one unchanging honorable opinion' which has always prevailed about his stories.

as

His own life seemed to him like a fairy story. 'I had, and still have, a feeling,' he says, though I were a poor peasant lad over whom a royal mantle is thrown.' He tells his own story in this book exactly as he had told the stories of the Constant Tin Soldier or the Wild Swans, and he himself, in his courage, piety, and simplicity, is very much like one of his own heroes, or perhaps, rather. one of his own heroines. But he was certainly odder himself than any of his own inventions, and it is astonishing that Mary Howitt's translation of his autobiography should not have been reprinted for eighty years; we must be grateful to those who have restored it to us. His life had been adventurous, and gave him a good story to tell, and no one could tell a story more happily and innocently than he.

Crazy Pavements, by Beverley Nichols. London: Jonathan Cape, 1927. 7s. 6d.

[Oliver Baldwin in the Daily Herald]

'I AM watching the final and utter decay of a large section of the British aristocracy. Soon the only respectable people left will be impoverished Scottish families who live surrounded by dogs in Inverness. The whole spectacle gives me great satisfaction, especially as I believe I may claim to be regarded as one of the plague spots myself.' (Lord William in Crazy Pavements.)

I am assured that the kind of events recounted in this new novel by the author of Twenty-Five are not called from the realms of Oriental imagery, but are based on well-known facts. Well, if that is so, it is well worth reading, for it shows us that when we are unable to see any reason for the continuance of a parasitic class our attitude is not without foundation.

If readers of our paper are interested to know how a certain sect of high society lives, or how 'gossip' writers invent their paragraphs, or how petty and small and vicious the lives of these aristocrats can be, this book will enlighten them. It is good to see that one of our most notable young authors has seen through the glamour of wealth and fashion, and that he is beginning to say so. Perhaps later his pen may be a little more condemning and his future novels break away from treatment of subjects which, though they may bring wealth to himself, do not necessarily bring encouragement or satisfaction to his readers. Nevertheless, the book, though cruel, is

witty and brilliantly written. Mr. Nichols describes events with ease. He carries one along. Yet the whole time one is asking, 'Can these things be?'

It seems incredible that this sect of the comfortable class can lead such lives without a care or a thought for the extraordinary troubles of the present day. That such flaunting of wealth, that such misuse of wealth, can be so thoughtlessly carried on with over a million unemployed in this small island, and two million on the Poor Law, with deep class-hatred stirring the very vitals of society, seems incredible when we realize that these same people have read the history of the French Revolution, and know something of Russia in 1917.

I received only one comfort from the reading of this very clever book, and that was with a fervent sigh and the outspoken assertion, "Thank God all these people vote Tory!'

Marriage of Harlequin, by Pamela Frankau. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1927. 73. 6d.

[Saturday Review]

THIS is so good a 'first novel' that we are tempted to predict its successor will be even better. The story is mainly of interest as exhibiting the reactions of a young girl to post-war conditions. Lionel de Vitrand (there is a faintly Family Herald flavor about the author's names) would never have married Sydney Sherne had not the latter been possessed of a considerable fortune, and about a year after the marriage he told her as much. By this time, however, Lionel was very much in love with Sydney, while Sydney had always been in love with Lionel. But pride kept Sydney dumb. The result is that husband and wife plunge recklessly into the feverish amoral life of modern London, and disaster is only averted by what seems the merest of chances. There is a half-promise of future happiness in the concluding sentence of the story. Miss Pamela Frankau has a keen eye for character, and if she would consent to ration her epigrams she would achieve something very like realism.

BOOKS MENTIONED

GELEY, DR. GUSTAVE. Clairvoyance and Materialization. Translated by Stanley De Brath. London: Fisher Unwin, 1927. 30s.

The Allinghams, by May Sinclair. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1927. $2.50.

THAT May Sinclair understands children cannot be denied. She has proved it by her past work, and she adds a further convincing proof in the shape of The Allinghams. This delightful family live in an English country house - Father and Mother, Aunt Martha, and the six children. When the scene opens the eldest is fifteen and the youngest five; by the end of the book all have grown up.

