2 DECEMBER 1893, Page 10

Tone Heron. of Sax. By Evelyn Everett-Green. (Religious Tract Society.)—This

historico-religious romance, by one of the most skilled pens of the day, has only one fault. Dealing with a special period of the eighteenth century, it is a trifle too long and prolix. The struggles of Methodism in its early ages, and the scenes of violence and oven bloodshed which they led to, were well worth reproduction, however, in such a volume as we have here. Tom Heron of Sax, the hero, dissipated and recklese —a kind of inferior John Bunyan—who becomes "converted," and has lapses into drunkenness, is admirably drawn, and so is the preacher who first touches his heart, and whom he rescues from death, although it was his original intention to assault him. Love, as well as Evangelicalism, has its part in this story ; and when pocr Tom is shot down while preaching, it is not quite cer- tain whether he is a martyr to his new faith, or merely the victim of a private hatred which he had aroused by preventing an abduction. The contrast between the earnestness of Methodism and the " worldly" indifference of the Anglicanism which it Arse fought and then infused new life into, is brought out very cleverly and carefully.