NOVELS OF THE WEEK.*
Ex Africa semper is becoming the motto of the literary as well as the political world. Only the other day we noticed in A Daughter of the Transvaal a clever though rather painful study of race dissensions at a girls' school in Cape Colony. Now Mr. Maclaren Cobban gives us in Cease Fire I a highly topical romance of the Boer War of 1881. John Cash, the narrator, is a young Afrikander of English parents and British sympathies, whose share in the campaign of '81 is hardly distinguished enough to merit for him the rank of a full-blown hero of romance. He is a tall, well-setup young fellow, to be sure, but his achievements prove him to be—in defiance of the adage--neither lucky in love nor in war. Betrothed to a. strapping Boer maiden, who jilts him ignominiously on the outbreak of hostilities, he encounters on the open veldt a beautiful but distressed damsel iu a green habit, wandering about in search, so she declares, of her soldier brother, an officer attached to the British field force. John Cash, infatuated by this lovely vision, at once constitutes himself her faithful cavalier, and for weeks and weeks travels about in her com- pany in quest of the mythical brother. .At last, after various perils and adventures, and after witnessing the actions of Laing's Nek and Ingogo, he reaps the reward of his infatua- tion by being denounced as a traitor to General Colley by his faithless innamorata, and in his efforts to extract an ex- planation falls into the hands of the Boers, where the enchantress reveals herself in her true colours as a termagant with a brogue and the wife of an Irish aide-de-camp of Piet Joubert! Eventually he escapes from his captors in the company of an English soldier, a fighting-man of the most intrepid and engaging character, and after further tragic ad- ventures—he witnesses his father's execution, and is himself condemned to be shot on his father's grave—is rescued by the devotion of an English schoolmistress, and released on the termination of the wax. Mr. Maclaren Cobban writes as a partisan, but he renders ample justice to individual instances of humanity and generosity amongst the Boers, and the por- traits of various historic personages on either side, notably of the high-minded, Quixotic Colley, are drawn with vigour and skill.
If they have such a thing as an Index Expurgatorius at Teheran, Mr. Morley Roberts's new romance will undoubtedly be placed upon it. For The Plunderers, which deals with the gospel of raids in the same eulogistic strain as The Colossus dealt with that of Rhodes, narrates how three private in- dividuals—a doctor and a millionaire (both English), and an Albanian—raised a large force of Kurds, levied war on the Shah, and, after a good deal of bloodshed, carried off the priceless jewels to secure which was the sole aim of the invasion. The motive in the case of the Albanian, it is only fair to say, was a personal vendetta, bat in the end it turns out that the Shah did not slay Osman Arslan Skipar Bey's brother ; indeed, if the truth be told, Naar-ed-Din com- pares very favourably with the trio of plunderers. The role (1.) Cease Firer a Story of the Transvaal War of '81. By J. Maclaren Cobban. London : Methuen and Co. [lis. 6d.]—(2.) The Plunderers. By Morley Roberts. London : Methuen and Co. [6s.]--(3.) Marcelle of the Latin Quarter. By Clive Holland. London : C. A. Pearson. [6s.]—(4.) The Acrobat; or, Mademoiselle Blanche. By John D. Barry. London : John Lane. (6s.]- (5.) Logan's Loyalty. By Sarah Tytler. London : John Long. [6s.]—(e.) Babes in the Bush. By Rolf Boldrewood. London Macmillan and Co. [8s.]—(7.) The Harvesters. By J. S. Fletcher. London : John Long. [6s.]—(8.) A. an of his Age. By Hamilton Drummond. London : Ward, Lock, and Co. 04. 65.1 of heroine is assigned to a brilliant lady journalist, deep in the counsels of the Foreign Office, and deeply in love with Dr. Seale, the arch-plunderer. As he proves impervious to her attractions, she goes out to Teheran on her own account, is persecuted by the attentions of the Shah, and is a prisoner in the palace at the moment of the invasion. Appearing at the present juncture, this daring novel can hardly be looked at in the light of a mere irresponsible fantasia. Viewed in connection with Mr. Morley Roberta's two previous ventures, it must rather be regarded in the light of a deliberate glorification of the quality of virtu in the sense in which that word was understood in Italy of the Renaissance,—i.e., masterful, unscrupulous efficiency. The book is inter- mittently amusing, but the disagreeable impression pre- dominates. Kurds are not amiable auxiliaries, and the plain person resents Dr. Sarle's " slimness " in saddling suspicion on the Russians. For ourselves, if criminals are to be apotheosised in fiction, we prefer the frank old-fashioned methods adopted in Jack Sheppard.
