The I Jewel. By the Hon. Frederick Moncrieff. (W. Blackwood
and Sons.)—We read this story to the end. There is something in it that draws one on ; but we must own that we have very little understanding what it is all about. King James has a jewel stolen from him, and the hero sets about the task of recovering it. After that pretty nearly everything and everybody is lost in an impenetrable fog. Yet the scenes, taken one by one, are often striking and effective. One thing we would say to the author about his style. He should write either sixteenth-century English (or something really later, but conventionally allowed,— the language of the English Bible) or nineteenth-century. But he should not mix them. In one place we have, "Truly it mar- velled me to see the planks thrown across between the two parapets," and in another, "His strongly marked features be- trayed his nationality." Did the Sheriff smoke "two pipes of tobacco" in the year 1585? Is not this a little "previous," as they say?
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