and heart-wringing thing to see, though now in the telling it seems no great matter. There is a time of year when it is fitting that the lambs should be separated from the ewes; and it ever touches one nearly to see the flock of poor lammies when first the dogs come near to them to begin the work, and wear them in the direction in which they are to depart. All their little lives the lambs had run to their mothers at the first hint of danger, Now they have no mother to flee

to, and you can see them huddle and pack ira frightened solid bunch, quivering with appreension, all with their sweet little winsome faces turned one way. Then, as the dogs run nearer to start them, there comes from them a little low, broken-hearted bleating, as if terror were driving the cry out of them against their wills. Thus it is with the lambs on the hill; and so also it was with the bairns that clung together in a cluster on the brae face."

A MAD MADONNA, AND OTHER STORIES. By L. Clarkson Whitelock. Boston Joseph Knight Co. $1.00.

Those who are acquainted with Clarkson Whitelock's earlier work will find a pleasant surprise awaiting them in her new volume of stories. There was no hint in that work that she would startle us by-and-bye with a new note, or develop latent power of imagination in striking a fresh vein. That kindest of critics, Mr. Edmund C. Stedman, is said to have stood as sponsor for these stories, reference to which was made in the columns of our "Chronicle and Comment" last month, and the critic has no reason to fear that his kindly judgment will be reversed. "A Mad Madonna" is a fine figment of the imagination, clothed in a beautiful style which is more suggestive than expansive, tinctured with the sad, melancholy grace that haunts the sojourner in the streets of Rome, and coloured with the soft lights and shadows and radiant beauty of fair Italia. The dumb patience and longing of the "mad madonna" is full of a great pathos that rends the heart, and is eloquent with at voice that melts to tears and moves us to an infinite pity-a pity that does not depress and cast down, but which purges and clarifies the mind. The mysterious madonna and her bambino, wandering these hundreds of years in search of the Great Master Raffaello, to whom she sat for his wonderful paintings, and the culmination of her desire, is a striking invention, and wrought with cunning art. The climax reached in the young artist's studio, where the "mad madonna" sits once more as she imagines to her Master, Raffaello, is conceived and executed with a rapidity and force which carries us breathlessly to the dénouement. The shad

owy outline of the wonderful Mother and Child of Raphael grows every moment more distinct :

"He took the brushes dreamily in his hand; but it was moved by a magic force, and there grew before him the marvellous colours of the Madonna, by no power of his own. The cloud of cherubs came once more about him. The room was full of them. The canvas was covered with them. The mother and child stood motionless, all the exquisite living beauty of their faces seeming to pass from them to the picture. . . . It seemed to him that his hand was moved as by the angels of God.

The earth rocked beneath him, and the blue sky, as he saw it through the window, had turned blood-red.

"He painted on and on, with no other consciousness than that the earth rocked and that the sky had turned to blood. Once a faint sigh came from the child's lips, and the mother caressed it softly. When she moved, it was as if an earth

quake shock went through him. The room with its occupants, the canvas with its miracle, faded from his consciousness; a red stream of blood gushed from his lips, and his head fell backwards.

He heard as from another world, Addio, Raffaello,' and was dead."

None of the other stories reach the same height of artistic perfection or are impelled by the same imaginative force to that lasting form which now and again singles out a short story for distinction. Through the half-dozen tales there runs a weird strain of madness more or less mysterious and inexplicable. "Ignoto" comes next in interest and literary execution to "A Mad Madonna," and after that "A Bit of Delft," which is charming in its quaint Dutch setting. "Love's House" is a new and not altogether satisfactory rendering of a time-worn theme, and Apollo" is ingenious but a little far-fetched. As for the last story, "From Another Country," it scarcely merits the honour which has been given to it by including it with the other stories in book form.

It is

amusing, and is written with vivacity, but it is out of harmony with the preceding contents of the volume, and strikes a discordant note. If it were only for the sake of the first and longest story, the book is well worth purchase; all the stories, however, are attractive and have a peculiar interest. The book is well. printed and bound, and has several halftone illustrations.

