hands of royalty not merely the customary Cashmere shawl of Court tradition, but also a copy of Diaries in the Highlands inscribed ’To the Lady Plowden Eton, with the kindest wishes of Victoria R.I.’, a mistake that the Queen, of all persons in the world, is the least likely to have committed.  Perhaps, however, we are treating Miss Bayle’s Romance too seriously.  The book has really no claim to be regarded as a novel at all.  It is simply a society paragraph expanded into three volumes and, like most paragraphs of the kind, is in the worst possible taste.  We are not by any means surprised that the author, while making free with the names of others, has chosen to conceal his own name; for no reputation could possibly survive the production of such silly, stupid work; but we must say that we are surprised that this book has been brought out by the Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.  We do not know what the duties attaching to this office are, but we should not have thought that the issuing of vulgar stories about the Royal Family was one of them.

From Heather Hills is very pleasant reading indeed.  It is healthy without being affected; and though Mrs. Perks gives us many descriptions of Scotch scenery we are glad to say that she has not adopted the common chromo-lithographic method of those popular North British novelists who have never yet fully realised the difference between colour and colours, and who imagine that by emptying a paint box over every page they can bring before us the magic of mist and mountain, the wonder of sea or glen.  Mrs. Perks has a grace and delicacy of touch that is quite charming, and she can deal with nature without either botanising or being blatant, which nowadays is a somewhat rare accomplishment.  The interest of the story centres on Margaret Dalrymple, a lovely Scotch girl who is brought to London by her aunt, takes every one by storm and falls in love with young Lord Erinwood, who is on the brink of proposing to her when he is dissuaded from doing so by a philosophic man of the world who thinks that a woodland Artemis is a bad wife for an English peer, and that no woman who has a habit of saying exactly what she means can possibly get on in smart society.  The would-be philosopher is ultimately hoist with his own petard, as he falls in love himself with Margaret Dalrymple, and as for the weak young hero he is promptly snatched up, rather against his will, by a sort of Becky Sharp, who succeeds in becoming Lady Erinwood.  However, a convenient railway accident, the deus ex machina of nineteenth-century novels, carries Miss Norma Novello off; and everybody is finally made happy, except, of course, the philosopher, who gets only a lesson where he wanted to get love.  There is just one part of the novel to which we must take exception.  The whole story of Alice Morgan is not merely needlessly painful, but it is of very little artistic value.  A tragedy may be the basis of a story, but it should never be simply a casual episode.  At least, if it is so, it entirely fails to produce any artistic effect.  We hope, too, that in Mrs. Perks’s next novel she will not allow her hero to misquote English poetry.  This is a privilege reserved for Mrs. Malaprop.