ing banality if they were not
concerned with such very nice people. On the whole I don't think it
quite fair to the spinster lady to have published her notes. They may
well have been painstaking jottings to provide material for polite
conversation and have sounded much better than they read in cold
print. For myself the real heroine of the book is _Maria_, the poet's
wife, who, on being waked and adjured by her spouse to get up and
strike a light for that he had just thought of a good word, replied
in un-Victorian mood, "Get up yourself! I have just thought of a bad
one."

* * * * *

_Love--on Leave_ (PEARSON) is the sufficiently expressive title that
Miss JESSIE POPE has chosen for a small book of little courtship
tales. You never saw a volume of its size, more packed with love,
which is shown leaping walls, laughing at locksmiths and generally
making the world go round in its proverbial fashion. The pace of the
revolutions may be found a little disconcerting. You will perhaps be
inclined to amend the title and call the collection "Love on _Short_
Leave," to mark the regularity with which the respective heroes and
heroines fall into each others' arms at the end of every dozen pages
or so. As a matter of fact, the incident that is to my mind the best
of the bunch is an exception to this rule of osculation--a happily
imagined little comedy of a young wife who thought to avoid the visit
of a tiresome sister-in-law by betaking herself for the night to
the branches of a spreading beech. Whether in actual life this is a
probable course of conduct need not exercise your mind; at least not
enough to prevent your enjoyment of her arboreal adventure, which
comes, as I say, with the more freshness as a break in what might else
be a surfeit of proposals. In effect, a gallant little florin's
worth of _fiancailles_; though, if you wish to avoid feeling like a
matrimonial agency, you will be well-advised to take it by instalments
rather than in bulk.

* * * * *

Among the pacific warriors in the great 1914-18 struggle there is
probably none who did better work, often under conditions of the
gravest peril, than Mr. G.M. TREVELYAN for the Red Cross in Italy.
Disqualified both by age and health from joining the army of attack,
he threw himself into the task--a labour of love--of tending the
sick and wounded of that country which he knows so well and of whose
greatest mo