* * * *

In _Theodore Roosevelt: an Autobiography_ (MACMILLAN) the ex-President
shows us how it was done: how he started life as a weakly lad and by
perseverance made himself what he is to-day. But what is he? That is
the insoluble problem. No two people, least of all Americans, seem to
agree on the point. I have heard Mr. ROOSEVELT called everything
from a charlatan to the Saviour of his Country. For myself, if I may
intrude my own view, I have always admired the "Bull Moose." But,
since nobody on this earth, in America or out of it, can really
understand American politics, my respect has been for Mr. ROOSEVELT'S
private rather than his public performances. And in the view that
he is, take him all round, a pretty good sort of man, this book has
confirmed me. He has told his story well. Nor is the Power of the
Human "I" too much in evidence. It is just a simple, straightforward
tale of a particularly interesting life. Whatever your views on Mr.
ROOSEVELT may be, the fact remains that he has been a cowboy, a
police commissioner of New York, a soldier on active service, and
the President of God's Country, suh; and a man must have an unusually
negative personality if he cannot make entertainment for us out
of that. Now nobody has ever suspected Mr. ROOSEVELT of a negative
personality; and it is certain that he has told a very entertaining
story. There are in this volume battle, murder, sudden death, outlaws,
cowboys, bears, American politics, and the author's views on the
English blackbird, all handsomely illustrated, and the price is only
what you would (or would not) pay for a stall to see a musical comedy.
It's a bargain.

* * * * *

Between the rising of the partisans of the Duchesse DE BERRI and the
dawn of the Tractarian movement there would not seem, at first blush,
to be any very close association apart from the coincidence of their
dates; yet in _The Vision Splendid_ (MURRAY), by D.K. BROSTER and G.W.
TAYLOR, a link is furnished in the person of an English clergyman's
daughter, who marries a Frenchman of the "Legitimist" aristocracy, and
is loved, before and afterwards, by an enthusiastic disciple of the
Oriel Common Room. But the link is too slight to give a proper unity
to the tale; and we have to fall back upon contrasts. Even so, the
two modes of life which made up, between them, the experience of the
_Comtesse de la Roche-Guyon (nee Horatia Grenville_)