A Modern Monarch. By Frank C. Lewis. (T. Fisher Unwin.
6s.)—The story seems to us to lack unity. The real subject, we take it, is meant to be the exclusion of love by ambition, and the tardy discovery that the more worthy has been ousted by the less. This is well enough done. The very difficult situation where Muriel Bainbridge plays, so to speak, her last card is excellently managed, while the conclusion is left just as it should be. But then the treachery of Gilles and the savage animosity of Lady Constance occupy too large a space. These things can but make an episode, and for an episode they are too much emphasised. The reader ought not to have his attention too strongly diverted from Caesar and the error that has confused his life. But this is not a serious drawback in view of the considerable merits of the book. It is a sincere and serious study of life, and, therefore, a decided relief from the frivolous and erotic fiction with which we are now being surfeited.
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