25 AUGUST 1923, Page 16

BOOKS.

THIS WEEK'S BOOKS.

Tins week comes a new volume of the Faringlon Diary (Hutchinson). It is a charming book though excessively desultory and, one cannot help thinking, the work of a dullish man. Yet we are lured on from page to page, encouraged to range about in it at will and every now and then we are rewarded by some strange little find. Some sentence like the following, for instance, when Cade saw the Buonapartes in 1802 at Havre.

"Buonaparte sat in a Box between Madame Buonaparte and Madame Lucien. Cade thought his countenance mild, but when very attentive to anything a searching look—He remained in the Box an Hour.—Madame Buonaparte appeared to be 45 or 6 years old ; not at all handsome ; unassuming in Her manner, and, plainly dressed."

Cade must surely have been a very poor judge of women.

A book which appears at the right moment is Sir Hugh Fraser's Amid the High Hills (Black). It is a simply written tw3.01F of.sporting reminiscences and its most interesting chapters are about deer stalking in Scotland. Visitors to London will welcome a new and revised edition of Mr. E. V. Lucas's. A TVanderer in London (Methuen). There is a tantalizing illustration showing St. Mary-le-Strand standing in an expanse of roadway which holds only two 'buses and one hansom. Mr. Walter McClintock's Old Indian Trails (Constable) is illustrated with fascinating photographs of American Indians, their clothes, weapons, and utensils. The author lived for some time among a tribe and writes with sympathy, admiration and understanding. Though it seems a book intended for the student it might be very much enjoyed by an intelligent boy. There are no novels of interest this week, but I hear that Miss Sheila Kay Smith publishes next week a new novel, The End of the House of Alard (Cassell).

THE LITERARY EDITOR.