Arm, Foots—By Compton Mackezsic:
Cassell, London.
To find so accomplished a writer! testing himself with a digression in the farcical vein is stimulating to the curiosity of the novel reader. The experiment is delightfully justified and, to those who have not read "Poor Relations," comes asa charming surprise. The _author maintains his incisive power of] characterization, q little of its severity, and throws over all a comfortable, friendly,—go-as-you-please cloak which may be best described as the modern running] of the Happy-ever-after school. Through the plot of a freak legacy. whereby @ number of ordinary and: not very attractive people are compelled to live together in one house Tans an amusing description of the pranks of the younger general Miraculously, the community thus assembled develops qualities which it had not before realized arbitrarily it possessed, and virtue blooms where petty selfishness once disfigured the individual dispositions: of the As for Mr. Compton Mackensie's children, they are altogether delightful; ho gives them no halos—they are essentially modern—but they are far more inspiring than the Victorian angels of the "Eric, or Little-by-Little" phase. The best way to give the reader an insight into Mr. Mac-Kenzie's shrewd _appreci young people's psychology is to quote the following characteristic passage—the two parties in the Gislogue are both on the first run and are travelling to-
Roing. to be as cold as Mackenzie deserves our
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.