y _roles_ the work of the principals.

Yes, undoubtedly a brilliant performance.

T.

[Illustration: BLIGHTED TROTH.

_Caroline Ashley_ . . . . . . . Miss IRENE VANBRUGH.

_Robert Oldham_ . . . . . . . Mr. LEONARD BOYNE.]

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Huntsman._ "GIVE US A BIT O' ROOM! YOU
WAS NEARLY IN MY POCKET THAT TIME."

_Flat-race Jockey._ "ROOM? WHY, I WAS NEARLY HALF A
LENGTH BEHIND YOU."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerics._)

THE evolution of the long novel appears to be following that of the
human race. Instead of the individual, the family now threatens to
become the central unit. I confess that this prospect, as evidenced by
_Three Pretty Men_ (METHUEN), fills me with some just apprehension. Mr.
GILBERT CANNAN has set out to tell how a Scotch family, three brothers,
a mother, and some sisters in the background, determines to make its
fortune in a South Lancashire city (very recognisable under the name of
_Thrigsby_), and how eventually all but one of them succeed. It is a
long book and a close; and the dialogue (which of its kind is good
dialogue, crisp and illuminating), being printed without the usual
spacing, produces an indigestible-looking page that might well alarm a
reader out for enjoyment. The book, in its record of the progress of the
three, _Jamie_ and _Tom_ and _John_, is really more a study of social
conditions in mid-Victorian Manchester than a work of imagination. But
there is clever character-drawing in it, especially in _Jamie_, who from
a worldly point of view is the failure of the group, making no money,
and drifting through journalism to emigration; and in the finely
suggested figure of _Tibby_, the ill-favoured kitchen drudge, who is his
real centre of inspiration. But first and last it remains a dull
business, partly from an entire lack of humour, partly from the absence
of any settled plan that might help one to endure the dreariness of the
setting. Mr. CANNAN certainly knows his subject, and few novels indeed
have given me, rightly or wrongly, a greater suggestion of
autobiography. But for once the art of being exhaustive without being
exhausting seems to have eluded him.

* * * * *

If you want really to get a picture of war as she is waged by an obscure
unit in the thick of the dirtiest, dampest and mo