Border Lances. By the Author of "Belt and Spur." (Seeley
and Co.)—This " romance of the northern marches in the reign of Edward III." has, perhaps, the fault of dealing with characters and events not sufficiently striking. Historical personages in fiction should be great people. But the book is a good one, and the style well kept up, though a critical taste may occasionally detect a modernism. "Superintending," for instance, is a doubtful word. We,shonld be inclined to say that for a sixteenth-century style, which seems to be the one here aimed at, no language should be admitted not found in the Bible, and, more doubtfully, in Shakespeare. The illustrations are excellent, illustrations in reality and not in name, as are most of the pictures with which, for some incomprehensible reason, publishers furnish their volumes.
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