RECENT NOVELS.* Sentimental Tommy is not a promising title. As

it turns out it is a perfectly accurate description of the hero of a curiously fascinating and often beautiful book. One cannot call it a novel, for the principal characters are children, and there is no plot nor denouement. It is, in short, the history of a boy- hood and two girlhoods arranged in a succession of episodes, now tragic, now comic, but mostly tragi-comic in their character. The story opens in the London slums, where Jean Sandys, a Thrums woman, released from cruel tyranny by her husband's death, is herself dying of destitution in the effort to bring up her two children. On her deathbed she writes to the man whom she had thrown over for his masterful and unscrupulous rival, begging him to provide for her children, and Aaron Latta is not deaf to the appeal. Thus Tommy and his little sister Elspeth return to Thrums, where the scene of the story is chiefly laid, and where Mr. Barrie is of course in his element. And yet we doubt whether he has done any- thing more finely imaginative than the picture of the ex- patriated Thrums folk in London, or the desperate stratagems by which Tommy's mother maintains, for the solace of her wounded pride, the fiction of a happy and prosperous marriage. There are situations and passages in this book so distressingly painful that if it were not for Mr. Barrie's wonderfully delicate and sympathetic handling they would have been well-nigh unendurable. Few living writers could have dealt with so difficult a theme as that of the Painted Lady without giving offence. As for the redoubtable Tommy himself, he is a character who inspires keen interest rather than affection ; full of energy and resource, but everlastingly living upon his emotions, and never happy unless he is playing a part. The chronicle of his adventures and impostures, his triumphs and defeats, is marked by an extraordinary amount of minute observation and poetic fancy on the part of Mr. Barrie, who deserves the greatest praise for the perfectly impartial attitude he adopts towards the central figure. Some of the episodes—notably that of the Jacobite rising—are developed at a length that threatens to become tedious ; once and again a slightly jarring note is struck in the scenes between the gruff old doctor and Grizel, the Painted Lady's daughter, and the real heroine of the book ; and here and there in the narrative passages Mr. Barrie adopts an unnecessarily colloquial, not to say slipshod, style. Bat the book is brimful of good things,—the romance of the two old maids and the stout bachelor is exquisitely told, and worthy of the author of Cranford; what is more, Mr. Barrie shows such a tender and reverent feeling for humanity that no one can read his work without feeling refreshed and cheered. At a time when most writers of genius only succeed in diffusing "inspissated gloom," such an achievement stamps a man as a benefactor.

M. Zola threatens to write a novel in which the influence of the bicycle on modern life will be exhaustively analysed. Pending the arrival of that monumental work we are disposed to consider The Wheels of Chance, by Mr. H. G. Wells, quite the best novel that has hitherto been inspired by the cult of the wheel. Nothing could be more hopelessly unromantic than the materials of the story,—the poor, weedy little draper's assistant out for his ten days' holiday, and the silly young lady in rational dress, who is resolved to Live her Life, and consents to what is practically an elopement with an unscrupulous married man. But Mr. Wells is a true magician ; his story is more than a

• (1.) Sentimental Tommy. By J. M. Barrie. London : Cassell and Co.— (2 ) The Wheels of Chance. By H. G. Wells. London : J. M. Dent and Co.— (3.) The Rogue's March. By E. W. Hornung. London : Cassell and Co.—(4.) For Freedom's Sake. By Arthur Paterson. London : Osgood, Malvaine, and Ca.—(5.) The Corissima. By Lucas Malet. London Methuen and Co.— (6.) A Splendid Sin. By Grant Allen. London • P. V. White and 0o.—(7.) The Decil.Tree of El Dorado. By Prank Aubrey. London: Hutchinson and 00. —(8.) The Sign of the Spider. By Bertram Mitford. London: Methuen and Co.—(9.) The Unjust Steward; or, The Minister's Debt. By Mrs. Oliphant. London : W. and R. Chambers.-30.) Tayuisara. By E. Marion Crawford. London Ma-millan and Co. mere tour de force ; and the little draper, spite of his twang and his cheap suit, his ridiculous manners, and his mean presence, is no "cad on castors," but a real knight-errant, for whom we have a sneaking liking at the outset, and at the last a feel- ing that is very near affection. Little Mr. Hoopdriver is a figure at once diverting and pathetic. His struggles with his machine in the early stages of his memorable journey, and the reckless mendacities in which he indulges with a view to impress Miss Milton, are immensely funny; but in the end one parts from the little man with a lump in one's throat. He has played the part of the deus ex machin,i—in a literal sense—with such pluck and nerve that he might well be pardoned for dreaming that the fair maiden whom he rescued from the Ogre might reward him with her hand. Mr. Hoop- driver has to go back "to the early rising, the dusting, and drudgery," but it is with a difference, "with wonderful memories and still more wonderful desires and ambitions." Let us say in taking leave of this brilliant and entertaining little book that Mr. Wells has brought home to us as no one ever did before all that a holiday on wheels means to a hard-worked counter-jumper. A propos of wheels, the only flaw in Mx. Wells's technique that we have noticed is his allowing the cautious Hoopdriver to taste the fearful joys of "coasting" while still a most rudimentary performer.

