no otherwise should it be.  Even when he deservedly failed to become a shining light in the literary firmament to which he aspired—­an unheard-of piece of audacity on the part of his authoress—­I did not rebel.  Miss SHEILA KAYE SMITH has an essential clarity of visualisation, a deep and still reserve of unforced pathos and an exquisite sense of the haunting word, that combine with a most competent alertness of movement to make her latest artistic success, The Challenge to Sirius (NISBET), a book for which I can hardly find adequate words of praise.  Most admirable of all, perhaps, is a strange faculty she has shown for making one satisfied that her people should remain perennially rather poor and unambitious and dull, and should even grow old without occasioning us regret.  With the deep under-drift of the writer’s philosophy one may not be completely in accord, but certainly it will worry nobody, while the unity and beauty of her methods hold one in willing bondage from beginning to end.  This is real literature, and everyone should read it.

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Without any very exceptional gifts as a story-teller Fleet-Surgeon T.T.  JEANS, R.N., scores heavily off most writers of boys’ adventure tales by having actually lived the life he describes.  Here, for instance, in A Naval Venture (BLACKIE) we do get the real thing, and boys would be well-advised to sample it and see if it is not preferable to the kind of adventurous fiction produced so prolifically for their amusement.  Not that this yarn is lacking in adventure; indeed it is concerned with the Gallipoli campaign, from the landings until the evacuation, and anything more adventurous it would be hard to imagine.  In reading this story of The Orphan, The Lamp-post, Bubbles, The Hun, Rawlins and The Pink Rat, one feels that the author actually knows these “snotties,” with their high courage, animal spirits and elementary humour.  It is in fact history spiced with fiction.  Of all the characters my vote goes to Kaiser Bill, for although, being a tortoise, he performed no deeds of actual gallantry, he carried good luck with him wherever he went.  Besides, his name might annoy the ALL-HIGHEST. Mr. JEANS made an extremely good shot when he drew his bow at A Naval Venture.

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You would hardly believe what a remarkably unprincipled set of persons make up the cast of Mr. WILLIAM CAINE’S newest story.  He calls them Drones (METHUEN), but that, I feel, is a charitable understatement.  There was Eric Wanstanley, rising young sculptor, who, because he didn’t rise quickly enough, was capable of borrowing the savings of his friend’s parlourmaid to work a system at roulette.  The friend, Austin Jenner, was also an artist and also rising.  His little failing was concealment of the fact that he was almost wholly supported by remittances furnished by his hard-working brother.