The Devil's Chain. By Edward Jenkins, M.P. (Strahan and Co.)—
We do not feel inclined to criticise this book. It is like the sermon of a vigorous revivalist. The author means it to rouse men out of their apathy, and it is certainly not easy to read it without being roused. It may be said that it is exaggerated. Most appeals that men make when they are very much in earnest, and the evil against which they fight is very real, are exaggerated. Enthusiasts always exaggerate, but then enthusiasts move the world. And it would.' not be difficult to say that the book is not art. Any one thiolring of art would have let some ray
of light, some glimmer of hope, penetrate the unrelieved gloom of the story. But it is art in the same sense in which George Cruikshank's famous design of "The Bottle" is art. Indeed, it is the letter-press to that picture.
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