Frank Thorburn, a struggling
schoolmaster, and ends by being desperately in love with Colonel Dallas,
a rich country gentleman who spends most of his time and his money in
preaching a crusade against beer. After she gets engaged to the Colonel
she discovers that Mr. Thorburn is in reality Lord Netherby's son and
heir, and for the moment she seems to have a true woman's regret at
having given up a pretty title; but all ends well, and the story is
brightly and pleasantly told. The Colonel is a middle-aged Romeo of the
most impassioned character, and as it is his heart that is 'on fire,' he
may serve as a psychological pendant to La Femme de Quarante Ans.

Mr. G. Manville Fenn's A Bag of Diamonds belongs to the Drury Lane School
of Fiction and is a sort of fireside melodrama for the family circle. It
is evidently written to thrill Bayswater, and no doubt Bayswater will be
thrilled. Indeed, there is a great deal that is exciting in the book,
and the scene in which a kindly policeman assists two murderers to convey
their unconscious victim into a four-wheeled cab, under the impression
that they are a party of guests returning from a convivial supper in
Bloomsbury, is quite excellent of its kind, and, on the whole, not too
improbable, considering that shilling literature is always making demands
on our credulity without ever appealing to our imagination.

The Great Hesper, by Mr. Frank Barrett, has at least the merit of
introducing into fiction an entirely new character. The villain is
Nyctalops, and, though we are not prepared to say that there is any
necessary connection between Nyctalopy and crime, we are quite ready to
accept Mr. Barrett's picture of Jan Van Hoeck as an interesting example
of the modern method of dealing with life. For, Pathology is rapidly
becoming the basis of sensational literature, and in art, as in politics,
there is a great future for monsters. What a Nyctalops is we leave Mr.
Barrett to explain. His novel belongs to a class of book that many
people might read once for curiosity but nobody could read a second time
for pleasure.

A Day after the Fair is an account of a holiday tour through Scotland
taken by two young barristers, one of whom rescues a pretty girl from
drowning, falls in love with her, and is rewarded for his heroism by
seeing her married to his friend. The idea of the book is not bad, but
the treatment is very unsatisfactory, and combines the triviality of the
tourist with the dulness of good intentions.

'Mr. Winter' is always amusing and audacious, though we cannot say that
we entirely approve of the names he gives to his stories. Bootle's Baby
was a masterpiece, but Houp-la was a terrible title, and That Imp is not
much better. The book, however, is undoubtedly clever, and the Imp in
question is not a Nyctalops nor a specimen for a travelling museum, but a
very pretty girl who, because an officer has kissed her without any
serious matrimonial intentions, exerts all her fascinations to bring the
unfortunate Lovelace to her feet and, having succeeded in doing so,
promptly rejects him with a virtuous indignation that is as delightful as
it is out of place.