Tempest - Torn. By Lieutenant - Colonel Andrew Haggard. (Hutchinson
and Co.)—There is the material of a good story in this portentous volume of nearly four hundred pages. But it is far too long, ill put together, and spun out to an almost. intolerable degree. We should say, too, that while Colonel Haggard is very good at descriptions of fighting—he has indeed a fair amount of the family talent—he is merely imitative where love-affairs are concerned. Given Lady Gladys Leith, a woman with voluptuous contours, "capable of loving deeply, of loving with boundless passion;" given Mrs. Edith Farquhar, of whom it is written that "she has the smallest and most beau- tiful mouth,—her fingers are tapered and shapely, her feet deli- cately formed, her whole attitude from head to foot breathes grace and elegance in every line and curve;" given Captain Claude Wentworth, who loves Edith, but has a sort of apology for a wife already, and has in addition "a regular set of teeth and a chin which would have doze credit to the Hermes of Prasiteles," and the result is what used vulgarly to be known as a "pretty kettle of fish." Gladys falls in love with Claude, but does not marry him ; and although Edith's husband is con- veniently killed, she also declines her lover, and so there is nothing for it but for him to die. All this is very sad; but it is also very conventional. There is in Tempest-Torn a great deal of fairly
good and possibly quite real military small-talk ; and a certain officer, generally known as Napoleon, who dangles after Went- worth's comic wife, is rather enjoyable in his queer way.
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