interminable
series of long letters by different people and of extracts from various
diaries. The book consequently is piecemeal and unsatisfactory. It
fails in producing any unity of effect. It contains the rough material
for a story, but is not a completed work of art. It is, in fact, more of
a notebook than a novel. We fear that too many collaborators are like
too many cooks and spoil the dinner. Still, in this tale of a country
town there are certain solid qualities, and it is a book that one can
with perfect safety recommend to other people.

Miss Rhoda Broughton belongs to a very different school. No one can ever
say of her that she has tried to separate flippancy from fiction, and
whatever harsh criticisms may be passed on the construction of her
sentences, she at least possesses that one touch of vulgarity that makes
the whole world kin. We are sorry, however, to see from a perusal of
Betty's Visions that Miss Broughton has been attending the meetings of
the Psychical Society in search of copy. Mysticism is not her mission,
and telepathy should be left to Messrs. Myers and Gurney. In Philistia
lies Miss Broughton's true sphere, and to Philistia she should return.
She knows more about the vanities of this world than about this world's
visions, and a possible garrison town is better than an impossible ghost-
land.

That Other Person, who gives Mrs. Alfred Hunt the title for her three-
volume novel, is a young girl, by name Hester Langdale, who for the sake
of Mr. Godfrey Daylesford sacrifices everything a woman can sacrifice,
and, on his marrying some one else, becomes a hospital nurse. The
hospital nurse idea is perhaps used by novelists a little too often in
cases of this kind; still, it has an artistic as well as an ethical
value. The interest of the story centres, however, in Mr. Daylesford,
who marries not for love but for ambition, and is rather severely
punished for doing so. Mrs. Daylesford has a sister called Polly who
develops, according to the approved psychological method, from a
hobbledehoy girl into a tender sweet woman. Polly is delightfully drawn,
but the most attractive character in the book, strangely enough, is Mr.
Godfrey Daylesford. He is very weak, but he is very charming. So
charming indeed is he, that it is only when one closes the book that one
thinks of censuring him. While we are in direct contact with him we are
fascinated. Such a character has at any rate the morali