Mr. Montgomerie : Pool. By Garrett Mill. (W. Blackwood and
Sons. 6s.)—This is the tale of a man who makes a slip in his youth and is cast off by his kinsfolk. His cousin, a prosperous business man, refuses to restore to him his mother's portrait, and the ne'er-do-weel departs in the orthodox manner vowing revenge. In the orthodox manner he returns, a millionaire by one of those happy accidents of fiction, and under an assumed name sets him- self to compass the ruin of his cousin. In the intervals of his revenge he devotes himself to good work, such as building a great cathedral in the slums, and when at last the time for vengeance is ripe, he holds his hand for the sake of the good work he had inaugurated. The story closes with his marriage to a fellow- philanthropist and his departure for the Antipodes. The plot is thin and hackneyed, the characters for the most part scarcely realised, and the treatment is melodramatic ; but the account of middle- class life and ambitions in a Scottish industrial city, which we take to be Glasgow, is clever and convincing. On the whole, however, the book is inferior to other stories we have read by the same author. It is hard to believe in the theatrical qualities of Mr. Montgomerie.
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