NOVELS OF THE WEEK.*

THE most interesting event in the world of fiction during the past week is the republication, in a greatly enlarged form, and under the title of " They that Walk in Darkness," of Mr. Zang- will's Ghetto Tragedies, which originally saw the light in 1893. As the author observes in a short but interesting prefatory note, "the 'Ghetto Tragedies' collected in a little volume in 1893 have been so submerged in the present collection that I have relegated the original name to a sub-title. Satan Mekatrig ' was written in 1888; ' Bethulah ' this year. Any one who wishes to trace the progress or decay of my imagina- tion during the last ten years has, therefore, materials at hand." Compliance with the author's suggestion is not likely to modify the admiration evoked by the earlier products of his genius. "Satan Mekatrig " is a very powerful and lurid tale of eacyilege and possession, a Ghetto variant of the Faust legend in fact, which suffers as an artistic achievement from a certain exuberance of detail, shown alike in the minute descriptions of the - ewish ritual and the macabre horrors —recalling Berlioz's orchestration in the Course de l'Abysse —which emphasise the presence of the mysterious hunchback. The style, as when Rebecca is described as catching " the nicotian and alcoholic reek of the two men's breaths," is at times floridly undistinguished, and there is something rather incongruous in making Moshe, in the moments of his Satanic gaiety, lapse from his formal diction into the slang of a London counter-jumper. With these deductions the story is singularly impressive, and in particular the vision seen by Rebecca when she flies for refuge to the Synagogue is nobly conceived. The faults of this striking story are eminently those of youth, and the reservations we have made above may be withdrawn when we come to consider. " Bethulah," the story written this year. This describes how an American Jew, revisiting the homes and haunts of his ancestors in Central and Eastern Europe, witnesses the annual pilgrimage of a sect of Jewish Shakers or Salvationists to a mountain village in the Carpathians, at tends the services conducted by the "Wonder Rabbi," who claims to be of the Messianic seed, and falls in love with his beautiful daughter, only to find that she is doomed to remain unwedded in the belief that from her immaculacy will spring the true Messiah. The theme needs delicate handling, but Mr. Zangwill has given no ground for complaint; the clashing of modernity and mediaavalism, of mysticism and actuality, is wonderfully well conveyed, and Bethulah—a Jewish Joanna Southcott—is a most romantic and touching figure. The six other new stories included in the collection, if less picturesque than " Bethnlah," are even more impressive in virtue of their poignancy and sincerity. That which gives its name to the volume is a moving tale of

• (1.) "They that Walk in Darkness": Ghetto Tragedies. By L

London : Heinemann. [6s.]—(2.) Talcs of Space and Time. By if. Wells. London : Harper and Brothent [6s.]—(3.) The Drummer's Coat. By the Hon. J. W. Fortescue. London : Macmillan and Co. [4s. ed.]--(4.) The Splendid Porsenna. By Mts. Hugh Fraser. London : Hutchinson and Co. [6s.]—(0.) The Dun and the Undergraduate. By W. E. \V. Collins. London : Blackwood and Sons. [68.]—(0.) Daniel Whyte. By A. J. Dawson. London : Methuen and Co. (es.)—(7.) The Enchanter. By U. b. Sliberrad. London : Macmillan and Co. [es.]—(8.) Comeiltup. By Toni Gallon. London : Hutchinson and Co. [es.] —(0.) The Bread of Tears. By G. B. Burgin. London : John Long. [6a.] —(10.) A Honeymoon's Eclipse. By Sarah Tytler. London : Chatto and WIndus. [3s. 6d.]—(11.) Called Back to Tsarland. By Fred. WhJahaw. London : Jarrold and Sons. [6s.)

a devout but ignorant Jewess who, as a last resource, takes her blind and consumptive boy to Rome to be healed by the Pope. "Noah's Ark" tells of the poor visionary lured over- seas from a Continental Ghetto by the promise of a new Eden held out by an American Jew. "The Land of Promise" is another intensely pathetic emigrant story, while in "To Die in Jerusalem" the strange irony of fate that pursues an =filial renegade lends dramatic intensity to the denouement. Best of all, perhaps, is the tragedy of the little Jewish pupil

teacher, "The Keeper of Conscience," with, to use Mr. Zangwill's own phrase, "its sordid romanticism, its pathetic meanness." We will only say, in conclusion, that while the tragic issue of each of these remarkable stories is inevitable, because inherent in the temperament or environment of the victims, they are frequently illumined by flashes of fancy, satire, irony, and humour. No reader, who is not blinded by prejudice, will rise from the perusal of this engrossing volume without an enhanced sense of compassion for, and admira- tion of, the singular race of whose traits and temperament Mr. Zangwill is, perhaps, the most gifted and the most unsparing interpreter.

