s cradle to be a notable leader of men. His marriage
with _Thorey_ was a romance of as exquisite a flavour as any that our
sophisticated age can show, and its tragic end wrings the heart with
its infinite pathos. By some singular discretion Mr. HEWLETT has
chosen to eschew the least approach to Wardour-Street idiom, and
this gives the narrative a simplicity, a sanity and a vivid sense of
reality which are extraordinarily more effective than the goodliest
tushery, of which flamboyant art Mr. HEWLETT is no mean master. I
am sure he has chosen this time a more excellent way. There are
transcriptions and transcriptions. This is brilliantly done.

* * * * *

I cannot help regretting that Miss RHODA BROUGHTON has not thought fit
to publish her total fictional tonnage (if without disrespect I may
employ a metaphor of the moment) on the title-page of her latest
volume. Certainly the tale of her output must by this time reach
impressive dimensions. And the wonder is that _A Thorn in the Flesh_
(STANLEY PAUL) betrays absolutely no evidence of staleness. If the
outlook here is a thought less romantic than in certain novels that
drew sighs from my adolescent breast, this is a change inherent in
the theme. For the matter of the present work is a study in conjugal
tedium. _Parthenope_ (name of ill-omen) was one of those unhappy and
devastating beings who go through life fated to bore their nearest
and dearest to the verge of lunacy. So that her marriage to poor
well-meaning _Willy Steele_ had not endured for more than a matter of
weeks before the wretched man fled from his newly-made nest, with the
heart-cry (uttered to _Parthenope's_ female relatives, themselves
too sympathetic to resent it), "I cannot stand her any longer!"
This unfortunate _debacle_ is very ingeniously contrasted with the
courtship of another couple, immune from the curse; and the whole
story is as fresh as it is amusing. Perhaps it might have been told in
fewer words; at times the slender theme seems a trifle overladen. But
probably your true Broughtonians (who must be reckoned in thousands)
would condemn such a suggestion as heresy; and, if they be satisfied,
as they certainly will be, then all is well.

* * * * *

It is a tribute at once to the art of her treatment and the actuality
of her theme that, after reading the delicate little study of modern
romance that ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL calls _T