By Faith Alone. By Rene Basin. (Ereleigh Nash. 6s.)—This story
is not construeted.on the usual lines. The conclusion will seem to-many readers somewhat lame and impotent. The farm- servant comes back at -fifty to- the place which he has-left at thirty,, and the little of the.lons -element, that these is we could wish away. Then it is written in very strange English. Whether this is M. Basin's own;. or the work of an unpractised translator, it is saturated with Gallicisms. But it is a notable book. In its secular aspect it is a very graphic picture of rural life in France, —life in the forest regions and among the beet-growing plains of Picardy. All the description is worth studying; but we may . note in passing two details which strike an-English reader with the sense of contrast. There is a system of combination among the workers which lies. never established itself in this country, and there is active opposition-ter-the introduction of machinery,—a state of things which here has long since disappeared. The story, we should say, is expressly said to be of the present day. But the more important side of By Faith Alone is the spiritual. We have this in a concrete form when the Abbe Roubliaux, com- pelled by his BiShop to make a collection through his parish for the disestablished Church, finds that there is a grain of religion inrthe most anti-clerical and least observant. But the finest thing in the book is the spiritual history of Gilbert Cloquet.
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