om
boasting, I could easily have borne it if she had tried me a little
higher. "_Ma tante_," for instance, got rather upon my nerves before
the heroine had finished with it. The plot (early nineteenth century)
is concerned with one _Ronnay de Maurel_, a soldier and admirer of
NAPOLEON, and in consequence anathema to most of his own family.
The heroine was betrothed to _Ronnay's_ half-brother, as elegant and
royalist as _Ronnay_ was uncouth and Napoleonic. It is a tale of love
and intrigue for idle hours, the kind of thing that the Baroness does
well; and, though she has done better before in this vein, you
will not lack for excitement here; and possibly, as I did, you will
sometimes smile when strictly speaking you ought to have been serious.

* * * * *

"Economy, I hate the word!" said a much-harassed housekeeper recently:
echoing, I fear, the sentiments of the great majority of the British
people. Nevertheless, let no one be deterred by a somewhat forbidding
title from reading Mr. HENRY HIGGS'S _National Economy: An Outline
of Public Administration_ (MACMILLAN). Although written by a Treasury
official--a being who in popular conception is compounded of red-tape
and sealing-wax and spends his life in spoiling the Ship of State by
saving halfpennyworths of tar--it is not a dry-as-dust treatise on the
art of scientific parsimony, but a lively plea for wise expenditure.
Mr. HIGGS is no believer in the dictum that the best thing to do with
national resources is to leave them to fructify in the pockets of
the taxpayers--"doubtful soil," in his opinion; nor is he afraid that
heavy taxation will kill the goose with the golden eggs. It may be
"one of those depraved birds which eat their own eggs, in which case,
if its eggs cannot be trapped, killing is all it is fit for." The
author is full of well-thought-out suggestions for saving waste and
increasing efficiency in our national administration. The introduction
of labour-saving machinery, the elimination of superfluous officials,
the reduction of the necessary drudgery which too often blights the
initiative and breaks the hearts of our young civil servants--all
these and many other reforms are advocated in Mr. HIGGS'S most
entertaining pages. I cordially commend them to the attention of
everyone who takes an intelligent interest in public affairs, not
excluding Cabinet Ministers, Members of Parliament, and political
journalists.

*