boilers in _Mr.
Powell's_ mill should hesitate in the fulness of time to explode. But
the lover had the native good sense to be present at the moment of the
inevitable catastrophe and to be the only person seriously damaged; and
since it was his first real lapse from the paths of rectitude, and he
was otherwise amiable, athletic, presentable and brave, who shall
complain if, after confessing in a manly way and being put into a state
of thorough repair, he found happiness in the end? Miss MARGARET
MACAULAY tells her story in a pleasant enough way, and describes with
some skill its idyllic setting (for _Mr. Powell_ was first a country
squire, and only secondly a manufacturer); but since she neither
indulges in satire, social and economic speculation, nor any pretence of
subtlety in psychological probings, there is a curiously old-fashioned
air about her novel. And when I mention that _Mr. Venning_ and _Miss
Powell_ were actually cut off by the tide on a treacherous reef of the
Cambrian coast it will be realised that _The Sentence Absolute_ is a
book for one of those softer moods in which we do not desire to be
startled or stung to profound meditation on the meaning of life.

* * * * *

[Illustration: OUR CURIO CRANKS.

THE MAN WHO TAKES EVERY OPPORTUNITY OF ADDING TO HIS GALLERY OF HATS OF
FAMOUS MEN.]

* * * * *

I hope that Mr. VAUGHAN KESTER, author of _John o' Jamestown_ (HODDER
AND STOUGHTON), is innocent of intent to do the dreadful thing that he
has done. With the book itself I have no fault to find; it is quite a
good historical novel, and tells with a fair amount of excitement the
story of _Captain John Smith_ and the early settlers in Virginia, not
omitting _Pocahontas_. Mr. KESTER'S crime consists not in his novel, but
in the fact that he has probably plunged America into all the horrors of
a new outbreak of historical fiction. A few years ago every adult in the
United States was writing historical novels. Those were the black days
at the beginning of this century, still spoken of with a shudder from
Maine to Tennessee. Gradually the horror spent itself; the country
became pacified. Except for an occasional sporadic outbreak, the plague
was stamped out. It got about that the historical novel was "a dead
one," and young America turned to something else. Now you begin to see
what Mr. KESTER has done. While Messrs. HODDER AND STOUGHTON are
publis