5 OCTOBER 1901, Page 21

OTHER NOVELS.

Herb of Grace. By Rosa Nouchette Carey. (Macmillan and Co. Gs.)—There is always evidence of good, solid, painstaking work in Miss Carey's novels. And that she has her reward who can deny who looks at the list of her books, some of which rise to being "in" their thirty-second thousand, while the less success- ful are in the tenth thousand P Her present book, Herb of Grace, is concerned with a set of excellent and well-meaning persons, who, if they do not scintillaLe with genius or pant for adventure, are quite up to the average man in intellect, and lead the usual mildly exciting lives with a due proportion of the domestic events which fall to the lot of most of his Majesty's lieges. Miss Carey is, as "Elizabeth's" gardener would say, sehr modern in the age of the heroine of her present story, who, by the way, is also called Elizabeth. There is a run just now in fiction on the name of that great Queen, and it might be amusing to speculate on what her feelings would have been towards some of her imaginary namesakes. This present Elizabeth is a mature woman,—no chit of eighteen or twenty. She is the possessor of a most beautiful wild garden,—a garden worthy of the great Robinson himself. On the whole, this quiet story may be recommended to readers who like their fiction as well as their potables to "cheer but not to inebriate" them.