f Notting Hill. There are some frightful battles in the
adjacent states of Kensington and Bayswater, and, after varying
fortunes, the Notting Hill Army is defeated, the Napoleon becomes again
the poet of Notting Hill, while his citizens have developed from grocers
to romanticists, from barbers to fanatics.

That there might be in the future a Napoleon of Notting Hill is highly
improbable, that London will ever return to the pomp and heraldry of the
Middle Ages is not at all likely; but that in a hundred years Notting
Hill will be different is quite possible. If it is not likely that there
will be fights between Bayswater and Notting Hill, there may at least be
battles in the air unthought of; it may well be that its citizens in
times of peace will take a half-day trip, not to Kew Gardens or to
Hampton Court, but to Bombay and Cape Town.

'MANALIVE'

One of the strangest complications that man has to face is the criminal
mind. It is so complex that no society has ever understood it; very
often it has not taken the trouble to try. No method of punishment has
stamped out the criminal; no reformers, however ardent, have freed the
world from those who live by violence, kill by violence, and are
themselves killed by violence. If crime is a disease, then to treat
criminals as wrongdoers is absurd. If every murderer is insane, then
hanging is nonsense; if a murderer is sane, then sanity is capable of
being more revolting than insanity.

'Manalive' may, perhaps, be called a philosophy of the motive for crime;
it may be a pseudo philosophy--at least it is an entertaining one--which
cannot be said about all serious attempts at moulding the universe into
a tiresome system, that is uprooted generally by the next thinker. The
book opens with a very strong gale that ends with the arrival at a
boarding house of a man who can stand on his head and has the name of
Innocent Smith. He is somewhat like the person in the 'Passing of the
Third Floor Back,' in that he revolutionizes the household, who cannot
determine whether he is a lunatic or not; anyhow, he falls in love with
the girl of the house. Unfortunately, rumour--a nasty, ill-natured
thing--has it that Smith is a criminal. Evidence is collected, and a
Grand Jury inquire into the charges, which include Bigamy, Murder,
Polygamy, Burglary. It looks as if Smith is in for a very uncomfortable
time, and the wedding bells are a long way from ringing.

The second part of the book is