28 AUGUST 1897, Page 24

A Minion of the Moon. By T. W. Speight. (Chatto

and Windus.)—The reader will probably be dismayed at the first sentence that he encounters. "When the nineteenth century was still a puling infant scarcely able to stand alone, and not yet knowing what to make of the strange burly-burly into which it found itself born," Sze. It looks as if we were going to have Dickens in his decline. But he may persevere. The style might be made more direct and concise with advantage. Why speak of an innkeeper as a "worthy Boniface " ? Still the story, one of abundance of incident, is sufficiently readable.