often inspired amateur, approaching each new part with the zest of a brief but brilliant enthusiasm.  I suppose no popular favourite ever had his name associated with more good stories and wit, original and vicarious.  Despite some entertaining extracts from his commonplace book I doubt if this side of him is quite worthily represented; at least nothing here quoted beats Lady TREE’S own mot for a mendacious newspaper poster—­Canard a la Press.  Possibly we are still to look for a more official volume of reference; meantime the present memoir gives a vastly readable sketch of one whose passing left a void perhaps unexpectedly hard to fill.

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In the prefatory chapter of Our Women (CASSELL) Mr. ARNOLD BENNETT coyly disclaims any intention of tackling his theme on strictly scientific principles.  The warning is perhaps hardly necessary, since, apart from the duty which the author owes to his public as a novelist rather than a philosopher, the title alone should be a sufficient guide.  One would hardly expect a serious zoologist, for instance, in attempting to deal with the domesticated fauna, to entitle his work Our Dumb Friends.  The book is divided in the main between adjuration and prophecy.  As a result of their emancipation from economic slavery, Mr. BENNETT expects women—­women, that is to say, of the “top class,” as he calls it—­to adopt more and more the role of professional wage-earners; but at the same time he insists that they do not as yet take themselves seriously enough as professional housekeepers.  How the two functions are to be combined it is a little difficult to see, but apparently women are to retain a profession as a stand-by in case they fail to marry or to remain married.  At the same time Mr. BENNETT takes it for granted that woman will never relinquish her position as a charmer of man, or even the use of cosmetics and expensive lingerie.  Speaking neither as a novelist nor as a philosopher, I cannot help feeling that Mr. BENNETT is too apt to consider the things he particularly likes about women to be eternal, and those that he does not like so much to be susceptible of alteration and improvement.  Anyhow, it looks as if Our Men were going to have rather a thin time.

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Miss BEATRICE HARRADEN calls her latest story Spring Shall Plant (HODDER AND STOUGHTON).  She might equally well have called it The Successes of a Naughty Child.  Certainly it is chiefly concerned with the many triumphant insubordinations of Patuffa (whom I suspect of having been encouraged by her too challenging name) both at home and at the various schools from which she either ran away or was returned with thanks.  This is all mildly attractive if only from the vivacity of its telling; but I confess to having felt a mild wonder whether a child’s book had not got on to my table by error—­when the grown-ups suddenly began to carry on in a way