JOAN HASTE. By H. Rider Haggard. New York: Longmans, Green & Company. $1.25. Perhaps Mr. Haggard or another will dramatise Joan Haste. The main incidents would have a fine scenic effect on the boards; the fall of Graves from the tower, Joan's heroic method of reviving him, the oath of the villain Rock, the confession of Levinger, and the tragic final sacrifice of the heroine, personating her old lover to save him from the maniacal fury of her husband-none of these could fail to be effective. We confess we like our melodrama best in dramatic form. The facts are there before us, and just because no fine-drawn explanations are given, we accept them. But Mr. Haggard is enough of a modern novelist to write as if he had got inside people's hearts and behind their motives, and with a melodramatic plot this is always unfortunate, especially so when you insist on your characters being, save for their histories, every-day kind of folks that you might meet in any railway train. Mr. Haggard, who is skilled in reading the clear-marked lines of savage natures, fails when he tries subtle investigation of his contemporaries and compatriots. Perhaps he is a little too simple-minded. Perhaps he has sought his material not in life but in romances, those of an earlier, more rhetorical generation. At least, while we regard the plot as a most effective melodrama, we don't much like the filling-up. And, indeed, he has piled the agony of the story rather needlessly, even for scenic effect. If Levinger had spoken a little sooner; if Rock had gone mad a little sooner; if- The fact is, the glamour of Mr. Haggard's romance makes us forget that we are looking at real life; but he insists on playing, with somewhat inappropriate material, the stern realist; and all the explanations which would have established Joan's legitimacy, her heirship, and brought about her marriage with

THE SECRET OF THE COURT. By F. Frankfort Moore. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. $1.25.

The leading lady of the first story, after five years of marriage, finds her soul too great for her surroundings, her individuality pooh-poohed, and her aspirations neglected by a husband immersed in the business of the State. So she makes up her mind to sell this great soul, and thinking Mr. Stuart Forrest would be a liberal purchaser, joins him in a voyage to the West Indies. The neglectful husband mysteriously turns up, behaves affably to Mr. Forrest, and gives his wife uncomfortable doubts about her projected bargain. The husband is diabolically clever, and sees through stone walls; he is a magnanimous cynic on a great scale. In the end the wife changes her mind about the best purchaser for her valuable commodity-which has gone down in price in the estimate book of her mind however-and she and her husband have an adventurous time together floating on a raft and on a derelict ship, till a steamer saves them for the domestic felicity which is now to begin in earnest for them.

The Secret of the Court belongs to the class of story that never seems to go out of fashion, but of which Bulwer was the completest master. It deals with the mysteries of life and death, their unveilers, and the victims of their experiments. The secret of the restoration of life was found in this case, after prolonged study, in an Egyptian temple of incredible age. The description of the temple, by-the-bye, is striking, and the weird effect it produces is brought about by no cheap devices. Unfortunately, we think, the experiment is tried a young English woman who has died, leaving her relatives bitterly sorrowing; it would have kept the story

on

in far better tone had the East and some fair, mysterious Oriental been the scene and the victim. For victim she must be called. Therein lies the point of the story. The secret referred merely to the physical life, and had no power in the restoration of the soul. The rash Englishman had not listened to the wise warning of the mysterious Albaran; but he learnt through remorse "that when Death knocks at the door he should be admitted as an honoured guest. There are worse friends than Death."

THE COMING OF THEODORA. By Eliza Orne White. Boston Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $1.25.

The old-time woman the new woman is still a chrysalis, but when we get a pattern of progress upon a groundwork of conservatism, what are we going to do about it? This question is that to which the household

of Theodora were reduced after fourteen months of her constant presence with them. A woman of genuine New England faculty, and the certainty which is not unfrequently found in the same section, that there is but one right way to do a thing, and that she knows it; a woman who has made a name and position for herself in the world, and who gives up both, to play the thankless part of a useful maiden aunt in her brother's home, out of her indefeasible

love for him and her longing for family

ties; a woman with very little tact, and with too much sense to be sensitive, or ever to suspect that she is in the way, yet with a certain brightness and charm of her own, which her chronicler has perfectly succeeded in photographing

-such is Theodora. The wholesome

ness of the story, in these days of erotic novels, is something for which to be grateful; the characterisation is well contrasted and vivid; one does so truly appreciate the blankness of Edward and Marie when their studio was "tidied" out of any possibility of ever working in it again! Yet it is also quite comprehensible that Frank Compton's heart should be vanquished by the coming of Theodora. But that the marriage should be broken off because his small daughter so vehemently opposed itisn't it almost too much? To be sure, a New England conscience is capable of anything, but would the opposition of Essie have had that or the contrary ef

