/tunic Rocks. By Wilhelm Jensen. (Elliot Stock.) — This novel
of Wilhelm Jensen's appears to have been very popular on the Continent, and it has the honour of being the first of his to be translated into English. Marianne E. Suckling has done the translation. It is described as "A North Sea Idyll," and embodies Jensen's peculiar views, we are told in the preface. better than others of his writings. These views may be summed up briefly as a belief in human nature and nothing else, and therefore, if there is any moral, which is doubtful, it may be described as a hopeless fatalism. The scenery and the peasants Of this Frisian Idyll are admirably delineated, and as the period of the story is that of the Napoleonic Wars, the evolution of character is assisted by the pressure of events,—the conscription taking place in the last chapters of the story. The literary excellence of Runic Rocks is very marked, but the melancholy that pervades the story, which is heightened by the choice of an isolated island people as a subject, is most depressing.
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