to hope for the restoration of order and very long after
considerations of personal safety might well have dictated and
justified retreat. Mr. HUGH WALPOLE in his preface points out that
Miss BUCHANAN is the first English writer to give a sense of the
atmosphere of Russia during the New Terror. It is curious, but the
impression she conveys is of something far less formidable than
we have imagined. That may well be due to her high courage which
minimised the ever-present dangers. Another odd impression is that her
accounts of current events, e.g. of the death of RASPUTIN, seem to be
as unplausible as those which have been patched from various reports
and guesses by writers far from the actual scene. It is perhaps the
very nearness of the author to the source of the host of wild rumours
and speculations concerning this strange tragedy that conveys this
sense of the impossible. Have I thereby suggested that the book lacks
interest? On the contrary, it hasn't a dull or insincere page.

* * * * *

_Little Houses_ (METHUEN) is not, as you might excusably suppose, a
treatise upon the problem of the hour, but a novel. I confess that,
when I read in the puff preliminary that it was "minutely observed"
and "drab" in setting, my heart sank. But Mr. WODEN'S book is not made
after that sufficiently-exploited fashion. He has a definite scheme,
and (but for the fault of creating more characters than he can
conveniently manage) tells his simple tale with a mature ease
remarkable in a first novel. The plan of it is the life-story of a
group of persons in a provincial factory town in those Victorian days
when trade-unions were first starting, when the caricaturists lived
upon Mr. GLADSTONE'S collars and the Irish Question was very much in
the same state as it is to-day. We watch the hero, _John Allday_,
developing from a Sunday-school urchin to flourishing owner of his
own business and prospective alderman. Of course I admit that this
synopsis does not sound peculiarly thrilling; also that as a tale it
is by now considerably more than twice told. But I can only repeat
that, for those with a taste for such stories, here is one excellent
of its kind. Whether Mr. WODEN has been drawing upon personal memories
for it, writing in fact that one novel of which every man is said to
be capable, time and the publishing lists will show. I shall certainly
be interested to see. Meanwhile the fact that despite his name