There is something businesslike in the way we are given a brief description of each person who is to play a prominent part in the story; we feel that we know them all, and instinctively the mind approves of the way their characters develop according to the signs visible in childhood. Clever or plodding, healthy or abnormal, it does n't matter - all are interesting.

There is a continual sparkle and fire about the social life of this family. Father and Mother stand for one set of ideals. Aunt Martha is frequently in opposition to them, and the children love all three. Some get married, and their lovemaking fits as it should the conception of their character that Miss Sinclair has built up. Others have a harder road to travel, even a surprising road, but eminently plausible. But the outstanding feature of this novel is the dialogue. Here the author is at her best; she scintillates, and is frequently brilliant.

The discriminating and sophisticated reader will find much that is pleasing in The Allinghams. It is a return to the manner of Anne Severn and the Fieldings.

The Pope of the Sea, by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1927. $2.50.

WHEN Blasco Ibáñez speaks, there is color in his voice, drama in his gestures, power and passion in his whole being as he raises arms to high heaven as if to tear the very stars out of the firmament and strew them quivering at the feet of an enchanted or terrified audience. When he writes, this fiery eloquence is not missing from the printed page. The present book, an 'historical medley,' as the jacket accurately puts it, reveals the self-exiled rebel from Spain devoting his flashing pen to a grateful subject, for here we

have the glamorous story of Avignon in the romantic days of the Great Schism. The Pope of the Sea is Don Pedro de Luna, Benedict the Thirteenth, a figure at once heroic and pathetic.

The skill of the practised novelist, backed by sound research, is lavished on the tale. But Ibáñez presents it as a story related by a modern young Spanish scholar to a wealthy and beautiful Argentine widow who forbids love-making and demands Church history instead! These two appear briefly every fifty pages or so, impertinent intruders to the reader honestly absorbed in the adventure of Don Pedro, and cold comfort to any seeking the sophisticated contemporary love story which the opening chapter promises. This clumsy device to give a pseudomodern scene is irritating and ill-advised.

From Man to Man, by Olive Schreiner. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1927. $2.50.

It gives an old admirer of Olive Schreiner a curious thrill to read after the author's death a book so reminiscent of The Story of an African Farm in power, truth, beauty, and in almost unforgettable tragedy. Both works are 'human documents' rather than novels, and both deal with the inner lives of two women, one of whom in each book was largely drawn from the author herself. In the African Farm it was Lyndall; in From Man to Man it is Rebekah. The childhood of Rebekah is frankly autobiographical, as we are told by Olive Schreiner's husband in the touching 'Introduction,' which reveals how little the author's wedded life could have resembled the tragedy of Rebekah's marriage. The dice have been loaded against the two sisters by whatever sinister destiny watched over their youth and maturity, but one finally ceases to believe that fate could be so uniformly cruel to such highminded women.

In From Man to Man there are too many pages of didactic discussion, there is too much philosophizing, too much moralizing. Again, as in The Story of an African Farm, the author loves to express her views in unnaturally long letters written by one character to another. The men and women are almost symbols of definite virtues and vices-Truth, Purity, Sincerity, Hypocrisy, Meanness, Cruelty - rather than human beings. But in spite of obvious faults, this unfinished book, pieced together after its

Latterday Symphony, by Romer Wilson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927. $2.00.

Latterday Symphony makes excellent reading. The action takes place within just twenty-four hours, during which we follow the hero from a musicale in Mayfair to a night club, a movingpicture theatre, and finally to his apartment for tea. He has returned from a sojourn in Spain, where he hoped to cure himself of a hopeless passion-only to be reintroduced to the object of his affections at the musicale. She finds him changed, agrees to reconsider her former decision and let him know her conclusions the next day at tea. The restlessness and agonizing suspense of the intervening hours, spent in the company of a mulatto tenor who has also capitulated to the heroine's charms, carry one along at a swift pace to the final crushing disappointment.

