t it confirms its
title; which, indeed, is about the highest praise that a critic can
bestow.

* * * * *

I am not at all sure how Mr. FRANK NORRIS, were he still living, would
have regarded the resurrection of this early attempt at realism, as
taught us by M. ZOLA--_Vandover and the Brute_ (HEINEMANN). He would, I
fancy, have softened some of the crudities and allowed a touch of humour
to lighten the more solemn passages. There are pages here that remind
one that _Vandover's_ creator was also the author of those magnificent
novels _The Octopus_ and _The Pit_; but I cannot, in spite of them,
place much confidence in the truth of _Vandover's_ life history. We are
told that he enjoyed his bath, and usually spent two or three hours over
it. When the water was very warm he got into it with his novel on a rack
in front of him and a box of chocolates conveniently near. Here he
stayed for over an hour, eating and reading and occasionally smoking a
cigarette. Can you wonder after this that poor _Vandover_ went utterly
to the bad, and is to be found on the last page doing some horrible work
with a muck-rake whilst an innocent child points an obvious moral? So
certain was _Vandover's_ doom, once that box of chocolates had been
mentioned, that I grew impatient and a little weary. If this is an age
of realism in fiction I think that _Vandover and the Brute_ should make
plain to any reader why, very shortly, we are going to have an age of
something else.

* * * * *

Do not allow yourself to be put off by the title of _Captivating Mary
Carstairs_ (CONSTABLE)--now published for the first time in England. It
is not, as you might assume, a costume novel of eighteenth-century
tushery. This is what I expected; but as a matter of fact Mr. HENRY
SYDNOR HARRISON has written a tale about as unlike this as anything well
could be. It is a capital tale, too; American to the last epithet, and
crammed so full of the unexpected and adventurous that never (except
once) can you anticipate for a moment what is going to happen. The chief
adventure is abduction, the subject of it being _Mary Carstairs_, whose
father was separated from her mother, and, being a lonely old man with
a longing for a daughter's affection, took this melodramatic course to
secure it. In furtherance of his end he secured the services of
_Maginnis_, genial swashbuckler, and _Varney_, young, susceptible and
heroic,