of the death of RASPUTIN, seem to be as unplausible as those which have been patched from various reports and guesses by writers far from the actual scene.  It is perhaps the very nearness of the author to the source of the host of wild rumours and speculations concerning this strange tragedy that conveys this sense of the impossible.  Have I thereby suggested that the book lacks interest?  On the contrary, it hasn’t a dull or insincere page.

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Little Houses (METHUEN) is not, as you might excusably suppose, a treatise upon the problem of the hour, but a novel.  I confess that, when I read in the puff preliminary that it was “minutely observed” and “drab” in setting, my heart sank.  But Mr. WODEN’S book is not made after that sufficiently-exploited fashion.  He has a definite scheme, and (but for the fault of creating more characters than he can conveniently manage) tells his simple tale with a mature ease remarkable in a first novel.  The plan of it is the life-story of a group of persons in a provincial factory town in those Victorian days when trade-unions were first starting, when the caricaturists lived upon Mr. GLADSTONE’S collars and the Irish Question was very much in the same state as it is to-day.  We watch the hero, John Allday, developing from a Sunday-school urchin to flourishing owner of his own business and prospective alderman.  Of course I admit that this synopsis does not sound peculiarly thrilling; also that as a tale it is by now considerably more than twice told.  But I can only repeat that, for those with a taste for such stories, here is one excellent of its kind.  Whether Mr. WODEN has been drawing upon personal memories for it, writing in fact that one novel of which every man is said to be capable, time and the publishing lists will show.  I shall certainly be interested to see.  Meanwhile the fact that despite his name GEORGE—­always an object of the gravest suspicion—­I accept his masculinity without question is my tribute both to the balance of his style and to the admirable drawing of his hero.

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That gallant and heroic gentleman, the late Mr. CECIL CHESTERTON, proved his quality by his service and death in the ranks of our army.  In such scanty leisure as he could command be wrote, quite casually as it were, A History of the United Slates (CHATTO AND WINDUS).  He seemed to say as Wemmick might have said, “Hullo!  Here’s a nation!  Let’s write its history,” which he at once proceeded to do with immense gusto and considerable accuracy.  Americans will not universally agree with all the views he puts forward.  I myself am of opinion (probably quite wrongly) that I could make a better argumentative case for the North in the Civil War on the question of slavery.  And in his account of the War of 1812-1814 Mr. CHESTERTON spends a great deal of indignation over the burning by the British of some public buildings in Washington, omitting to mention that this was done in reprisal for the burning by the Americans in the previous year of the public buildings of Toronto.  But in the main this history brilliantly justifies Mr. CHESTERTON’S courage in undertaking it, and it is written in a style that carries the reader with it from first to last.  The book is introduced by a moving tribute from Mr. G.K.  CHESTERTON to his dead brother.