a Cambridge professorship through amorous complications, next by living many years in the Far East, and finally by settling upon a remote moorland farm (locality unspecified) with a taciturn Chinaman and an Airedale for his only companions.  This and other contributory circumstances, for which I lack space, just enabled me to admit the situation as possible.  Naturally, therefore, when a befogged Zeppelin laid a couple of bombs plonk into the homestead, the ex-professor experienced a mental as well as a bodily shake-up.  I had no complaint either with the transformation that developed John Baltazar from the only outsider to apparently the big boss of the War; while the scenes between him and the son of whose existence he had been unaware (a situation not precisely new to fiction) are presented with a sincere and moving simplicity.  So far so good, even if hardly equal to the author’s best.  But the catastrophe and the melodramatics about War-Office secrets, preposterously put on paper, and still more preposterously preserved, simply knocked the wind of reality out of the whole affair.  A pity, since Mr. LOCKE (though I prefer him in more fantastic vein) has clearly spent much care upon a tale that, till its final plunge, is at least lively and entertaining.

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The amateur of lace, whether as expert or owner, will be pleasantly stirred by learning that another book has been added to the already large bibliography of a fascinating subject in The Romance of the Lace Pillow (H.H.  ARMSTRONG), published at Olney from the pen of Mr. THOMAS WRIGHT.  Olney, of course, has two claims on our regard—­COWPER and Lace, and it is now evident that Mr. WRIGHT has kept as attentive an eye on the one as on the other.  His book makes no pretence to be more than a brief and frankly popular survey of the art of lace-making chiefly in Northamptonshire and Bucks, and to it he has brought a wealth of various information (which the average reader must take on trust) and an enthusiasm that can be judged by his opening statement that “lace ... is the expression of the most rapturous moments of whole dynasties of men of genius.”  So now you know.  Even those of us who regard it with a calmer pulse can take pleasure in the many excellent photographs of lace-work of different periods and schools that adorn Mr. WRIGHT’S volume.  As for the letter-press, though I will not call the writer’s style wholly equal to his zeal, his chapters are full of interesting gossip, ranging from the late KATHERINE OF ARAGON (the originator, according to one theory, of English lace-making), to some jolly stuff on the literature of Bobbins and the old Tells, or working-songs, sung by “the spinners and the knitters in the sun, and the free maids that weave their threads with bones.”  I have a fancy that the whole volume has been more or less a labour of love (never certainly did I meet an author with such a list of helpers to thank), so I am glad to think that its reward in one sense is already assured.