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Mrs. Hinkson, author of A Cluster of Nuts, and one or two volumes of poems, life, and with considerable success. has now ventured upon a novel of Irish awkwardness in the construction; but be sure, there are crudities and a certain while the merits of the present book these will disappear in her future work, Her touch is a light one, which will will reappear and to better advantage. probably strengthen with use without losing its delicacy; and there is a simplicity and directness about her way of telling her story that remind one of Miss Austin. Nora is a very fascinating though one cares rather less for Hiland delightful little heroine; and liard, his attraction for her is perfectly comprehensible. We doubt, however, whether Nora proved altogether as charming in married life as she was as a sweetheart; the average man, we fear, would find her somewhat of a responsi bility; and it is perhaps quite as well that the pen of her chronicler halted when it did. But the main value of the book and its chief charm is in its thumb

nail sketches of Irish life; the visit to the convent, with the laughing nuns, the stately Mother Superior, and the poor family who were equipped, in honour of Christmas, with garments which the sisters themselves had fashioned, with results to the masculine habiliments which can better be imagined than described.

"Lanty was tellin' me, miss, how ould Joe Geraty an' the wife an' kid was dressed by the nuns for Christmas. He says Joe's pepperin' for the day after to morrow till he pawns the duds. Och, God help them craturs o' nuns, it's too inno

cent they are! Let alone they makes the clothes themselves, and the throusers is all bags. Lanty says the men in the town ud give Joe a quare life if he appeared in them.”

The woman who took away her neighbour's character by publicly praying for her as "a great sinner and an ould reprobate," is the heroine of another sketch. The book is by no means a tendenz roman, for which we are told it is our duty to be grateful; nevertheless our gratitude will be increased, if in her next book Mrs. Hinkson lend the grace and delicacy of her style to a picture of Irish social conditions from which those of us unfamiliar with Irish affairs may draw our own conclusions and accumulate our own tendencies.

ZORAIDA. A Romance of the Harem and the Great Sahara. By William Le Queux. Illustrated. New York: F. A. Stokes Company. $1.50.

Every reader with an ounce of romance in him will bitterly resent the last chapter in this thrilling story. Zoraida is the most ravishingly beautiful and marvellous woman; her capacity of poetical expression is extraordinary, and

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her occult powers of the rarest. love her is most interestingly dangerous; thus does she address the daring

Cecil Holcombe

"Yonder knife and potion will bind thy soul unto mine; thou wilt become one of the companions of the Left Hand, whose habitation is the shadowless Land of Torment, where the burning wind scorches, and water scalds like boiling pitch.` "Is there, then, no hope for those who love thee?" he asks.

None," she replied, sighing. "Neither rest, mercy, nor the Garden of Delights can fall to the lot of him who loveth me."

And yet after all this, and a great many other warnings, Cecil and the darkly romantic Zoraida were actually married at St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, and lived in a Kensington flat; Zoraida wore a tailor-made gown, and had crowded “at-homes." This is the greatest outrage on the romantic feelings that we ever remember to have had practised upon us in the reading of fiction. But, omitting the last chapter, and putting one's self into a fittingly youthful mood, and determined to call the pseudo-poetical language sublime, let us acknowledge the attractions of Mr. Le Queux's story. It is packed full of incident, fighting, loving, plotting, dark crime, treasure-finding, and around all is the mysterious air of the desert.

Something may have died out of Mr. Bret Harte since he wrote The Luck of Roaring Camp-the power or the opportunity of gathering fresh and piquant incident from wild, rough life to wake up his tame readers from their sleepiness and shake off a prejudice or two in the process. But though some of the freshness has gone from his stories, they have never grown dull. And with years there has come a too little recognised compensation for any loss of youthful vigour. His understanding of human nature has grown in subtlety and in delicacy, till to-day we look confidently to his books for interesting studies in more sophisticated character. His plots are good in their conception, but in their development he is more easily surpassed than in the strong, minute handling of his personages, whom he an

alyses with a care that is never finickThe characters here are mostly old friends. ing. In the war between North and South, Clarence Brant, Alice Benham, and the lively Susy are tested to the utmost by the storm and stress of the times. The new heroine, Miss Faulkner, is of course, seeing who has fashioned her, no mild pattern of propriety; but really her asperity on her first appearances we are much more inclined to resent than were Clarence Brant and, evidently, Mr. Bret Harte. It is difficult to resign ourselves to a favourite hero marrying a shrew, however heroic she might be on occasion.