litarcelle of the Latin Quarter is a mildly Bohemian tale of artist life is Paris. Georges Brand, a rising young painter, befriends pour le bon motif a consumptive model who has been deserted by her protector, and on her death adopts her little daughter. The child's father, a handsome ne'er-do-weel " wanted " by the police on a capital charge, endeavours to blackmail the benevolent artist, and a former flame of Brand's, Mathilde Sievinaki, also tries to make mischief. Marcelle, jun., grows up in happy ignorance of the secret of her parentage, and Carlton, a young English artist and protégé of Brand's, loses his heart to her. The question of enlightening the Englishman as to Marcelle's parentage is happily solved by the death of her disreputable father, who shoots himself in the belief that the police are on his track ; Marcelle politely rejects the Englishman, and Brand marries her himself. Mr. Holland's story will disappoint those who look for a record of any surprising or fascinating wickedness. Indeed, he is not afraid to dwell on the sordid and struggling aspects of artist life, while emphasising in the main the optimistic view that humanity and charity are to be found in the guerilla as well as in the regular forces of society. His command of French and other languages, we may note, is not always impeccable, unless the printer is to blame for such solecisms as "air paternal" and "Nal:mica." We have to thank him, however, for the lurid synonym for absinthe,—" the chrysoprase witch."
The scene of The Acrobat is also laid in Paris, and techni- cally in Bohemian surroundings, for the heroine is a circus girl who earns her living on the trapeze, and in particular by plunging from the roof of the Hippodrome into a net. But there is very little of the Alsatian in Mademoiselle Blanche, a modest, devout girl, whose sole ambition is to emancipate herself from her perilous calling. That ambition seems in a fair way of being realised when she marries a respectable young Parisian engaged in commerce.—It is characteristic of the heroine that her great anxiety is that Jules should attend confession before they are married.—So far, however, from his encouraging her wish to abandon the circus, Jules gives up his business to become her manager, and forces her to resume work at the very earliest opportunity after the birth of her first child. Jules, in a word, is far more in love with his wife's performance than with herself, and when she leaves off the high plunge, neglects her for a rival performer. Thereupon the unhappy wife, to regain his affection, the loss of which is breaking her heart, decides to resume her "dive," and breaks her neck in the first attempt. If the story does not quite carry conviction, it is at least not without a sort of exotic pathos.
Miss Sarah Tytler's new story deals with the outcome of a misalliance between a Scottish Baronet and a crofter girl. Their only child, a daughter, devotes herself to the memory of her low-born mother; and resenting the attentions of a fortune-hunting cousin whose snit is encouraged by her father, runs away to her mother's people and marries a crofter. Summoned in haste to her father's deathbed, she learns when it is too late that she has misjudged him, and resolves to make reparation by bringing up her child to fit him for the rank to which he is called by Sir Hector's will. This decision causes an estrangement between her and her husband, who enlists in the Army—the time is that of
Napoleon—and by his gallantry and patient devotion wins the abiding affection of his wife. Logan's Loyalty alike in matter and manner worthily maintains Miss Tytler's
well-
deserved reputation as a writer of stories at once wholesome and interesting.
"Rolf Boldrewood " recounts in Babes in the Bush the fortunes of an impecunious middle-aged officer with a long family who emigrates to New South Wales in the "thirties," and after many ups and downs settles down into a prosperous Australian squire. Judged by the standard of the writer's best book, the new venture hardly emerges above the level of readable mediocrity, but it is a decided improvement upon some of the recent volumes from the same pen.
Mr. Fletcher has made ample amends for the indulgence in a vein of cynicism betrayed in The Paths of the Prudent by the genial simplicity of The Harvesters. Here he gives us a charming rustic idyll, in which, though tragic incidents are not wanting, there is none of the hopeless squalor so dear to modern delineators of village life. The ex-soldier and the poacher's son—the two suitors for the hand of the heroine—are a well-contrasted pair of lovers, and the author must be congratulated on the way in which he has contrived in the denouement to reconcile the exigencies of poetic justice with the just claims of probability.
A Irian of his Age is a stirring though rather confused historical romance of the mid-sixteenth century in France, in which bigotry and butchery loom large in every chapter. Mr. Drummond writes well, but his narrative lacks relief, and a certain artificiality of sentiment mars the effect of his strongest situations.
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