Judging from our previous acquaintance with Mr. Hornung's work, we should be inclined to say that The Rogue's March was by far the most ambitious and powerful of his novels. Hitherto we have only known him as a graceful chronicler of the brighter social aspects of modern Colonial life. In his new venture, having primed himself with Parliamentary papers, Blue-books, and other documentary evidence, he has given us an extremely realistic picture of convict life in Australia some fifty years ago. .Alike in his method of preparation and in his manner Mr. Hornung reminds us not a little of Charles Reade,—by no means a bad model in this department of fiction. Mr. Hornnng's story, however, is entirely his own; it is not written, as Charles Reade's books were, "with a purpose," and it has in Daintree, the apparent good genius, but in reality the villain of the plot, an exceed- ingly well-conceived and highly original character. The obvious fault of the book is an absence of relief. It is too consistently sombre, though that is really the logical conse- quence of the choice of theme, and not the fault of the author. The situation is perfectly summed up in the words of the old Major after Tom Erichsen's release, " Gadzooks, Sir, he gave me more trouble than any three men in the gang, but I knew him for a gentleman at bottom, and I might have known him for an innocent man. They take it worst, gadzooks ! Stockades like mine must be a living hell to 'em." There is no lack of horrors in The Rogue's March—notably the scenes at the slave-drivers' "Castle "—but Mr. Hornung knows when to draw the line. Still, though the lovers are reunited in the end, and the mystery of the murder is cleared up, the general impression left by the book is hardly exhilarating.

For Freedom's Sake is a good, straightforward, manly book, full of fighting and incident. It is strange, however, in 1896 to find such strong language used against the Southern States, or to encounter such an entire lack of appreciation for the virtues of men who were both kind and generous although they were slave-owners. And perhaps it would have been better not to mention the "guarding of the polls" by the pro- slavery party now that the descendants of the Abolitionists do the same thing in States where the negro vote is incon- veniently large, and where falsifying the figures of the voting- papers is defended by the Yankees. No doubt such Abolitionists as John Brown were perfectly single-minded in their action, but they never considered what was to be done with the slaves after they had freed them, and for such shortsightedness not Southerners alone bear them a grudge. However, if the book is lacking in the judicial quality, John Brown makes a very fine and noble central figure of the Cromwellian type. The hero and heroine are sympathetic, and the omniscient Isaac Shappett an unrivalled dews ex machinci.

Lucas Malet's new book affords convincing proof, if any proof were needed, of her extraordinary ability. Unluckily, it is ability of the order that disconcerts and distresses rather than delights. The Carissima is not an unclean or a mis- chievous book : it is rather mereiless, gruesome, and pro- formdly pessimistic. Apart from Constantine Leversedge, the doomed victim of a dreadful hallucination, none of the characters of the story inspire more than a modified aversion. In the case of Gerrard, a society journalist, Lucas Malet leaves no means untried to excite loathing and disgust in her readers. As for the central figure, the " Garissima" her- self, she eclipses even Jessie Enderby in her odious selfishness, and the ignoble and shocking stratagem by which she achieves her release is a locus classicus in the annals of feminine perfidy. The writer's curious anti-English bias is noticeable in such passages as the following : — " It must be con- ceded that the number of our dear countrymen and women who possess the gentle art of living peacefully in public is lamentably small Most English are born with their feet glued to little round green stands, like the ladies and gentlemen of Noah's Ark. To see them unglued —as in foreign travel—is to see them at a disadvantage. For the stand is as necessary to their self-respect as their decent petticoats and irreproachable trousers." These, of course. may only be the sentiments of the narrator, Mr. Anthony Hammond, a decidedly disagreeable gentleman, but they are typical of the hardness and cruelty of the whole book. if Lucas Malet were only as sympathetic as she is clever, what a fascinating writer she would be ! Her style, we may note in conclusion, is, apart from some aggravating mannerisms, as forcible as ever ; but it is curious to find so accomplished an author labouring under the delusion that the Krentzer sonata is a pianoforte solo.

We have not often come across a book so purely disagree- able as A Splendid Sin. We have met, it is true, with a some- what similar theme in two other novels lately. But whereas in these other books the notion of a hitherto beloved and admired mother deliberately turning back to the one blotted page of her life's history, and forcing it upon her son's notice, is sufficiently unpleasant to the authors and, apparently, to their characters as well, Mr. Grant Allen's respectable matron revels in her wrongdoing, brags of her shame, and is for ever after favoured far beyond her deserts by a Fate as obliging as ever bent to the will of the novelist. The teaching of the story is this, that if a girl is wicked enough or weak enough (either will do) to marry a man whom she neither loves nor respects, it is her plain duty (to herself and the next generation) to fall in love without loss of time with the handsomest and most sentimental man who comes across her path, turning over to him the fulfilment of her marriage vows, the love, the respect—everything, in fact, which should have belonged to her rightful lord and master, had he been worthy of them ; and this without leaving her husband's roof.

We are almost inclined to think that the cold-blooded, deodorised, " strong " novel is almost more disgusting than the frankly agricultural variety breathing of the manure- heap. The assumption of a high moral standard by Mr.

