Diane. By Katharine Holland Brown. (W. Heinemann. 6s.) —Novel-writers are
beginning to discover what a rich mine of material lies before them in the oondition of affairs in the Southern States before the outbreak of the American Civil War. Miss Holland Brown has added to exciting descriptions of the traffic in escaped slaves an account of a communistic French settlement on the Mississippi River. The book contains many exciting adventures and a brief glimpse of John Brown, without whose appearance any novel treating of this period would be incom- plete. The drawing of character is not the essential factor in a novel of adventure, yet the heroine Diane is a very attractive figure, and the book boasts also a wonderful portrait of a fan- tastic child, Petit Clef. There is, altogether, a great deal to read in Diane, and although it suffers a little fromfaults of construction, it is on the whole a very good story.
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