God's Playthings. By Marjorie Bowen. (Smith, Elder and Co. 6s.)—In
these stories Miss Marjorie Bowen sups as full of horrors as did Macbeth. Almost all the sketches concern people who irr some way or other have made entire failures of their lives, and when this is not the case their deaths are described in immense detail. One of the most horrifying of the series is that called "A Woman of the People," and is an account of the execution of Madame du Barry, the only person who showed cowardice at the guillotine. It is, of course, a moot point whether the aristocrats would not have done better for themselves in the Terror if they had all screamed and struggled on the scaffold. Their splendid calm made things too easy for their captors, and a daily struggle would have proved exceedingly exhausting to the revolutionary authorities. Another poignant story is the account of the death of the unhappy Sophia Dorothea, wife of George I., after her thirty-two years' imprisonment. The hopelessness of the prisoner is well realized and the conversation between the Princess and her old lady-in- waiting, in which they recall the fatal end of Philip von Konigs- marck, is extremely vivid. But the collection of stories as a whole is not calculated to arouse cheerfulness in its readers.
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