NOVELS OF THE WEEK.* IN houses where the war has

left a vacant room, Mrs. Anstruther's war-stories should be strictly tabooed. To read them when suffering from an intimate personal loss would be to turn a knife in a raw wound, or deliberately to touch a nerve already exposed and quivering with anguish. The stories deal entirely with the sadness of war from the on- , looirer's point of view, and they would almost all apply. to any campaign as well as to the South African. The sweet- heart left behind for ever, and the mother to whom no son

• (I.) The Influence of Mars. By Eva Anstruther. London : Grant Richards. [3s. 6d.]—(2.) The Belle of Toorak. By E. W. Hornung. London : Grant Richards. (Ss. 611.]—(S.) On Allen Shores. By Leslie Keith. -London : Hurst and Blacken. Fits-James. By Lilian Street. London: Methuen and Co. [6a.]—(5.) The Angel of Chance. By G. 0. Chatterton. London : John Long. [68.]—(6.) 4 04)5 from the Grave. By Edith Wharton. London : John Murray. [2e. ad. net.1—(7.) Many Daughters. By Sarah Tyner. London : Digbyriong, and-Go. -(6&]—(4.)-The-Married Mtes Denis!. -By John Strange

Winter. London : F. V. White. [3a. . .

can come "up from the under-world," play their sad parts, aid -wring the -reader's" heart with ' the inevitable sadness of their lot.. But though- Mrs."- Anstruther has shown -moat. pkthetieally the hardness of the women's part ". Who -only

stand and yet she has hardly fulfilled the task which she sets herself in her - semi - allegorical prelude of showing war as the Purifier. She shows na the anguish, -she is silent- - the -lesson it has left behind,:

If, as we all hope, this :war has tended -ta the purifiCation of the nation, the strongest evidence we have yet had of the fact comes not in the tears of the bereaved, but in the self-sacrifice- of those who have left their secure home-lives and gone. out to.- help England- in her need. Now these stories. show us- very few of these. Only in two instances does the author dwell on the fate of volunteer soldiers, and in both these she merely tells Of the sorrow of bereaved women,—both, however, citizens

of Britain . beyond, seas. One of these two stories, ".The Strongest Bond of Empire:: is a most useful feminine pendant to Mr. Kipling's story, " The Outsider," though it illustrateaa slightly different point. It would serve a useful purpose if a good many people who talk big words about the way the daughter-Colonies responded to their mother's call would read and digest Mrs. Anstruther's few words of poignant analysis of the feelings of a Colonial woman in England :—

"And in this England, which I'd always loved as Home, I felt inferior in some way, an alien and a stranger, just as though there were no place for me. You made me feel just as I thought the English people felt about their kinsmen from the Colonies: as though there were no place for us except most formally—as though you tolerated us, but did not care nor understand."

If Mrs. Anstruther wishes to help fulfil the prophecy of her own prelude, she will use her pen once more in war-stories, and will make her new series illustrate what lessons we may truly learn from this campaign. Our shortcomings, whether • we acknowledge it or not, have been most plainly shown us, and we can all do something—Mrs. .Anstruther can certainly do a great deal—to drive the lesson home. In the vital interest of Mrs. Anstruther's subject we have hardly said enough in praise of her very clever writing, but the sincerest flattery from a reviewer to an author is the request for another book.

Mr. Hornung is at his best in his new story, The Belle of Toorak, which deals entirely with life in the bush. It is,, in fact, only the story of an episode, and the action • is,. consequently, concise, dramatic, and well-focussed. The plot deals with the efforts of Pelham Rigden, the young "boss" of a Riverina station, to shelter an escaped convict, whom he believes to be his father. The crisis is peculiarly inopportune, as Rigden's fiancee, Moya Bethune, a Melbourne girl decidedlysuperior to him in position, is with her brother spending a week at the station, and sees the arrival of the wandering swagsman, who disappears with Rigden into the station store. When the police arrive Rigden leaves the man locked up in the store, and denies all knowledge of him. Many complications follow, some of which might have been avoided had not Rigden shrunk from confiding in Moya. In the end all comes right,—the convict, far from being himself Rigden's father, turns out to have murdered that individual, who was a comrade of his in the hulks and who had escaped with him. Moya forgives the fact that Bethune is a convict's son ; the sergeant of police, who has been keeping some items of information dark so that his capture of the criminal may be single-handed, finds it convenient to look over the part Rigden played in endeavouring to shelter the convict ; and all goes well. The interest of the story does not altogether depend on the plot. There is a fascinating description of a

day's sheep mustering, and Moya's adventures when she. follows the convict's trail and is abandoned by him in Blind- Man's Block are well told and exciting. How she ever get- out of Blind Man's Block, in which experienced bushmen were - afraid to trust themselves, can only be accounted for. by the fact that of necessity the heroes and heroines of fiction have - each as many lives as cats.

