l, by a sort of Becky Sharp, who succeeds in becoming Lady Erinwood.
However, a convenient railway accident, the deus ex machina of nineteenth-
century novels, carries Miss Norma Novello off; and everybody is finally
made happy, except, of course, the philosopher, who gets only a lesson
where he wanted to get love. There is just one part of the novel to
which we must take exception. The whole story of Alice Morgan is not
merely needlessly painful, but it is of very little artistic value. A
tragedy may be the basis of a story, but it should never be simply a
casual episode. At least, if it is so, it entirely fails to produce any
artistic effect. We hope, too, that in Mrs. Perks's next novel she will
not allow her hero to misquote English poetry. This is a privilege
reserved for Mrs. Malaprop.

A constancy that lasts through three volumes is often rather tedious, so
that we are glad to make the acquaintance of Miss Lilian Ufford, the
heroine of Mrs. Houston's A Heart on Fire. This young lady begins by
being desperately in love with Mr. Frank Thorburn, a struggling
schoolmaster, and ends by being desperately in love with Colonel Dallas,
a rich country gentleman who spends most of his time and his money in
preaching a crusade against beer. After she gets engaged to the Colonel
she discovers that Mr. Thorburn is in reality Lord Netherby's son and
heir, and for the moment she seems to have a true woman's regret at
having given up a pretty title; but all ends well, and the story is
brightly and pleasantly told. The Colonel is a middle-aged Romeo of the
most impassioned character, and as it is his heart that is 'on fire,' he
may serve as a psychological pendant to La Femme de Quarante Ans.

Mr. G. Manville Fenn's A Bag of Diamonds belongs to the Drury Lane School
of Fiction and is a sort of fireside melodrama for the family circle. It
is evidently written to thrill Bayswater, and no doubt Bayswater will be
thrilled. Indeed, there is a great deal that is exciting in the book,
and the scene in which a kindly policeman assists two murderers to convey
their unconscious victim into a four-wheeled cab, under the impression
that they are a party of guests returning from a convivial supper in
Bloomsbury, is quite excellent of its kind, and, on the whole, not too
improbable, considering that shilling literature is always making demands
on our credulity without ever appealing to our imagination.

The Great Hesper, by Mr. Fran