tion of their responsibilities, but soon to learn that Virgie, Mr. Peyton-Call, and her own oldest brother among them have plans to which she must give unconscious or unwilling aid. Virgie's father, an unscrupulous man, also comes within the field of Cassandra's influence, and from these elements, with the introduction of a lost contract and an almost forgotten family scandal, Miss Brooks evolves complications which pique curiosity and develop cumulative interest. More than this, she has, in some well-managed situations, evinced an excellent understanding of character and has reproduced with the appreciation of a native the Southern speech and attitude. The book gives the impression of reality from first page to last, and is distinctly readable.

Dorothy South, a love-story of Virginia just before the war, is to be read leisurely and without expectation of surprises. There is no elaboration of plot and the character development is slight except in the girlish figure of the jealously guarded Dorothy herself, and in her it is the ripening of those gracious qualities of mind and body which make her lovable from the start, but which are so irrevocably and obviously at the command of Doctor Arthur Brent from the moment of their meeting that the reader with an appetite for the mischances and uncertainties of love confesses to a wish to take a hand in abetting Madison and Jefferson Peyton. Edmonia Bannister, the toast of her neighborhood, who promises to make it interesting for the handsome and accomplished Doctor Brent, also fails to live up to her opportunities in this respect, which is all the more provoking because we feel sure the Doctor is of metal to yield a ringing note. As it is, he proves himself worthy of Dorothy, and shows a will, capacity, and patience in

DOROTHY SOUTH. By George Cary Eggleston. Illustrated by C. D. Williams. Lothrop Publishing Company, 12mo, $1.50.

keeping with the atmosphere of a story for which, it is fair to presume, there will be a host of satisfied readers. The quiet of the book will be its chief charm for these. Aunt Polly, who has no faith in the traveller's tale that the earth is round, and does not believe in railroads, but who places herself exactly when she informs the scheming Madison Peyton that she would call him a fool, if the Bible didn't forbid, is in harmony with her broad porches embowered in honeysuckle and climbing roses; Colonel Majors and the rest, and Dick, Diana, and Polydore, and the other darkies fill in a bit of Southern sweetness and contentment over which the approaching war is allowed to cast but the lightest of shadows. Mr. Eggleston again shows that he knows his Virginia. His pictures of the days in which each gentleman at the dinner-table carved his own joint or pair of fowls are delightfully intimate. The publishers have given the book dainty dress, and there is a winning portrait of Dorothy in the riding habit she wears so gracefully, and other illustrations by C. D. Williams.

"Droll to be dead in such fine weather," Mr. Watrous has recorded in "Mr. Draper's Diary," one of the eighteen sketches and short stories collected in Young Howson's Wife. The words gather pathetic significance from the fact that their author died but a few days before his book was published, and again and again they are recalled by the tragic note which predominates in most of the other contributions. The tragedy in these is stark, and, were it not for the livelier spirit in which part of the book's contents is conceived, some really clever work would be likely to be passed over. The sketches are a few of them humorously cynical, a few appreciative of the opportunity for satire in the foibles of the day, one an

YOUNG HOWSON'S WIFE. By A. E. Watrous. Quail & Warner, 12mo, $1.50.

idyl reminiscent of the French manner, the rest such bits of description and narrative as the experiences of a newspaper man afford and his skill enable him to put graphically and entertainingly into writing. Mr. Watrous, as an exceedingly active and versatile newspaper worker for a fair share of years, viewed the panorama of city life as a trained observer at close range; and this much may be said for his book: there is not a contribution in it which, by oddity of circumstance, novel point of view, or a breezy fashion of putting things, does not prick interest. The sketches and stories are of all sorts. There has been no attempt to group them, other than to print the line that the first six relate to married, the others to unmarried women.

"The Two Cornets of Monmouth" is an essay at historical fiction, slender, but done with some accuracy of detail and a nice fancy; "Old Coaching Days" uses an account of a journey on the express stage-line from Philadelphia to New York in 1830 as the setting for a wooing; "The Appearance of Evil" puts an old and sombre picture in a new frame; "The Woman who Sang" tells of a last and pathetic triumph; "Oliver Mendwell's Wife" relates the deplorable consequences of woman's acquisition of the franchise. In many respects the titular story, with its eternal question, is the strongest thing in the volume.

Francis Churchill Williams.

GOOD ROMANCES, IF HISTORICAL

HE historical novel entered some

time ago upon the machine-made stage: it became easy to manufacture the article, but, as is always the case with factory work, what was won in quantity of production was lost in quality. The hand-made, artistic product has become rare. The greatest of the many merits

of Mr. Cyrus Townsend Brady's Hohenzollern is that it has all the appearance of being hand-made. To be sure, it belongs to the family of historical fiction, which lives in an atmosphere that in its essence remains always the same, but it has a vigorous, honest spontaneity about it that carries the reader along for the moment being, and leaves him well satisfied at the end. The villain still pursued her" is an old and tried formula, but when no less a personage than Frederick Barbarossa is the pursuer, and when his rivals number no less than two, and these two a Guelf and a Hohenzollern, the situation is somewhat changed. This is a capital bit of writing, which will please many a jaded palate. It has the making of a play in it, but with that we are not concerned for the moment. Suffice it to say that Mr. Brady has evidently found time in his vigorously busy career as a writer to bring to a higher state of merit a method that serves remarkably well as the vehicle of his strenuous material. His characters have individuality, his heroine has charm, his romance has a convincing touch. Hohenzollern is beyond doubt his best work thus far. It sounds a fresh note in a somewhat jaded genre.

