Tales of Dunstable Weir. By Zack. With Photogravure Frontispiece by
A. S. Hartrick. (Methuen and Co. 6s.)—Most beautiful but most melancholy are the "tales of Dunstable Weir " Zack " gives us in a very fascinating little volume. The stories are all told in the soft Somersetshire dialect with its buzzing " z's," but with commendable art the dialect is so managed that it reads easily, and is therefore not a hindrance—as dialect so often is—to understanding and enjoyment. As stories the sketches are slight, and to a certain extent inconclusive. But in each some core of tragedy,. more or less inarticulate, is seized and brought home to us. One expresses the heart-loneliness of "a lad with blood in him" who grows up under the care of a- village foster-mother under the windows of the Hall from which he is shut out by the irregularity of his birth, only to learn- the secret of his position when his mother sends for him on her deathbed. Another lets us into the suffering of a kind-hearted, tactless man who adopts a deformed boy out of charity, lavishes all his power of affection upon him, but never wins the child's
love. These things are told with perfect pathos, and the relief of humour is never wanting.
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