Perhaps the best scene is that of the night club, which is treated with unusual humor and felicity. Though the siren and the Negro are so consistently inconsistent as to render them, if not quite preposterous, at least unconvincing and nebulous, the result is nevertheless a clever, sophisticated, and at times moving portrayal of the self-consciousness and hypersensitiveness of the present generation.

Bolshevist Russia, by Anton Karlgren. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1927. $3.50. ORIGINALLY published in Swedish, this study by the professor of Slavic at the University of Copenhagen is an exceedingly useful contribution to the understanding of Russia as it is after some eight years of Bolshevist government. From 1904 to 1916 Professor Karlgren visited Russia every year; he was at one time correspondent for the Swedish press; finally, for some months in 1924, he again studied conditions on the spot.

The author is less concerned with the theories of Bolshevism than with its practice and results. Unlike the majority of recent observers, he was able to travel extensively in the remoter parts of the country, and by this means avoided the distortion of impressions from which those who see only the 'show' spots in the large cities invariably suffer. His pages teem with quotations from Pravda, Izvestia, the speeches of Lunacharskii, and other trustworthy Bolshevist sources, and his conclusions are therefore doubly arresting.

Members of the Party exercise a power every whit as tyrannous as the Tsaristic rule, the condition of the peasant is worse, and, in the words of the Minister of Public Education, 'in seven years no such advance has been made as may safeguard us against the continual increase in barbarism.' It must not be supposed that the conclusions are drawn with partiality; on the contrary, it is hard to find a phrase that does not show a purely dispassionate and critical attitude. As an intimate and vivid picture of Russian life as it was up to the end of 1925 the book is admirable.

Revolt in the Desert, by 'T. E. Lawrence.' New York: George H. Doran Company, 1927. $3.00.

THERE are probably not half a dozen people in the world who are really qualified to review this book. Both critic and reader, therefore, can judge and enjoy it only as a fine piece of writing and a record of adventure. And here again we are up against it. Lawrence's achievements in Arabia, though they turned, as he himself should have foreseen, to dust and ashes, have no modern parallel. Before them we can only wonder, ignorantly. His curious prose is not so baffling, for it stems directly from Doughty, and, though it is not so original or spontaneous as some of his admirers would have us believe, it is marvelously suited to its subject wild tribes pursuing a will-o'-the-wisp across desert wastes, rushing from one, unheard-of place to another, eating impossible food and drinking sewer water. Not every reader will fall under the author's spell, but those who do will be amazed with what enthusiasm they will follow him from one adventure to the next.

I'll Have a Fine Funeral, by Pierre La Mazière. Translated from the French by Jacques Le Clercq. New York: Brentano's, 1927. $2.00. THIS daring French novel is a clever piece of irony on that shibboleth of success, 'Behave yourself, be earnest, and work hard.' In it the Janus-faced author looks at life with the wistful seriousness of a threnody while he laughs at it with a diabolical cackle of cynicism. His treatment of the war is startlingly sane, although typical of much French post-Armistice thought. This worldly novel, certainly not intended for the squeamish moralist, has been regrettably spoiled by a translation which is clumsy and often crude, but when the work is considered in its entirety the finesse exhibited in the general handling of material outweighs these minor defects. Its keen satire and Gallic frankness make the reading of this book a distinct pleasure.

What I am saying to you is this, that we have got in China a large number of Chinese who, having been to America, have absorbed the ideas which America gives, and, having got back to China, repeat some of the shibboleths they have heard in the United States about British dealing and British imperialism, and they become leaders in an anti-British movement which has for its object the getting of something which never belonged to them, and which their race never created — namely, the European cities of China. - Sir Auckland Geddes

mad dogs, if you can believe me, and regarded water with horror. And they were terrible.' Perhaps when the Americans go wet again, they too will become nicer, and will not, for instance, ask us for any more money. - Cyrano