at lifts it out of
tushery into romance. She wields a picturesque and courtly style,
sometimes indeed a trifle too charged with metaphor to be altogether
manageable (as for example when she speaks of "pouring oil upon the red
embers of a score unpaid"), but for the most part admirably pleasing to
the ear. Her antique figures are alive; and the whole tale goes forward
with a various and high-stepping movement and a glow of colour that
reminded me of nothing more than that splendid pageant one follows round
the walls of the Riccardi Palace in Florence. Of course the journey ends
in lovers' meeting and the teaching of his place to the evil-minded. The
fact that this latter was called _Jaufre_, a name that I would wish
kindlier entreated, is almost my only complaint against a lively and
entertaining story which more than once rises to real beauty.

* * * * *

Given a plot of the conventional order I dare say it is best to make
very little fuss or mystery about it. So, at any rate, "KATHARINE TYNAN"
seems to think, for after about page 32 of her latest book, _Since First
I Saw Your Face_ (HUTCHINSON), there is really almost no guessing left
to do, the authoress seeming principally concerned to ensure a smooth
passage for one's prophecies. Thus, while the unknown son of a secret
marriage, happening by good luck to thrash the ostensible claimant to
the title and heroine, gets that successful start in the early pages
that is so necessary to his happiness in the last, and the lady never
really looks like straying far into disconcerting opinions of her own,
even the rival himself obliges us by throwing up the sponge just when
the game should really begin. All this is soothing enough, but it is
also very thin stuff; and the addition of a ghostly ancestress, who
lures her descendants to midnight assignations by smiling at them out of
a LELY painting, does not stiffen things much. The fact is that away
from such a purely Irish subject as, say, "Countrymen All," Mrs. HINKSON
really has not much to tell. Sweeney's New York Stores do not harmonise
at all well with her atmosphere of wistful tragedy. The effect suggests
a soap-bubble trying to cake-walk.

* * * * *

When cattle-ships put forth to sea
From Montreal across the Atlantic,
The life on board would not suit me,
Nor you, I think. The cattle frantic,
The tough steel plates beneath the might
Of c