FICTION.
TALES OF THREE HEMISPHERES.•
GEOGRAPHICALLY the title of Lord Dunsany's new book is justi- fied by its division into fantasies wherein the scene is laid at home or in the East, and dreams of the wonder land " beyond the fields we know." The former are mostly of the nature of allegories or oblique satires. Thus the danger of indiscreet curiosity is illustrated by the tragic end of the rural postman who, after holding back for seven long years (like the Hebrew child in the Bab Ballads), was prompted by his wife to spy on the sinister household on the wolds, surprised them in the act of sacrificing to the elder gods, and perished of the shock. " The Old Brown Coat," an ingenious gloss on a story of Sir J. M. Barrie's, is a romance of the auction-room, a reductio ad absurdum of the mania which besets the speculative bidder. There is both irony and imagination in the episode of the Manchu shepherd witnessing the passage of four hansom cabs over the great plain of North China—the outcome of a bet made by American and Semitic millionaires—and poetry is linked to actuality in the brilliant Nocturne " A City of Wonder," showing how the orderly monstrosity of the sky scrapers is transformed and glorified by the wizardry of night. " The Prayer of Boob Aheera " brings home the unbridgeable chasm between East and West ; primitive rites for the propitiation of idols taking place within gun-shot of a'great liner. " The Gifts of the Gods " is a new variation on the old theme that the worst tragedies spring from the granting of human wishes. The man who had four times craved war and peace alternately as a relief from the monotony of life at last came to the conclusion that his wishes
were dangerous and not to be desired, so ha wrote an anonymous letter to the gods advising them to pay no further heed to their impious supplicant. The gods took the advice and left him alone in a monotony of peace, until at last in sheer boredom he
• Tales of Three Hemispheres. By Lord Dunsany. Loudon : Fisher Unwin. lee. net.]
begged for one more war. And the gods said : " We hear not well of your way of life, yea ill things have come to our hearing, so that we grant no more the wishes you wish." But after all, and with a cordial admiration for these freakish and somewhat sardonic apologues and allegories, we like Lord Dunsany best when he migrates to the third hemisphere, and carries us, willing captives, on his magic carpet to the Hills of Hap, or fellow passengers on his voyage down the magical river Yana. " Idle Days on the Yann" is reprinted from an earlier volume, but we are glad to renew our acquaintance with this wild and fascinating chronicle and welcome its sequel, full of wonder and surprise, and strange unfamiliar names, reminding us by turns of Kubla Khan and Edward Lear. These excursions into the Dream East, viewed from an educational standpoint, would no doubt be regarded as deplorable by Mme. Montessori, but there can be no question as to their appeal to grown-up children of all ages.
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