whose _Portraits of the
Seventies_ the present volume is intended as a sequel) that he "used
to drive about London in a carriage picked out in colours that did not
suggest that he sought seclusion." I have no space for the barest list
of the sitters in Mr. HUTCHINSON'S crowded picture of a time rich
in character, his treatment of which aims rather at covering a
wide ground than at intimacy of detail. To mention but one, it is
interesting to compare his General GORDON with the recent presentment
of him by another hand. If the result is more creditable to Mr.
HUTCHINSON'S kindliness than to his wit, it may serve as an apt
comment on the whole book.

* * * * *

_Beauty and Bands_ (CONSTABLE) is not, as you might excusably suppose,
a treatise on syncopation or the decline of Jazz, but takes its title
from a verse in the Book of Proverbs. Really what the story most
illustrates is the extent to which a clever and experienced writer
can clothe a wildly impossible plot with some aspect of reality. Miss
ELLEN THORNEYCROFT FOWLER assuredly does not lack courage; having
thought out a "good situation" (which it certainly is) she was not
going to be put off by any considerations of probability. I can't
resist some sketch of it, even at the risk of spoiling your pleasure.
Suppose a lovely but selfish wife, bored to the point of flight from
a well-intentioned husband, then involved in a railway smash which
disfigures her beauty, destroys her memory and incidentally reforms
her character; let her by plausible circumstance be mistaken for
another traveller in the wrecked train and under a new name and
personality meet her husband, fall in love with him, but be compelled
to reject his suit by the presumption that his vanished wife may still
be living--as I hinted, the result in situations is enough to satisfy
the most exacting, the only real drawback being that not all Miss
FOWLER'S pleasantly persuasive efforts can make me believe a word of
it. If she had dared a little more, and inflicted the husband with
blindness, impaired hearing and slight mental decay, I would have
stretched a point and supposed that, during a protracted courtship, he
might never have recognised his own wife. Lacking these concessions I
can only report an entertaining but preposterous absurdity.

* * * * *

Those of us who read _With the Persian Expedition_ know something
about the Hush-Hush Army;