The Career of Harold Endsleigh. By Walter B. Harris. (W.
Blackwood and Sons. 6s.)—The figure of the young man who is eager to break the narrow bounds of life in England, and to embark rather vaguely on a larger sphere, is very true to life. True also, no doubt, of youths destined to be failures is the picture of the same young man entirely daunted by his first encounter with the realities of life and by the unsuccess of his first efforts. But it is doubtful whether the reader can continue to sympathise with a youth who displays such a completo want of pluck, and who is so complacently content not to try his fortune once more. Mr. Harris has not the faculty of rendering his personages lifelike in the eyes of his readers, and he should check a tendency to caricature in the characters intended to be comic. It is to be hoped that no Harrow boys will read the book, otherwise it will be a severe shock to their feelings to find Mr. Harris depicting one of their number, who has reached the age of sixteen, taking a young lady whom he has met for the first time to look at his white rats, and telling her that he does not like girls as a rule, "they're so helpless and silly." This is no true picture of the awful decorum of manners practised by gentlemen of so ripe an age at our great public schools.
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