these sketches an architect, Murgatroyd, who in planning most of the houses in the locality has attempted to express in brick and stone the characters of their several occupants.  This is a device which becomes rather monotonous as the book proceeds, besides imposing a series of strains which neither architecture nor credulity can easily bear.  Since these are rather superior suburbanites, dialect is for the most part absent, and it is hard to feel that they are very different people from those who live about the borders of Manchester or London; a character like Mrs. Flitch, for instance, who is angelic to behold but a spiteful gossip at heart, is, alas! to be found anywhere.  And where the dialect does crop out it does not seem to be dependent on suburban soil for its raciness.  I don’t doubt the accuracy of Mr. RILEY’S Yorkshiremanship, but I do think he has under-estimated the difficulty of localising the peculiar genius of villadom.

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Though billed by her publisher as a merciless analyst, Mrs. MORDAUNT is really (if you want to fling this kind of title about) an eclectic synthetist or synthetic symbolist.  Her wicked people are prodigiously wicked, wickedness personified, in fact; her good folk are noble-hearted without stint or measure.  I don’t personally think that anybody could be quite so completely and gratuitously evil as good-looking Charles Hoyland in The Little Soul (HUTCHINSON); or, being so, could possibly be recommended, still less engaged, as tutor to a sensitive youth; or, being so engaged, tolerated for two days.  He certainly could not hold down his job long enough to corrupt his pupil, Anthony Clayton, by exchanging souls with him under the nose of mad but perceptive Mrs. Clayton and sane sister Diana.  This conspicuously chaste Diana is an attractive person, and so is the recklessly charitable Dr. McCabe, her appropriate mate, who first had to fly the country through helping a chorus-girl out of a difficulty and then (more or less) won the War by revolutionising bacteriology or something like that.  However, Mrs. MORDAUNT interests because she is so palpably interested herself.

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The scenes of Lure of Contraband (JARROLDS) are laid in the Devonshire of some hundred years ago.  It is, as its title suggests, a tale of smuggling, and it contains an account of a hand-to-hand fight between the hero and the villain which I advise all members of the National Sporting Club to read.  They may be shocked by the tactics of the villain, but at the same time they will see what a bout of fisticuffs meant in those days.  Mr. J. WEARE GIFFARD is a master of atmosphere, and I, at any rate, lived happily in his Appledore, and imagined myself drinking prime (and cheap) French brandy in the Beaver Inn; while Lieutenant Perkins, who commanded the “preventive men,” sat in his tall-backed chair by the fireplace and kept his eyes and ears open to detect anything that was suspicious.  But he was not foolish enough to ask many questions about the French brandy.  An excellent yarn, simply and straight-forwardly told.