The Belforts of Culben. By Edmund Mitchell. (Chatto and Windus.
6s.)—This story is of a kind that was more often seen five-and-twenty years ago than now. It gives us surprises, un- expected reappearances after shipwreck and battle, repentances and recoveries, still more unexpected, of hardened offenders, life- long prejudices overcome, and worldly scheming given up for dis- interested affection; in short, all the familiar "properties" of fiction as it used to be, which the "up-to-date" novelist disdains to use. We are not ashamed to own that these things are to our taste. The newspapers tell us quite as much as we want to know about mean places and persons, and we are obliged to a writer who takes us away from them. And Mr. Mitchell, though he is decidedly romantic, knows how to tell a story. The South African scenes, in particular, are pictured with as much spirit as anything of the kind that we have seen.
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