11 MAY 1907, Page 24

Madame de Treymes. By . Edith Wharton. (Macmillan and Co. Is.

6d.)—Mrs. Wharton's sketches of French manners, and of the unhappy position of a free-born American caught in the meshes of a "family council," make a short but interesting story. The end, of course, will be obvious to the ingenious reader, and, as usual with Mrs. Wharton, it is not the plot which is attractive, but the study of personality. The great force of the French family as an organisation has never been better treated by a foreign pen, and the little book is written with all the author's usual delicacy and distinction of style.