are too cleanly
severed by the estranging Channel to be brought into sharp antithesis,
except in the heart of the one woman. And, since it is difficult to
understand why anyone so British in her independence and aloofness
should have surrendered her heart to the first good-looking Frenchman
who came her way, we never get to be on very intimate terms with that
organ. The construction of the story tends to break up the action and
make its interest desultory. While we are spending a hundred odd pages
at one time and fifty odd at another in Paris and Brittany we forget,
very contentedly, about Oriel; and while we are in residence at Oxford
we are practically cut off--no doubt, to our spiritual gain--from
the things of France. The authors seem to belong to the solid
old-fashioned school that had the patience to spread itself and leave
as little as might be to the imagination. I suspect one of them
of supplying the foreign information and the other of being the
correspondent on home and clerical affairs. I don't know how many of
them--if any--are women, but I seem to trace a female hand in some of
the domestic details. But the book contains strong matter, too--both
of narrative and characterization; as in the dying of _Armand de la
Roche-Guyon_, and the picture of his lover, _Madame de Vigerie_.
And there is something of the inspiration of the Holy Grail in
that "Vision Splendid" which heartens _Tristram Hungerford_ to make
sacrifice of his passion that he may give his soul unshared to the
service of the Church.

* * * * *

Until I had read Mr. A. RADCLYFFE DUGMORE'S book and revelled in his
most wonderful photographs I had never wished to be a caribou; but now
that I have fully digested _The Romance of the Newfoundland Caribou_
(HEINEMANN) there is only one animal whose lot in life I really envy.
This is due not to a natural sympathy with caribous (for, as the
author says, "In England it is quite the exception to find anyone
who knows what the caribou is, unless he happens to have been to
Newfoundland or certain parts of Canada," and I was never one of the
exceptions), but to the extraordinary manner in which Mr. DUGMORE
has imparted the affection that be himself entertains for his chosen
beast. Although he shoots with no more formidable a weapon than a
camera, the dangers and risks that he has run would appal many of
the sportsmen whose aim is to destroy and not to study the lives of
animal