19 AUGUST 1893, Page 26

Frank Maitland's Luck. By Finch Mason. (Routledge.)—It remains to be

seen on whom the mantle of the late Mr. Hawley Smart, in his character of " sporting " novelist, has fallen. Meanwhile, it may bo allowed that Mr. Finch Mason is making a bold bid for it. His Prank Maitland's Luck, which quite deserves its second title of " A Story of the Derby," is an enormous advance on such a perfOrmance as " The White Hat." It is a pleasant, natural story of two conventionally wicked fathers and their children, who come together quite after the fashion of Romeo and Juliet. There is, of course, a good deal in Frank Maitland's Luck about Tattersall's, and betting, and turf malpractices. But one quite forgets them in the contemplation of the love affair—which runs, on the whole, wonderfully smooth—of Frank Maitland and Mary Deane. Perhaps, however, the best portrait in this story is that of the honest and love-lorn (though not too love-lorn) jockey who refuses to lose a race that he may oblige a scoundrelly employer.