Father Felis's Chronicles. By Nora Chesson. (I'. Fisher Unwin. 6s.)—There
is much real charm about Mrs. Chesson's last book, besides the melancholy interest which unfortunately attaches to it. It is not exactly a novel, but rather a series of pictures reminding one of the illuminations of some old missal, and the writer contrives, with wonderful success, to give the requisite local colour both in language and in setting. The Chronicles are told by a monk living in one of the powerful conventual establish- ments of the day, and the date is in the early years of King Henry IV. Although the King makes only a very brief appear- ance on the stage, yet Mrs. Chesson conveys a far leas favourable impression of him than that to which Shakespeare has accustomed us. The last scene in the book, the peine forte et dare of the "Lady Hawise," is almost too realistically horrible ; but the volume is well worth reading for the vivid pictures which it leaves upon the mind of life at the beginning of the fifteenth century.
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