reading, the minor characters are effective, and the pictures of country society well done.

The Ivory Queen is a good specimen of the conventional murder story, the most ingenious thing in the book being the way in which the detective, who is called, and thinks himself, the English Lecoq, is fooled by the murderer, and all but hangs the wrong man. It is worthy of notice that the author and all the characters appear to think that Lecoq was a real personage.

The prolific Mr. Gunter's new story is of a magic seed which has the power of changing the sex of the eater. A box containing four of these seeds put there by an ancestress and lost, is accidentally bought by the heroine. She eats one and gives her maid another, they both become men, and any one acquainted with the delicacy of Mr. Gunter's method can accurately foretell the manner in which the plot is handled. To speak frankly, A Florida Enchantment is one of the silliest novels we have ever encountered.

Like Them that Dream is marked by a certain fluency of expression that rescues it from the category of the unread- able. More, however, can hardly be said of a book that has neither originality of plot nor distinction of style,—witness the reference to a man's evening dress as "this trying yet tasteful equipment."

Persons who like their theology in the form of fiction will find The Light that is Darkness mildly interesting. It practi- cally amounts to a Swedenborgian tractate, but though the style is too stiff and formal for a story, criticism is disarmed by the author's sincerity.

Mr. Shaw has written under the title of Adventures of Rosalie Stuart a historical novel of the time of the Young Pretender. The work is conscientious, but undoubtedly belongs to the class of books for the perusal of which the life of the most indolent reviewer is not nearly long enough.

The young lady who sustains the title-role in The Patroness is the daughter of a Welsh squire who is anxious to give the parish living to a glib-tongued curate of unsatisfactory ante- cedents. He has actually written, but not despatched, a letter offering the living, when he is struck down with paralysis, and dies. Whereupon the daughter, trusting to her instincts, and ignorant of the existence of the letter, offers the living to another highly eligible young clergyman. Subsequently she discovers her father's letter and suppresses it. The way in which she is treated by her relations and neighbours, and, above all, by the disappointed curate—a most repulsive creature— makes us devoutly hope that this book is not a faithful picture of the manners and morals of the Welsh.