4 JANUARY 1902, Page 25

The Real World. By Robert Herrick. (Macmillan and Co. 6s.)—The

Real World is another elaborate study of American social life, with a more introspective bias and a slightly morbid tone of moralising. Jack Pemberton, the hero, seeks" reality" among the various vulgarities of social ambition and sensual indulgence with which his acquaintances content themselves. He rejects one after the other as " unreal," and at the end of the three hundred and fifty odd pages which go to his " making " finds happiness in the woman of his early dreams, and takes the word of the riddle from her lips.