5 MARCH 1904, Page 22

Stella Fregelius. By H. Rider Haggard. (Longmans and Co. 6s.)—Mr.

Rider Haggard may pile up as many horrors as he pleases round such a creation as "She," but we object to the process when we have been introduced to so attractive a creature as Stella. A young lady who was quite conscious of a grievance when she had to wear an "old-fashioned silk fichu" had no business to go through a form of spiritual marriage in the "Dead Church," to be drowned by an inrush of the sea in the same eerie place, and to exercise after her death a sinister influence on living people. If we are to have this kind of romance—and we must own that we do not particularly wish to have it—let it be a long way removed in time or space, preferably in both. About human things Mr. Rider Haggard writes with sense and humour; but when he passes to the preter-human we have to go without both the one and the other.