and humor enough to furnish forth half-a-dozen ordinary sporting novels.”  “Told with the sparkle and vivacity of a past-mistress in the art of novel writing,” said the Review; while Miranda, of Smart Society, positively bubbled with enthusiasm.  “You must forgive me, Aminta,” wrote this young person, “if I have not sent the description I promised of Madame Lulu’s new creations and others of that ilk.  I must a tale unfold; Tom came in yesterday and began to rave about the Honorable Mrs. Scudamore Runnymede’s last novel, A Bad Un to Beat.  He says all the Smart Set are talking of it, and it seems the police have to regulate the crowd at Mudie’s.  You know I read everything Mrs. Runnymede writes, so I set out Miggs directly to beg, borrow or steal a copy, and I confess I burnt the midnight oil before I laid it down.  Now, mind you get it, you will find it so awfully chic.”  Nearly all the novelists on Messrs Beit’s list were ladies, their works all ran to three volumes, and all of them pleased the Press, the Review, and Miranda of Smart Society.  One of these books, Millicent’s Marriage, by Sarah Pocklington Sanders, was pronounced fit to lie on the school-room table, on the drawing-room bookshelf, or beneath the pillow of the most gently nurtured of our daughters.  “This,” the reviewer went on, “is high praise, especially in these days when we are deafened by the loud-voiced clamor of self-styled ‘artists.’  We would warn the young men who prate so persistently of style and literature, construction and prose harmonies, that we believe the English reading public will have none of them.  Harmless amusement, a gentle flow of domestic interest, a faithful reproduction of the open and manly life of the hunting field, pictures of innocent and healthy English girlhood such as Miss Sanders here affords us; these are the topics that will always find a welcome in our homes, which remain bolted and barred against the abandoned artist and the scrofulous stylist.”

He turned over the pages of the little book and chuckled in high relish; he discovered an honest enthusiasm, a determination to strike a blow for the good and true that refreshed and exhilarated.  A beaming face, spectacled and whiskered probably, an expansive waistcoat, and a tender heart, seemed to shine through the words which Messrs Beit had quoted; and the alliteration of the final sentence; that was good too; there was style for you if you wanted it.  The champion of the blushing cheek and the gushing eye showed that he too could handle the weapons of the enemy if he cared to trouble himself with such things.  Lucian leant back and roared with indecent laughter till the tabby tom-cat who had succeeded to the poor dead beasts looked up reproachfully from his sunny corner, with a face like the reviewer’s, innocent and round and whiskered.  At last he turned to his parcel and drew out some half-dozen sheets of manuscript, and began to read in a rather desponding spirit; it