17 SEPTEMBER 1898, Page 24

Half-Text History. By Ascott R. Hope. (A. and C. Black.)—

These "Chronicles of School Life" are, as we should expect of what Mr. Ascott Hope writes, the "real thing." Schoolboys and their doings are a frequent subject of fiction, often amusing, but mostly romantic, if the romantic is remote from reality. "The Three McKickshaws" (a local perversion of the Celtic patronymic McCuistruc) is a capital story of the friction which may arise from the day-boy element ; "French and German" is a tale of much interest of two foreign teachers in the Franco-Prussian War days ; and "The Parlour-Boarder" illustrates the most vexatious and puzzling creature that ever comes in a schoolmaster's way, an artful kleptomaniac. The chronicles are told in a sober, s'most prosaic, fashion, but they are genuine.