The Unknown Lady. By Justus Miles Forman. (Ward, Lock and
Co. 6s.)—This novel would be improved from the literary point of view if it were written either in French or in English and not in a mixture of the tire elniguages. It is not to be denied, however, that once the hero arrives in Paris the book becomes extremely readable. Of course it may be urged that descriptions of artist life in Paris are becoming decidedly stale, but the author contrives to lend a certain freshness to his account of his hero's doings, and although the Bohemian side of the life is not concealed, it is never dwelt on in the morbid detail beloved by some of the writers of the day. The main theme of the story verges on the incredible. It is extremely difficult to believe that " five great canvases," all portraits of the "Unknown Lady," could be produced even after much . study by a man who has no love of pictures or painting. Once more, as in another recent novel, an extraordinary callousness will be found in the attitude of the author towards the crime of suicide. Both the heroine and the hero commit suicide at the end of this book, the heroine because she thinks that she may fail to give her lover-husband the ideal happiness which he is seeking, and the hero in order that he may not survive his wife more than an hour. According to the modern author, "the Everlasting has not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaughter." To return once more to the question of language, it is impossible for anyone who knows in- timately the small British boy to imagine that small American boys whose only connection with France is a French attendant would chatter willingly in that language. Neither would a small British girl who goes over to America and plays with the little American boy habitually burst out into little French sentences. There is a natural resistance in the young to the practice of foreign tongues, especially when inculcated in the nursery, which makes these phenomena absolutely incredible.
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