A great point is made of the study of character in "Leslie Keith's" new novel, On Alien Shores. The character of: Susie, the heroine, brought up in luxury in Portland and then making the best of her stolen marriage with a City clerk, " is well drawn and lifelike; but the author's real

achievement is the portrait of good, middle-aged Mrs. William "Barentine. She has such good impulses', which struggle so hard with the inevitable worldliness induced by havin 19 keep up a " smart " appearance in household and children on a comparatively narrow income, that in spite of the mean deeds to which her worldliness tempts her, the reader cannot help having an ardent desire that she may come creditably out of her sordid cares. In the story of the anguish of her shabby temptation in Edinburgh the author rises almost to Mrs. Oliphant'e level. And when the dens ex machirtil in the person of the telegraph-boy arrives with the news that her tardy repentance is too late, and that she and her children must, after all, reap the benefit of her suppression of facts, her breakdown and subsequent con- solation is again drawn almost with Mrs. Oliphant's subtly cynical knowledge of the human heart. The melodramatic chapters at the end of the book are much less good than the quieter parts. Susie's forced elopement and return, the storm, the drowning of the villain of the piece, and the sudden appearance of Susie's husband back from his business mission in China, are out of tone with the rest of the story, and we cannot help wishing that "Leslie Keith" had kept to his analytical descriptions all through. However, there is a great deal of very good stuff in the book. It is a quietly amusing story, not too short, written with great care, and, above all, with a real power of describing human nature ; and people who like these qualities will find this novel more than merely readable.

It is to be imagined that there is intended to be something attractive about the gentleman who fills the title-role in Miss Street's story, Fitz-.Tames, but the present writer has failed to discover what that something is. His Christian name, Galt, is against him. It would be very difficult to be a hero if one were called Galt and the gods had been so unkind as to make one a poet. Ruth, the heroine, is an attractive creature, and one grudges her extremely to poet Galt. The best thing in the book is the character of Uncle Webster, who imagines himself a Great Man. He is an affected and elderly poetaster, who bores his guests by reading aloud in a sonorous voice his emendations of their favourite poets. Uncle Webster is a really humorous creation. Otherwise the book is in no way remarkable, though it is a fair specimen, if one can forgive the unattrac- tiveness of the hero, of a modern semi-society story.

The hero of Mr. Chatterton's story, The Angel of Chance, emulates the ingenious Becky Sharp, who, it will be remem- bered, tried to bring about a reconciliation with Miss Crawley through the medium of the amiable Miss Briggs by diving under the awning where that lady was taking her matutinal dip. Mr. Clifford Anstey, however, is more fortunate in his attempt than poor Becky, and inaugurates a very successful acquaintance with Miss Rachel Meredith. In the course of this seaside friendship the couple manage after an evening concert to get locked in on the pier, and to have to swim to shore together, to the no small scandal of the inhabitants of Shinglebeaa. After the Shingle- beach episode, Clifford Anstey disappears from the story till he has to come back at the end to fulfil his obvious mission of marrying the heroine. She, meanwhile, after a short straggle with poverty, drops into one of those delight- ful companions' places only to be found in the pages of fiction, where the companion is treated as a daughter by her employers. Even from this light servitude she is eventually delivered by coming into a fortune of 24,000 a year. This is a cheerful book to read in a moment of depression. Every- thing goes well in it after no more difficulties than suffice to make the prosperity at the end piquant to hero and heroine.

It is difficult to say in what exact point the difference lies, but no one, apart from the mise-en-scene, could for a moment imagine that Miss Wharton's little book, A Gift frail& the Grave, was anything but an American story. The motive is the temptation, fall, and repentance of the hero, Glennard, who to escape from dire poverty and to enable him to marry the woman he loves, publishes anonymously some most inti- mate letters from a celebrated American woman novelist. Mrs. Aubyn has loved him, an affection which her physical peculiarities had prevented him from returning, though he enjoyed keeping up a sentimental correspondence with her. These letters he finds he can get an immense sum for, if he will publish them after Mrs. Aubyn's death, making public her name but not his, and he yields to the dishonourable temptation. The book is chiefly concerned with his repent-

ance after his shabby deed has brought him all the good things he wanted, and the study in souls is well and cleverly done. Readers who like motives, emotions, and soul search- ings will be much interested in the story.

Miss Tytler gives us a modern version of the University founded by Tennyson's Princess, in her new novel, Many Daughters, but being ultra-modern, far from the pupils taking a vow "not for three years to speak with any men," the Woman's Institute is presided over by a male Dictator, and masters are employed in the tuition. Miss Tytler arranges her Institute to cover the ground not only of Newnham and Girton, but of the most glorified schools of domestic economy as well. As a novel Many Daughters is not a success, but as a thoughtful woman's idea of the ultimate ideal for the perfect and complete education of her sex it is at least interesting.

If one were destined to be born a heroine (which, as Mr. Dooley would say, "Thank }livens, Hinissy, rm not") it would be wise to follow the example of "the Married Miss Binks," and espouse a gentleman whose parentage was un- known, as it gives such splendid chances of ultimate advance- ment. In the case of lucky Miss Binks, her husband turns out to be the long-lost cousin of an Earl, who delightedly hands over to him the title and estates which he had usurped owing to doubts as to the legitimacy of the gentleman known as Mr. Tom Knipp. When she hears the joyful news the late Miss Binks, now Mrs. Tom Knipp, faints with joy and emotion. It is not so very often that "John Strange Winter" deserts her beloved officers for millionaires and the aristocracy, though this book is a sequel to earlier annals of the Binks family. But the present specimen of the results of such desertion makes us hope that she will return with all possible speed to the mess-room and the garrison town.