22 APRIL 1893, Page 27

/Wiz ; a Society Story. By Lady Duntze. (Ward and

Downey.) —Tacitus, when contrasting German simplicity of life with Roman manners, says of his own fashionable contemporaries, " corrum- pare et corrumpi semi= vocant." This may be translated with no great departure from the original, by "They seduce, and are seduced,—and they call it society." We do not know whether Lady Duntze has ever read Ta.citus, but this is quite her idea of a " Society Story." Her heroine kills herself as the only way of avoiding adultery. This, after all, is a doubtful way of keeping the Commandments.