_A Garden of the Gods_ (Alston
Rivers) is just a modern version of one that we all used to be told in
the nursery? Moreover, Beauty and the Beast had been used once at least
in this fashion before Miss Edith M. Keate happened on the idea. But
that does not make the present any the less an amiable, quietly
entertaining story, if a little obvious. The characters have never
anything but a very distant resemblance to life; and their speech is for
the most part that of a lady novelist's creations rather than of human
beings. But those who demand "a good tale," with beauty properly
distressed till the last page, and there beatified with the knowledge
that "the darkness that surrounded her was scattered for ever," will
find some highly agreeable pasturage in _A Garden of the Gods_.

_The Modern Chesterfield_ (Hurst and Blackett) is a book that I enjoyed
only after overcoming a considerable and partially-justified prejudice.
In the first place, I generally dislike stories told in epistolary form;
in the second, I almost always detest books that their publishers
advertise by selected "smart sayings." But I must honestly admit that
_The Modern Chesterfield_ conquered me--chiefly, I think, by its
good-nature. The writer of these very up-to-date paternal admonitions is
supposed to be one _Sir Benjamin Budgen, Bart_, "of Budgen House, Fleet
Street, E.C. and Cedar Court, Twickenham, Middlesex." The addresses tell
you what to expect--a satire on the methods of popular journalism. This
in fact is what you get, but the satire is so neat (and withal so
genial) and Mr. Max Rittenberg has so happy a knack of conveying
character in a few lines that you are simply bound to enjoy reading him.
One other facility he has that deserves the highest praise: he tells his
story, in letters that emanate from one side only, without wearisome
repetition. There is, I mean, hardly any of that "You say in your last
that--and ask me whether--etc.," which in similar volumes always bores
me to ill-temper by its unlikeness to the letter-writing customs of real
life. An explanatory line or two at the head of each epistle puts you in
possession of the facts--that _Norman_, the son to whom they are
written, has left Cambridge, is proving unsatisfactory, has married an
Earl's daughter, and so on. That known, the letters tell their own tale.
They reveal the writer too (I refer to _Sir Benjamin_): shrewd,
clear-headed, vulgar and of bull-dog courage. The disasters