ous, to more exalted anecdotes
connected with the time when her hero had been advanced as far as the post
of Commander of the Royal Yacht _Victoria and Albert_. It is all kindly
gossip, not ill suited to the best-tempered service in the world.
Especially did I like Lady POORE'S gently maternal attitude towards the
many junior officers who figure very attractively in her pages (_e.g._ the
jovial pic-nic party in the Blue Mountains, who slaked their thirst from
the Government rain-gauge, and thereby disorganised the meteorological
records of Jamaica). Certainly the book could not have appeared in times
more apt to give it a hearty welcome.

* * * * *

_The Stars in their Courses_ (UNWIN) is not, as you might possibly suppose,
a work of theatrical history, but just the latest volume in that admirable
series, the First Novel Library. While I am not claiming for it any
startling pre-eminence, it is at least a story of more than ordinary
promise, and one that easily contrived to hold my interest. This is,
perhaps, the more odd, since Miss HILDA M. SHARP has apparently of
deliberate intent called in every one of the three conventions that all
good young novelists are bidden to avoid--the long-nourished revenge, the
missing will, and the super-quixotic self-sacrifice. Naturally the last is
the worst. Thus when old _Mr. Yardley_ (who had, I fancy, more than a touch
of the melodramatic habits of the late _Mr. Dombey_) planned to revenge
himself upon a faithless wife by bringing up his and her son with
extravagant tastes, and leaving him penniless, I winced but endured. When,
repenting of such inhuman intentions, he revoked them by a will, carefully
placed, for subsequent discovery, between the pages of a put-away book, I
still held an undaunted course. But, when _Patrick_, the disinherited
spendthrift, took upon himself, for the thinnest reason, all the blame of
his supplanter's evil doing and kept up this idiotic fraud till the girl of
his heart, and indeed everyone who cared for him, turned their backs in
disdain, then I confess to having felt that Miss SHARP was trying my
forbearance too high. But even so the fact that I could not throw the book
down unfinished seems to show that whoever selects Mr. UNWIN'S _debutantes_
has spotted another winner. If, in short, Miss SHARP will forget all the
novels she may ever have read, and choose for her next story something a
little nearer to life, I believe