A COMEDY IN SPASMS. By "Iota" (Mrs. Mannington Caffyn). New York: F. A. Stokes Company. $1.00.

The title is a mystery even at the end of the story. The heroine, a young Australian, has bouts of deep discontent, which perhaps gave her physical pain, but, as a rule, she is level-headed and not at all excitable. not at all excitable. Titles are trifling matters, however. On the whole, "Iota' has put better work into this book than into her others; it will probably raise her worth in the esteem of critical readers, though it may not reach the popularity of A Yellow Aster. The story itself is interesting. The young Aus

tralian, beautiful, practical, energetic, admiring above all things physical force and comeliness, finds a way out of pecuniary difficulties weighing on her family by marriage with an intelligent, upright, spirited man. But he is physically weak, and a martyr to headaches. He is worth ten of her, and she dimly guesses it, but is too much of a young savage to grasp the idea openly. Meanwhile, the young Adonis and Hercules combined, who had hitherto been unavailable, turns up free. Writhing in her bonds, she would have burst them had it not been for the virtue of Hercules-Adonis. So the young beauty and the middle-aged headachy student have to shake down as best they may. There is a curious jumble, as there always is in Iota's books, of good common sense and prejudices, shrewd understanding of human nature, and limitation of vision. She is gaining conciseness in the form of her stories; but her caste instincts will always obscure humanity to her.

THE CARBONELS. By Charlotte M. Yonge.
New York: Thomas Whittaker. $1.25.
THE LONG VACATION. By Charlotte M.
Yonge. New York: Macmillan & Co. $1.00.

For more years than some of us can remember Miss Charlotte Mary Yonge, who comes of a Hampshire family, and first became known to the world as the author of The Heir of Redclyffe, has poured forth volume after volume, from a pen whose sources seem to be perennial; volumes of history, biography, and, above all, of fiction; earnest, helpful, inspiring, pure and refreshing, and all imbued with a strong High Church feeling. She has educated, through the pages of the Monthly Packet, a circle of readers in what, after all, if just a little bornées, are noble and chivalric ideas of religion and ethics; she has kept up with the times herself, in the most wonderful manner, and all this she has done in the most absolutely unassuming and thoroughly feminine way that it is possible for us to imagine. She has advertised her stories, to be sure, but there is a dearth of anecdotes illustrative of her personality, and on remarkably few occasions does her photograph stare at us from the public prints.

Of the two books now before us, one -The Carbonels-has, from her, the value of a historical monograph upon

the social conditions of the English rural districts, in the first quarter of the present century, upon the state of the Church, and the attitude of the landlords. It is quiet in tone, despite some stirring scenes, and though there is absolutely no plot, and the characters are rather types than persons, the story is both valuable and interesting.

The Long Vacation is a continuation of the adventures of that composite family who have grown up from the intermarriage of the personages of the author's earlier novels. Descendants of the people whom one remembers in Beechcroft, The Pillars of the House, The Daisy Chain, The Castle Builders, and several others, all connected by as intricate a bond of cousinhood as one could find in any county of Old Virginia, meet, converse, act in private theatricals, and further intermarry, in these pages, which to Miss Yonge's veteran readers have the affectionate value of news from old friends. One must confess, however, that the climax is not well done; it was well imagined, no doubt, to lay young Gerald in the grave beside his father, at "Fiddler's Ranch" by the same hand that had saved him from the Indians; but Miss Yonge's orderly English imagination being inadequate to the task of conceiving American Western life, she was forced to finish her tale through the always clumsy medium of letters from a spectator; and the result is what might be expected. Nevertheless, the book is a delightful one, and in any case Miss Yonge wrote it!

WHEN CHARLES THE FIRST WAS KING. By J. S. Fletcher. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co. $1.50.

Mr. Fletcher has written a delightful tale of adventure. Not only so, but there is a literary charm in its pages permeating its quaint, fascinating style, its intricate plot, and its characterisations which lays hold of the imagination and wins a grateful acknowledgment. The scene of the story is laid in Yorkshire, where the forces of King and Parliament, Cavalier and Roundhead come together in several hard-fought battles. It was in one of the fiercest conflicts on the field of Marston Moor that the hero, Will Dale, a great fellow six-feet-five, met Cromwell. The picture of the great soldier is followed up strongly. Indeed,