Grant Allen's hero, when he preaches the doctrine of natural affinities, seems to us a sort of blasphemy, and a dangerous blasphemy in that it falls from the lips of a young man so astoundingly virtuous that up to the age of twenty- two his uncle could not even call him selfish. "He is one of the most affectionate and unselfish fellows I ever came across," says the acute London physician. The theory of heredity is the harassing motif of the story, and reference to it is made on about two hundred of the two hundred and twenty-eight pages which it contains. When the author has got his unselfish hero fairly floundering in the cruel sea of a passionate attachment, rendered hopeless by the sins of his putative father, he makes him a raft out of the sin of his mother upon which he is floated safely to the haven of English squirehood, where riches, honour, and distinction await him, and a wife who has been educated at Somerville College, Oxford. It is really rather hard that this excellent establish- ment should be rendered responsible for the ideas and opinions of Mr. Grant Allen's ideal girl. As for the great scene of the disclosure by the mother of her "splendid sin," we can only say that the fatuous delight, the smirking self-gratula- tion of the ineffable prig on finding himself the son of an immoral American poet, is as nauseous as it is improbable. When a book is entirely a mistake, and a mischievous one to boot, it seems hardly worth while to point out its trifling blunders of diction and detail. But there are plenty of these in A Splendid Sin. Thus the unmarried daughter of a Marchese is not called ifarchesa but 3farchcsina. And why " bonhommie " [sic] and " lager " beer ?

The Sign of the Spider and The Devil-Tree of Eldorado may be conveniently considered together inasmuch as they am

linked by an intellectual affinity. In both cases the author has taken for the mainspring of the plot a mysterious monstrosity of natural history. With Mr. Mitford it is a gigantic spider in the heart of Africa. Mr. Frank Aubrey, proceeding from the logical basis of the carnivorous plants, has evolved the grisly conception of a monstrous man-eating tree, fed by the human sacrificea of the inhabitants of Roraima. The idea is sufficiently blood-curdling to satisfy the most Idas amateur of the gruesome, and it has been worked out by Mr. Aubrey with considerable skilL The only unlucky thing about his book is that he commits himself to the statement in his introductory chapter, in which he enumerates his authorities, that Roraima still remains unsealed. As a matter of fact, it was climbed by Mr. Everard im Thum as long ago as 1884. This is rather unfortunate, since it is of the essence of the story that the scene should be an unexplored region, and ex ipso facto full of magical possibilities. Turning

to Mr. Mitford's romance, which displays a good deal more worldly wisdom than that of Mr. Aubrey, we find its attrac- tiveness sadly impaired by the sordid selfishness of the central figure. It is impossible to accept this callous wife-

deserting, philandering adventurer in the light even of a demi.aemi-hero. And that is essential to the satisfaction of

any well-regulated reader. When the central figure of a story of adventure has a good deal of the cad in his composition, it is impossible to feel much interest in his career. The senti-

mental scenes are of a sloppiness that passes description. But there is decided power in the grisly description of the fight with the spider. What Mr. Mitford has really succeeded in doing only too well is in depicting the utter corruption of moral fibre that the auri sacra fames seems to produce in nine Englishmen out of ten who settle in South Africa.

Mrs. Oliphant's novel is hardly to be reckoned amongst her happiest efforts. The story is wound up in a decidedly perfunctory manner, and we cannot say that she has rendered the growth of Elsie's affection for her humble admirer altogether intelligible. But the love interest in The 17rjust Steward is entirely subsidiary. The central figure of the story is that of the Scottish minister who, under the stress of poverty, on the sudden death of a friend who had lent him money, succumbs to the temptation of misrepre- senting the extent of his debt to his friend's solicitor. How poor Mr. Buchanan expiated this, the solitary sin of a blameless career, is worked out with all Mrs. Oliphant's wonted acute- ness of insight. The minister's devoted wife is a beautiful portrait, and the grief and resentment of her younger daughter at the defection of her brother—the inseparable companion of her childhood—when he begins to prefer the society of his boy-friends to that of his sister is inimitably touching and natural.

In Tagaisara Mr. Marion Crawford gives us another of his brilliant and enthralling studies of modern Italian manners. As a work of art this novel lays itself open to the very obvious objection that the second volume partakes too largely of the nature of an anti-climax. The collapse of the fiendish plot against the heroine after a succession of scenes of the most painfully thrilling interest, leaves the reader in a state of such exhaustion that the subsequent love-story, poetic and touching though it is, savours of un- reality. Mr. Crawford has taken us back too thoroughly in his first volume to the age of the despots. The hideous tragedy of the Macomer family might have come straight from the pages of Guicciardini. The Countess Mathilde- if she really has her counterpart in modern Italian society —would seem to show that the breed of the Borgias and Sforeas is not yet extinct. Fascinating as the story of her crime undoubtedly is, there is something disagreeably signi- ficant in the fact that Mr. Crawford, whose intimate know- ledge of modern Italian society is above question, should now for the second time have associated high birth and culture with deliberate recourse to the poisoning habit, in his vivid delineations of modern "high life" in the peninsula.