A Man's Fear. By Hamilton Drummond. (Ward, Lock, and Co.
6s.)—This is a Viking story, belonging to the "romance" 'order of fiction—does not Balder himself become an inmate of the hero's dwelling ?—and so, to a certain extent, conventional, but with some fine studies in it of human life as we know it. Pusher, the hero, and the two women, Mahe "of the pale face," and Gndruna, laborantes in uno, are particularly well drawn. In some respects, too, the story is striking. The general conception Furker's ambition to raise his native town is good, while of details the stratagem by which he makes himself master of Wittenstedt is a thing which the reader will not easily forget. We must own that A Man's Pear is not the sort of book which we should choose to read for pleasure's sake—and since improve- ment as a final cause is angrily disclaimed, pleasure must be the end of fiction—but we readily acknowledge its great literary merits.
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