Mr. Wells's Tales of Space and Time partake to a great extent of the nature of a supplement to his last two volumes, —The War of the Worlds and When the Sleeper Wakes. Thus, "The Crystal Egg" describes how a henpecked curio collector found solace from domestic worries in the furtive inspection of a luminous crystal, in which he was able to see what went on in the planet Mars. But this picture of the Martians at home tells us so little beyond and above what we had already gathered from The War of the Worlds, that its real interest depends on the purely mundane setting contrived by Mr. Wells, and here we are bound to confess that the spell of his circumstantial method seems less convincing than usual. Much more striking is the finely imagined episode entitled "The Star "—a curiously a propos commentary on Dr. Falb's prophecy—describing the collision of Neptune with a new planet, and the momentous effects, both physiographical, physical, and moral, of this cosmic portent on the earth and its inhabitants. There is a most ingenious touch in the supposed comment of the Martian astronomers on the incident as showing "how small the vastest of human catastrophes may seem at the distance of a few million miles." But the pith of the book is to be found in the two succeeding stories, one a romance of England in the Stone Age—fifty thousand years ago, to be precise—and the other a story of the twenty-second century. Dissevered by this gigantic stretch of time, the two stories are linked together by a common "motive": since in each we are presented with the spec- tacle of a man and his mate struggling for life. The suc- cessive episodes in the Stone Age story—the flight of the young couple from the jealous chief, the fight at the ford, their encounter with the bear, the making of the first axe, the first ride on horseback, the triumphant return of the fugitives after a wholesale slaughter of their enemies—are narrated with curious power and vividness, though the scientific stand- point is not easily reconciled with the conversations of the bears and hyenas it la Jungle Book, and the introduction of modern slang strikes a jarring note. Sinister as is the retro- spect in this curious story, the picture of industrial serfdom in the twenty-second century is even more depressing. But the ingenuity with which the abiding principle of romance is adapted to the imaginary conditions of the mechanical millen- nium, with its deserted country, organised hypnotism, and underground proletariat, is nothing short of masterly. The volume is completed by an audacious fantasia entitled "The Man who Could Work Miracles." What we miss in this extremely interesting, suggestive, but occasionally disquiet- ing volume is the development of that delightful vein of humour and humanity of the possession of which Mr. Wells gave us such convincing proof in his Wheels of Chance.

Mr. Fortescue'e beautiful little story of Exmoor, The Drummer's Coat, by its format and subject would be naturally classed with books for children, and no doubt a good many child-readers will be thrilled by the adventures of Dick and Elsie when they lost their way in the mist while following the stag-hunt, and spent the night at the hut of the Witch of Cossacombe. But the charm of this delightful book, like that of Mrs. Ewing's Jackanapes, can only be appreciated in its entirety by "grown-ups"; and we can pay Mr. Fortescue no higher compliment than to say that since

Jackanapes we have read no more fascinating study of child-life in its relation to the charities and chivalry of the soldier's calling. The period chosen is that just after Waterloo. Mr. Fortescue is very happy in the artistic restraint he displays in the use of his expert military knowledge ; the scene is laid on Exmoor; and the characters, gentle and simple, from the gallant Colonel Fitzdenys to the poor idiot with his magical power over animals, from the gracious and tender-hearted Lady Eleanor to Mrs. Mugford, the shrewish village matron, are excellently drawn. Mr. For- tescne makes dramatic use of a West Country superstition, the vitality of which he attests in his preface, and his discreet employment of the Devonshire dialect lends a pleasant flavour to the dialogue. The narrative is a model of effective simplicity, witness the concluding sentence of the book : "But folks still pause to look at the tablet which records the death of Private John Dart in the retreat to Corunna, and of Lucy his wife, who after his fall carried her son of nine years old to the British ships, and having devoted the rest of her life to the care of him, who by God's visitation could take no care of himaelf, was found dead upon his body when he died." All who love children, animals, and soldiers are indebted to Mr. Fortescue for a, most engaging and stimulating story.

