24 APRIL 1915, Page 42

The Spell of the East, by L. M. (Methuen and

Co., 6s.), is a somewhat grandiose name for a gossiping account of travels in Japan. It is an unpretentious and pleasant book. The word-pictures of Japanese temples, Japanese children, Japanese toys, cherry-blossoms, feasts, and fetes are very pretty, and very much what we have all read many times before. The writer's account of a visit to some Ainu villages arrests the reader's attention as being less familiar. This, however, is but a short description of a flying visit.