Great courage is sometimes required to do a conventional thing, and the novelist who would still tell us tales of the Revolution is certainly daring in following in the footsteps of those who apparently have gleaned that particular field with minute. thoroughness. Mr. Hamblen Sears reaps the reward of his boldness in None but the Brave, which, like Mr. Brady's book, has the merit of freshness, however familiar its subject. It is certainly a strenuous tale, for if ever bravery was tried inces

HOHENZOLLERN. By Cyrus Townsend Brady. Illustrated. The Century Co., 12mo, $1.50.

NONE BUT THE BRAVE. By Hamblen Sears. Illustrated. Dodd, Mead & Co., 12mo, $1.50.

santly, it is in the case of the hero of this book: he deserves his fair damsel, won in circumstances sufficiently romantic to make one rejoice over his victory. The debatable ground between the Colonial and the British lines on the Hudson at Tarrytown and New York furnish the scenes; the moment of Benedict Arnold's attempted treachery the setting, the historical plot into which the author weaves the doings of his imaginary characters. The maid is wed at the beginning of the book, under ingeniously planned conditions; she is won later, amid the clash of arms, with plot and counter-plot, love winning the day over traitors and enemies less historic than Arnold, whom the hero is sent to capture in New York. Washington, Lafayette, Clinton and Howe, the Baroness Riedesel and other historical personages, flit through the pages of this story, which is as well written as planned. It is sound, capable literary work.

Mr. Hamlin Garland is at his best in The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop, strong, direct, dramatic, with the human touch that rings true, and historical. For the American Indian is certainly already a part of history, as is his treatment by the innumerable children of the Great White Father at Washington, who is their guardian. Mr. Garland's interest in the Red Men is not sentimental, much less purely scientific: they are men and women he has known and learned to love, whose wrongs he understands, whose part he takes, so far as that is necessary, in the person of his hero. Being a novelist first of all, however, he does not indict, he does not denounce: he chronicles, and in the recording tells a tale of duty done; of fine, sturdy, honest American manhood; of love triumphing over prejudice without sacrifice of principle. The true note of historical romance rings in the

THE CAPTAIN OF THE GRAY HORSE TROOP. By Hamlin Garland. With portrait. Harper & Bros., 12mo, $1.50.

mastery of the young army officer over the mob which invades the territory on lynching bent; and when the Gray Horse Troop arrives, clad in the authority of the Federal Government, the author stirs the heart of every citizen acknowledging allegiance to Uncle Sam. Mr. Garland's name is not one to be easily submerged in the flood of "current literature." This latest book of his deserves consideration. There is life in it, and human nature, and the still primitive West which its author knows and interprets so well.

Youth, beauty, love-these form the trinity upon which is founded all romance. Mr. Charles Major felt this instinctively when he wrote " When Knighthood Was in Flower," which the three carried to success, notwithstanding the amazing crudity of its writing. Since then this author has wisely taken the trouble to learn his trade, with the consequence that his new book, Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall, deserves serious attention. Mr. Major remains true to the trinity, which is, indeed, palpably of the essence of his talent; but he has improved in method and style to an extent upon which he is to be congratulated. Popular his new story will be there can be little doubt of that, and it will deserve its popularity also in the eyes of those who insist upon literary quality in even the "bestselling" books. It has the true ring. evoked now by a skilful hand, not struck at random. The story is an historical romance, not an historical novel: Dorothy Vernon did elope with John Manners in the days of Good Queen Bess, and brought to the house of Rutland the wide domain of Haddon Hall, but it is a love-story first, last, and all the time, the presence of Elizabeth and Mary Stuart to the contrary notwithstanding. They are but incidental figures in the plot, which never

DOROTHY VERNON OF HADDON HALL. By Charles Major. Illustrated. The Macmillan Co., 12mo, $150.

wanders far in its interest from the proud, imperious, indomitable personality of Dorothy, whose blind friend, Lady Magdalene Stanley, introduces a gentler note of pure affection into the chronicle of her headstrong passion.

There is a great deal of miscellaneous reading in N. M. Meakin's The Assassins, mostly about Saladin and the Crusaders under their great leader Richard; consequently the reader cannot help remembering Sir Walter. Then, for the sake of good measure, there is a heretical sect which believes itself orthodox, of course, a terrible secret society, something like the mixture of Jesuits and thugs in Sue's masterly dime novel, a society which, made up of outcasts of all tribes of Asia Minor and Africa, counts even renegade Franks among its members. The death of Saladin is decreed by this order, whose leaders are not fanatics but clever scoffers, who count among their means of deception even a make-believe Paradise, with houris and all the pleasures promised by Mohammed himself. The old pagan priestcraft, it will be seen, in a later guise. The man who is chosen to be the assassin of the great Sultan is allowed to dwell in this earthly Paradise, ere he is sent upon his misston. But he falls in love with one of the maidens there, whence it follows that Saladin is not murdered. It is all old, familiar material, handled with a certain measure of clever

ness. The battles between Christians and Moslems are the best thing in the book. It is hard to classify or judge it, for it is altogether a question of taste in fiction, and there be tastes many in that field of literature nowadays.

