ially coherent; but at least Mrs.
Steel has given us some exceedingly interesting pictures of a period
that our novelists have, on the whole, unaccountably neglected.

* * * * *

_The Experiments of Ganymede Bunn_ (HUTCHINSON) is like to command a
wide audience. Its appeal will equally be to the lovers of Irish scenes,
to those who affect stories about horses and hunting, and to the
countless myriads who are fond of imagining what they would do with an
unexpected legacy. It was this last that happened to _Ganymede_, who was
left seventeen thousand pounds by an aunt called _Juno_ (the names of
this family are not the least demand that Miss Dorothea Conyers makes
upon your credulity). My mention of horses and Ireland shows you what he
does with his money, and where. It does not, however, indicate the
result, which is a happy variant upon what is usual in such cases. You
know already, I imagine, the special qualities to be looked for in a
tale by Miss Conyers--chief among them a rather baffling inability to
lie a straight course. If I may borrow a metaphor from her own favourite
theme, she is for ever dashing off on some alluring cross-scent. More
important, fortunately, than this is the enjoyment which she clearly has
in writing her stories and passes briskly on to the reader. There's a
fine tang of the open-air about them, and a smell of saddle-leather,
that many persons will consider well worth all the intricacies of your
problem-novelists. I had the idea that her honest vulgar little legatee
and his speculations as a horse-breeder might make a good subject for a
character-comedian; but I suppose the late LORD GEORGE SANGER is the
only man who could have produced the right equine cast.

* * * * *

The component elements of _The White Rook_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL) may be
summarised in the picturesque argot of Army Ordnance somewhat as
follows: Chinamen, inscrutable, complete with mysterious drugs, one;
wives, misunderstood, Mark I, one; husbands, unsympathetic (for purposes
of assassination only), one; _ingenues_, Mark II, one; heroes, one;
squires, brutal, one; murders of sorts, three; ditto, attempted,
several. The inscrutable one is responsible for all the murders. Only
the merest accident, it seems, prevents him from disposing of the few
fortunate characters who survive to the concluding chapters of the
story. He narrowly misses the misunderstood wife (now a