Mrs. Hugh Fraser's new novel deals with the trials of an English girl married by a worldly mother to Orazio Porsenna, an Italian Prince of ancient line, who is both mad and bad. After ineffectually trying to bury his wife alive, and practi- cally murdering his child, Porsenna, though admittedly in- sane, is shot in a somewhat irregular duel by General Sir Maxwell Lyndhurst, an old friend of the Princess's father, and the Princess marries her old playmate and cousin, Gerald Lowther. The Splendid Porsenna, which after a promising opening degenerates into a morbid melodrama, is very much below the level of Mrs. Fraser's earlier achievements.

The field of academic fiction is strewn with failures, from which category we fear The Don and the Undergraduate can hardly be excluded. About a year ago an amazing article appeared in a respectable weekly contemporary on the wickedness and effeminacy of the modern undergraduate. As depicted by Mr. Collins, he is a sentimental Paladin, an emotional Sandow, a Bayard in "shorts." George Ronald, an Australian semi-millionaire undergraduate, a pupil of Beach (the famous sculler), a pillar of the 0.13.B.C., and a brilliant mathematician to boot, is the accepted suitor of Miss Daisy Fanshawe, daughter of the President of St. Hilary's. He subsequently discovers that Ingram, the youngest and most brilliant member of the Common Room, is in love with Daisy, and that he himself is suffering from incurable heart-disease. Whereupon he decides to facilitate matters by competing at Henley, where, after winning the sculls and performing prodigies of aquatic valour, he is killed in an accident, having already bequeathed £50,000 to Daisy, and an estate and £150,000 in cash to the don. The novel ends with an account of the wedding by Ingram's old friend and master, an elderly gentleman of positively appalling benevolence. This is the sort of book that drives readers to correct its cloying optimism by a dose of Machiavelli.

Mr. Dawson describes his new novel, Daniel Whyte, on the title-page as "an unfinished romance," and the reader is inclined to exclaim : "For this relief much thanks." As it stands the book, like a Chinese play, conducts the hero from the cradle, if not to the grave, at least to the eve of his second marriage. This is carrying out Mr. Balfour's advice to novelists to give us life-histories with extreme rigour. But although Mr. Dawson has given us a biography rather than a story, and though his style suffers from a perpetual straining after effect—e.g., the hero is described on one occasion as being "fluidly nervous" !—the book has a good deal of that invaluable quality, life, and may be conscien- tiously recommended to readers with plenty of time before them.

Another book of the biographical tendency and of great length is The Enchanter, by U. L. Silberrad. Here we are fintroduced not only to a small boy hero, but to a heroine o the same tender age. The opening chapters are rather dull\,

but that section of the story which treats of the adventures of hero and heroine in Hansa, a province in the extreme North-West of India, is decidedly exciting. After their return to England the narrative suffers from anti-climax. Bat the story as a whole shows unquestioned promise, and if the author only masters the art of omission, he (or she) should prove a decided addition to the ranks of contemporary novelists.

Yet another biography is Mr. Gallon's Comethup. Here we preside at the birth of the hero, and actaally bury him, though not, it is true, at an advanced age. The dramatis personce remind one of the historic little girl : when they are good, they are very, very good, and when they are bad, they are horrid. This unbridged gulf between good and evil robs the story of any close correspondence with the facts of real life, but admirers of Mr. Gallon's sentimentalism will doubt- less find pleasure in his latest venture.

The Bread of Tears is chiefly concerned with brigands and American missionaries, and the scene is generally laid in Armenia. Mr. Burgin provides the reader with an abundance of adventure and excitement, his heroine, Fenella, is not wanting in charm, and the perusal of the whole is an easy and agreeable undertaking.

Miss Tytler, whose work the professional novel-reader wel- comes with a confidence born of past favours, puts the date of A Honeymoon's Eclipse back into the "fifties." Her story is decidedly amusing, but we find it rather hard to credit the conduct of the heroine, who in consequence of a petty squabble goes back to live with her own people as soon after her honeymoon as possible. If, however, the premiss is granted, the working out of the story is excellent, while, to the relief of readers familiar with the tyranny of gratuitous catastrophes, the sundered pair are happily reunited at the end. The scene, it may be added, is laid in Scotland, and the unfortunate husband is a Scotch minister.

Mr. Whishaw does not reach a very high level of achieve- ment in his new novel, Called Back to Tsarlancl, a would-be exciting story of the disappearance of a Russian Count. The literary merit of the book is slight, nor is this deficiency made good by the rapidity of movement needed in a sensational tale of this description.

[*.* The title of Mr. Edward H. Cooper's novel, noticed last week, was inadvertently given as Resolved to be Free. It should have been Resolved to be Rich.]