A Nineteenth Century Miracle. By Louis Zangwill. (Chatto and Windus.)—Mr.
Zangwill makes fools of his readers with fair success. Mr. Robert Ashfield is swept off the deck of a steamer into the sea, and his body is found at the same hour in a London studio, the cause of death being suffocation by salt water. That is the situation with which we are confronted. The explanation is certainly a surprise, though some of the details are open to criticism. The worst of it is that we find in the end that it is a miserable story of unlawful love and crime. Let us hope that readers are getting wearied of this toujours perdrix, or rather toujours charogne.—A Drawing-Room Cynic. By Lorin Kaye. (Macqueen.)—This is a cleverly written story of modern life as it is lived by " smart " people. An American widow is the heroine, a young English diplomatist the hero ; they interest us, though the very leisurely pace at which their life-story moves on is a little trying. Still, the book amuses, nor are there the too common drawbacks.—Pierce Heart the Soldier. By J. C. Snaith. (A. D. Innes.)—Here the progress of the story is as slow as it well could be, while the style does nothing to reconcile the reader to its tedium. It is lengthy and pompous, while the writer fails to give us sufficient compensation in the way of thought, or wit or incident or characterisation.—On the
Gogmagogs. By Alice Dumillo. (T. Fisher Unwin.)—The ex- periences of Mrs. Archdeacon appear to include various kinds of labour, "A Day's Potato Planting," "I Day's Sewing," &c. The author, however, does not know more about these things than other people. What she does is to make each of them a peg on which to bang a village story, commonly of the tragical sort. This is cleverly done, and the stories, though not pleasant to read, are effective —Odds. By the Author of "Eric's Good News," &c. (R.T.S.)—This is a child's story, or rather a story about children written to please older people,—net the same thing, and not so good a thing. Odds, however, may be read with pleasure.
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