In spite of the similarity of some of the subject-matter, "Caroline England" is in every way far ahead of Miss Streatfeild's previous novel, "Shepherdess of Sheep"; and, by reason of its ambitiousness, is in a different category from her earlier works of fiction. To start with, she has taken in hand the question of her English. There is no resemblance between the loose discursiveness and, often, wearisome meandering that spoiled so much of the narrative of the other book and the tight, balanced prose of this. Miss Streatfeild's dialogue was good before. Now it is excellent.

It is a well integrated, smoothly planned novel. If one could have approached it without reference to its predecessor, it would have been regarded solely as yet another in the long line of fictional obituaries of the England that began, presumably, somewhere in the Eighteen Seventies and passed away, lingeringly, with King...