he Lovers_ (HEINEMANN),
I cannot determine whether the clever writer was reproducing or
inventing--she begins so convincingly with the statement that it was
her first chapter, itself an article in _The Century_, describing the
life of The Lovers as she watched it from her window, that brought
about her friendship with the originals, and thus her knowledge of
their further history. Anyhow, true or not, it is the kind of story
that has been going on all round us in these days of love and heroism.
Mrs. PENNELL first began to watch her pair of _amoureux_ in their
attic, which was overlooked from her higher window (most readers
could probably make a shrewd guess at its postal district) in those
seemingly so distant years when the young champions of artistic London
used to meet at a certain _cafe_, wonderfully clad, to consume vast
quantities of milk. Then came the War; the boy-husband enlisted, went
to the Front--and the end is as we all have known it many and many
times. In this little book the too familiar story is given with a
restraint and absence of striving after effect that leave me, as I
say, uncertain whether its appeal is due to art or actuality. But in
either case Mrs. PENNELL has told it very well.

* * * * *

"Father, what is the difference between Tories and Radicals?"
"Radicals, my dear, are the infamous crew who wish to destroy all the
noble institutions for which the Tories would give their life-blood."
"And which are you, Father?" I have inflicted this ancient (and, I
always think, rather touching) scrap of dialogue upon you because it
exactly illustrates my impression of _The Soul of Ulster_ (HURST
AND BLACKETT). In other words, this little book, written as ably and
attractively as you would expect from the author of _The First Seven
Divisions_, is really less a dispassionate survey of the Home Rule
difficulty than a piece of special pleading for the Northern cause.
According, therefore, to your own attitude towards this problem will
characters occupies her rural stage--an old grandmother, be your
estimate of Lord ERNEST HAMILTON'S arguments. To the bigoted (or
confirmed) Orangeman they will seem revelation; to the confirmed (or
bigoted) Nationalist they will as clearly seem rubbish. Even I, who
admit the justice of the author's contentions, fancied now and again
(as in the matter of the "Peep-o'-Day Boys," for example) that a
slightly more generous admission of faults on h