Of this remarkable series, the most noteworthy, though probably not the most popular, are those dealing with Italian life. Mr. Crawford has been markedly successful in his portraiture of Italian middle-class life, and only a little less so in writing of the aristocracy. He excels in representing agreeable, well-bred men and women; under his touch they are natural, human, lifelike. He is fertile in invention and lavish of characters and plot-incident, using in quite a subordinate connection materials which other novelists would reserve for the main plots of future novels. In general, his plots are skilfully constructed; occasionally, as in “Taquisara” (which is almost two separate stories), he fails to weld his material insolubly together. He has a remarkably bold and vigorous imagination, and does not hesitate to introduce daring conceptions and incidents; a romantic cast of mind is necessary if one would fully enjoy him. A Roman Catholic himself, he has had the amplest opportunity for studying the Catholic temperament and point of view, which he interprets admirably; it is natural that he should be weakest in portraying the characters of unbelievers or heretics. He is always dispassionate, calm, never losing himself in any storm of passion. His fiction as a whole is remarkably even, and it cannot be affirmed that his latest work shows deterioration. For the skill with which he has utilised vast stores of learning, for the effective though restrained use of a virile and picturesque imagination, for “astonishing literary tact” and breadth of view, Mr. Crawford has not his equal among living American writers, and his place is among the writers who only just miss the first rank. _Frederic Jesup Stimson._--Frederic J. Stimson, a native of Dedham, Massachusetts (born in 1855), has led a busy life as lawyer, legal writer, Harvard professor, and novelist. His earlier novels were published over the pen name of “J. S. of Dale.” He has written, among others, “Guerndale” (1882), “The Crime of Henry Vane” (1884), the plot of which is unconvincing, “First Harvests” (1888), “Mrs. Knollys and Other Stories” (1894), “Pirate Gold” (1896), “King Noanett” (1896), carefully worked out, an exciting story of mystery and adventure, “Jethro Bacon of Sandwich” (1902), and “In Cure of Her Soul” (1906). Mr. Stimson has not taken high rank as a novelist, but his stories are generally interesting and the later ones may be commended to those who are fond of good romances. “The Weaker Sex” (_The Atlantic_, April, 1901) is a powerful short story.