El Supremo. By Edward Lucas White. (Fisher Unwin. 7s. 6d.)
This is a striking and original novel, sufficiently so to excuse its seven hundred odd pages. The hem is Francia, the beneficent tyrant who in the early part of the nineteenth century made of Paraguay a city of peace and happiness for all those who submitted themselves to the law—or, rather, to "El Supremo." The life of the city is described very minutely and with such fascination as to make every reader rebel for a moment against the liberty which forces us to take our place in the great omnibus of progress amidst the whirling traffic of the modern streets. Over every chapter of this charming historical novel there bangs a mist of romance (an atmosphere in which only bright things show), bright clothes and jewels, polished manners and bright steel. All the people we meet hold life as cheap in peace as we moderns hold it in war. What we offer up for a cause they wager for a fancy. They love life, indeed, but with a light sort of love, not for better for worse. They are gay as we cannot be gay now. We talk of ready-money and are quick to expend it. They are full, if we may be allowed the expression, of ready life.and hold to it as loosely. The Spanish civilization their fathers brought to Paraguay is worth everything to
• A &version to Type. Br E. II. Delatleld. London: Hutchinson. (7e. 8d.]
them. They love justice if it is summary and poetic, decorum as dignifying life, but not duty as ennobling it. Our tense souls relax as we meet them, but the price of the relaxation is high, and perhaps after all the old Spain which was preserved in South America was a place in which to take a holiday rather than to live in. Mr. White gives us this holiday and we are very grateful.
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