the
house." It is not often however that Mr. SPENDER leaves his clauses to
fight it out together like that.

* * * * *

In _The Golden Rope_ (LANE) Mr. J.W. BRODIE-INNES has tried to combine
a tale of mystery and murder with the love-story of a man of fifty;
and, on the whole, it is a fairly successful effort. _Alan Maclean_,
the middle-aged one, who tells the tale, was a celebrated artist, and,
when he made his way to Devon to paint Pontylanyon Castle, he little
expected to find himself involved in a maze of intrigue and adventure.
The castle, however, was owned by a lady of great but unfortunate
possessions. In the first place she had a dual personality (and,
believe me, it is the very deuce to have a dual personality); and,
secondly, she possessed a crowd of relatives (Austrian) who wanted her
estate and were ready to remove mountains and men to get it. I know
nothing of _Mr. Maclean's_ pictures except that I am assured by the
author that they were exquisitely beautiful, but I do know that Mr.
INNES'S own canvas suffers from overcrowding, and, although I admire
the deft way in which he handles his embarrassment of figures, his
task would have been less complicated and my enjoyment more complete
if he had managed to do with fewer. Otherwise I can recommend _The
Golden Hope_ both for its exciting episodes, lavish of thrills, and
for the warning it gives to men of fifty to stick to their pigments,
or whatever their stock-in-trade may be.

* * * * *

_The Cinderella Man_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), "a romance of youth,"
by HELEN and EDWARD CARPENTER, is more suited to the ingenuous than
the sophisticated reader. Its hero is a poet, _Tony Quintard_, very
poor and deathly proud. The scene is set in New York and largely
in _Tony's_ attic verse-laboratory, which _Marjorie_, the rugged
millionaire's daughter, visits by way of the leads in a perfectly
proper if unconventional mood. The idiom occasionally soars into
realms even higher. Thus when _Tony's_ father dies he is "summoned, by
the Great Usher of Eternity." When the gentle _Marjorie_, reading out
one of _Tony's_ efforts--

"Love whose feet are shod with light
Lost this ribbon in her flight;
Rosette of the twilight sky,
Waft to me Love's lullaby!"

(the note of exclamation is _Tony's_), says, "Anyone who can write
songs like that ought to write an opera," you realise that her
heart is sounder th