ll the
ultra-domestic school of fiction. Here is another example, _Married
Life_ (CASSELL), in which Miss MAY EDGINTON, following the mode,
unites her hero and heroine at the beginning and leaves them to
flounder for our edification amid the trials of double blessedness.
I am sorry to say it, but her great solution for the eternal problem
of How to be Happy though Married appears to be the possession of a
sufficient bank-balance to prevent the chain from galling. In other
words, not to be too much married. All this love-in-a-cottage talk has
clearly no allurement for Miss EDGINTON. With her, the protagonists,
_Osborne_ and his young wife, are no sooner wed than their troubles
begin--troubles of the domestic budget, of cooking and stove lighting
and the rest. (By the way, for all its carefully British topography,
I strongly suspect the whole story of an exotic origin, chiefly from
certain odd-sounding words that seem to have slipped in here and
there. Does our island womanhood really talk of a _matinee_, in the
sense of an article of attire? If so, this is the first I hear of
it). To return to the _Kerr_ household. In the midst of their bothers
_Osborne_ is given a post as traveller in motor-cars at a big salary.
So off he goes, while _Marie_, like the other little pig of the poem,
stays at home, and enjoys herself hugely. When he returns she hardly
cares about him at all; and might indeed have continued this attitude
of indifference--who knows how long?--had not some Higher Power
(perhaps the Paper Controller) decreed a happy ending on page 340. A
lesson, I am sure, to us all; but of what character remains ambiguous.

* * * * *

In such a title as _The North East Corner_ (GRANT RICHARDS) there is
something bleak and uninviting, something suggestive of the bitter
mercies of an average English April, that is by no means confirmed in
the story itself. Windy it certainly is--it runs to 496 pages--for I
do not remember any other recent volume where the characters really do
talk so much "like a book," and though, of course, this may be a true
way of presenting the customs of a hundred years ago, one feels that
it can be over-done. _Frank Hamilton_, the magnanimous friend, facile
politician and all-but hero, was the worst offender, not only making
love to the _Marquis's_ unhandsome daughter in stately periods, and
invariably addressing pretty _Sarah Owen_, who was much too good for
his and the