ths of the mother and
step-mother, the shabby London lodgings, the fall of _Veronica_, the
selfishness of _Beat's_ boy-friend, and the loathsome trade of her
lover--these, and more horrors and lapses beside, are all taxed for
the general effect in so able and vivid a fashion that the authoress
succeeds to admiration in making her readers nearly as uncomfortable
as her characters, long before the climax is reached. The end comes
rather less wretchedly than could have been expected, but even so
surely this is genius partly run to seed. The greatest tragedies are
not written in these minor keys. _Beat_, woman and heroine, is so
admirable that one fain would know her apart from all this unredeemed
welter of sex and selfishness.

* * * * *

I confess I should have thought that the fictional possibilities
of being as like as two peas to Royalty were fairly exhausted. But
apparently Mr. EDGAR JEPSON does not share this view; and it is only
fair to admit that in _The Professional Prince_ (HUTCHINSON) he has
contrived to give a novel twist to the already well laboured theme.
_Prince Richard_ (precise nationality unstated) was so bored with
the common round of his exalted duties that, hearing of a convenient
double, he engages him, at four hundred a year and pickings, to
represent him at dull functions, and incidentally to pay the requisite
attentions to the young woman, reported by photograph as depressingly
plain, whom political considerations have marked as the _Prince's
fiancee_. When later one of the characters points out to His Highness
that this conduct showed some lapse from the finer ideals of taste, I
am bound to say that I could find no words of contradiction. However
the originality arrives when _John Stuart_, the deputy, instead of
falling in love with the bride-elect in Ruritanian fashion, develops
a marked liking for the prosaic side of his job, and insists upon
lecturing his supposed relations upon the political crisis of the
moment. Capital fun this. When the _fiancee_ in her turn proved wholly
different from the photograph I permitted myself to hope that we
were in for a double masquerade--but this was to expect too much.
Still, Mr. JEPSON has handled his wildly-preposterous plot with
great verve; and even if the central situation is one that has been
often encountered before, this only proves again that HOPE springs
eternal.... But I wish he had avoided the War.

*