Major Monk's Motto. By the Rev. Frederick Langbridge. (Cassell and
Co.)—In some respects Mr. Langbridge's book is good. He hits off with success the conversation of his boy-heroes, for it is with school-life chiefly that he has to do. In his hand it is neither too slangy nor too stilted. In fact, his boys are real boys ; we recognise them as young people with whom we have actually come into con- tact. But the weak point of the book is the plot. Schoolboys do not contrive, as far as our experience goes, these elaborate schemes of deceit and vengeance. Here is a lad who steals the essay of another, and sends it in as his own—surely a somewhat improbable act ; and then, being detected and having received a sound thrashing withal, hides a bank-note in the coat-pocket of his adversary. This hiding of property in an innocent victim's box or pocket is a stock incident in tales of school-life ; but we venture to doubt whether it has ever occurred in the actual experience of any living schoolmaster. Theft is unhappily too common, but hardly these ingenious ways of shifting the blame on to the wrong shoulders. Mr. Langbridge's tale has many merits of execution, and has plenty of fun, and humour, and " go " in it, bat is, as we have said, not happily imagined.
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