Mary Catherine Crowley returns to old Detroit, the scene of her earlier story, "A Daughter of New France," in her new book, The Heroine of the Strait, which deals with the surrender of the post to the British, and Pontiac's unsuccessful attempt to capture it in 1763. Here, then, is material for a tale of bloodshed and cruelty and danger and treachery, but, on the whole, Englishman and Frenchman and Indian roar you as gently as any cooing dove, for this tale is told by a woman

chiefly for young women, we supposeand love pervades it from beginning to end, the usual love of a daughter of the conquered for a son of the conquerors. Miss Crowley has no pretty talent for the strenuous life in its most primitive expression; she tells of it, but not con amore, for her real interests lead her elsewhere. She is scrupulously and meritoriously exact in her use of historical authorities the facts are all here, but the blood-and-thunder spirit is missing. On the other hand, she tells a sweet lovestory, if not a strikingly original one, and tells it skilfully, while managing to reflect the daily life of the French settlers of the day.

CRITICISM IN DISGUISE MR. R. H. G. WELLS has persuaded

himself that his latest book is a serious attempt at scientific prophecy.

THE ASSASSINS. By N. M. Meakin. Henry Holt & Co., 12mo, $1.50.

THE HEROINE OF THE STRAIT. By Mary Catherine Crowley. Illustrated. Little, Brown & Co., 12mo, $1.50.

Probably enough, therefore, it will be accepted as such by the many readers it deserves and is sure to get. As a matter of fact, however, Anticipations is much more of an achievement in criticism of

ANTICIPATIONS OF THE REACTION OF MECHANICAL AND SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS UPON HUMAN LIFE AND THOUGHT. By H. G. Wells. Harper & Brothers, Svo, $1.75.

to-day than in prediction of to-morrow. For prediction of the kind he has attempted can have real value only on one condition-that the forecaster has an extensive, minute, and accurate knowledge of the past and the present. Now, Mr. Wells knows a good deal about not a few subjects; he has studied and observed industriously, and from given premises he can argue logically as well as audaciously; but his best friend and warmest admirer would hardly claim that he is more than a clever amateur in either science or sociology. His attainments in both were quite sufficient to make his romances something more than mere imaginings, though the imagination they displayed was by far their most valuable element, but it was vastly easier for the physiologist to forgive a romancer for creating beings who were practically all brains than it is for the engineer to pardon a philosopher for seeing in the toy railways of England the limit of possible development in that direction. The error was negligible in the one case; it is fatal in the other, or, if not exactly that, it certainly warrants extreme caution in the acceptance of any conclusion reached by Mr. Wells, and justifies the suspicion that his "anticipations" may be nothing more than guesses founded on imperfect information.

To deny authority to a writer, however, by no means necessitates the denial that he possesses any merit-a most fortunate circumstance, since to question the interest of this book would be the height of absurdity, and no merit is greater than interest. It formulates the problems of the day with intelligent and sympathetic appreciation; it attacks the venerable wrongs and follies of modern civilization with a vehemence which is not the less admirable for being a little reckless, and, unconvincing as are many of its confident forecasts, the majority of them are plausible enough to set the reader-if he be,

as ninety-nine readers out of a hundred are, also an amateur in science and sociology, but not so clever as Mr. Wells-to thinking along new and surprising lines. Than which what can be a pleasanter or fruitfuller occupation?

An illustration of the author's courage as a critic is his declaration that the British army is so hopelessly inefficient as a fighting machine, in the present and future conditions of warfare, that efforts to reform and improve it are an utter waste of time, and that it, with its glorious memories, should be turned into a mere decoration for court functions, while for the nation's real military service, offensive and defensive, a new army should be raised, made up of men who know things. and can do them. Just how this amazing proposition affects the average British mind it is not for an American to say. As Mr. Wells has not yet been mobbed, or even denounced with any seriousness, it may be that the average British mind regarded the proposition as a joke. It is one, in a way, and a joke rendered easily appreciable-to minds not British-by the daily reports from South Africa, where reincarnations of the valiant Braddock are slowly learning the rudiments of their business in the most expensive of schools.

One grievance against existing society to which Mr. Wells returns again and again, and consideration of which forms the substance of his book, is the survival of privileges once honestly earned, but now entirely uncompensated. Princes and peasants he overwhelms with a common condemnation as useless and functionless. The small landholder, so long the object of universal laudation, he groups with the inhabitants of the city slums-the "people of the abyss." He has patience and commendation only for the engineer type of man-the man who has learned the lessons of science, and acquired ability and inclination to do things on a large scale.