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I confess I should have thought that the fictional possibilities of being as like as two peas to Royalty were fairly exhausted.  But apparently Mr. EDGAR JEPSON does not share this view; and it is only fair to admit that in The Professional Prince (HUTCHINSON) he has contrived to give a novel twist to the already well laboured theme. Prince Richard (precise nationality unstated) was so bored with the common round of his exalted duties that, hearing of a convenient double, he engages him, at four hundred a year and pickings, to represent him at dull functions, and incidentally to pay the requisite attentions to the young woman, reported by photograph as depressingly plain, whom political considerations have marked as the Prince’s fiancee.  When later one of the characters points out to His Highness that this conduct showed some lapse from the finer ideals of taste, I am bound to say that I could find no words of contradiction.  However the originality arrives when John Stuart, the deputy, instead of falling in love with the bride-elect in Ruritanian fashion, develops a marked liking for the prosaic side of his job, and insists upon lecturing his supposed relations upon the political crisis of the moment.  Capital fun this.  When the fiancee in her turn proved wholly different from the photograph I permitted myself to hope that we were in for a double masquerade—­but this was to expect too much.  Still, Mr. JEPSON has handled his wildly-preposterous plot with great verve; and even if the central situation is one that has been often encountered before, this only proves again that HOPE springs eternal....  But I wish he had avoided the War.

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[Illustration:  Manager of Automatic Dreadnought Pianofortissimo Company (enthusiastically to Literary Gentleman who has written a moving appeal to the public in favour of the Company’s goods). “MY DEAR SIR, THIS IS MAGNIFICENT.  IT ALMOST MAKES ME DECIDE TO BUY ONE OF THE THINGS FOR MYSELF.”]

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“WHERE MY CARAVAN HAS RESTED.”

    “Wanted, modern Detached Villa Residence, inside tram
    lines.”—­Northern Whig.