ntertaining dialogues, and has caught the Western idiom,
not only in these set reproductions, but unconsciously in his own
writing, which is singularly straightforward and attractive, nor
burdened with the sort of cleverness which the young graduate is apt to
air. Neither is there anything of the prig in his composition--his book
abounds in reported words which an earlier generation of clerics would
certainly have censored--but when he is saddened by the indifference,
the unplumbed materialism and what he sees as the wickedness of his
scattered flock he might remember for his comfort that valid and sane
distinction of the casuists between formal and material sin. Anyway,
good luck to him for a sportsman!

* * * * *

I have often wondered why so few novelists select the English Lake
District as a fictional setting. I wonder still more after reading
_Barbara Lynn_ (ARNOLD), in which it is used with fine and telling
effect. Miss EMILY JENKINSON'S previous story showed that she had a rare
sympathy with nature, and a still rarer gift of expressing it. _Barbara
Lynn_ does much to strengthen that impression. It is a mountain tale,
the scene of which is laid in an upland farm, girt about by the mighty
hills and the solitude of the fells. Here, in the dour old house of
Graystones, is played the drama of _Barbara_ and her sister _Lucy_; of
_Peter_, who loved one and married the other; of the feckless _Joel_,
and the old bed-ridden great-grandmother, who is a kind of chorus to it
all. Practically these five are the only characters. Of them it is, of
course, _Barbara_ herself who stands out most prominently, a figure of
an austere yet wistful dignity, of whom any novelist might be proud. I
should hazard a guess that Miss JENKINSON writes slowly; one feels this
in her choice of words and her avoidance (even in the final tragic
catastrophe) of anything approaching sensationalism or melodrama. When
all, is said, however, it is for its descriptions that I shall remember
the book. The hot summer, with the flocks calling in the night for
water; the storm on the slopes of Thundergray; and the end of all things
(which, pardon me, I do not mean to tell)--these are what live in the
reader's mind. _Barbara Lynn_, in short, is an unusually imaginative
novel, which has confirmed me in two previous impressions--first, that
Miss EMILY JENKINSON is a writer upon whom to keep the appreciative eye;
secondly, that West