of
well-directed bricks at Officialdom, and concludes his book by giving us
his frank opinion of the way in which the Navy ought to be run. It is
impossible, even if one does not subscribe to all his ideas, to refrain
from commending the enthusiasm with which he writes of those who, in spite
of great difficulties, set to work to invent and perfect the Paravane. If
you don't know what a Paravane is I have neither the space nor the ability
to tell you; but Mr. CORNFORD has, and it's all in the book.

* * * * *

A stray paragraph in a contemporary, to the effect that the portrait of the
heroine and the story of her life in Baroness VON HUTTEN'S _Happy House_
(HUTCHINSON) is a transcript of actual fact, saves me from the indiscretion
of declaring that I found _Mrs. Walbridge_ and her egregious husband and
the general situation at Happy House frankly incredible. Pleasantly
incredible, I should have added; and I rather liked the young man,
_Oliver_, from Fleet Street, whom the Great Man had recently made Editor of
_Sparks_ and who realised that he was destined to be a titled millionaire,
for is not that the authentic procedure? Hence his fanatical obstinacy in
wooing his, if you ask me, none too desirable bride. I hope I am not doing
the author a disservice in describing this as a thoroughly wholesome book,
well on the side of the angels. It has the air of flowing easily from a
practised pen. But nothing will induce me to believe that _Mrs. Walbridge_,
putting off her Victorian airs, did win the prize competition with a novel
in the modern manner.

* * * * *

Mr. ALEXANDER MACFARLAN'S new story, _The Inscrutable Lovers_ (HEINEMANN),
is not the first to have what one may call Revolutionary Ireland for its
background, but it is by all odds the most readable, possibly because it is
not in any sense a political novel. It is in characters rather than events
that the author interests himself. A highly refined, well-to-do and
extremely picturesque Irish revolutionary, whom the author not very happily
christens _Count Kettle_, has a daughter who secretly abhors romance and
the high-falutin sentimentality that he and his circle mistake for
patriotism. To her father's disgust she marries an apparently staid and
practical young Scotch ship-owner, who at heart is a confirmed romantic.
The circumstances which lead to their marriage and the subsequent events
which reveal to e