29 SEPTEMBER 1923, Page 23

A Romance of the Nineteenth Century. By C. H. Dudley

Ward. (Murray. 15s.) This old-fashioned love story of real life is based on a packet of letters discovered by Colonel Dudley Ward. They were written by his grandfather, the • first Lord Esher, to his grand- mother, and by filling in the contemporary background the author stages a most attractive idyll. Contemporary remarks on the novels of Thackeray and Dickens and glimpses of the Nuke of Wellington and Bulwer Lytton vary agreeably the emotional interest of the book.