Readers of fiction are now pretty familiar with the theme of the decay of an English upper middle class family. It is a pleasure to report that Miss Streatfeild's "Caroline England" is a variation which almost, if not quite, restores to this theme something of its original freshness.

There is little in the structure of this book which is original. Even that august and banal intruder, the royal funeral …, trails its sable across her closing pages. How often English novelists have used the obsequies of Victoria, Edward, and George to punctuate or pronounce the decline of some family! But even this tired device seems permissible here; for Miss Streatfeild has restraint, delicacy, integrity.

Her novel falls into two parts; and, if these two parts could have been reconciled, there would have been no denying its distinction. The first part tells of Caroline's Victorian childhood. It has all that...