A superficial reading of “The Fire of Spring,” by Margaret Potter, D. Appleton & Co., might lead to the conclusion that the book is very different from “The Flame Gatherers,” the last work of the same author, which was published a year ago, but, as a matter of fact, they are, in substance, not at all dissimilar. In one respect, at least, they are identical, and that is the point of view from which the love element is considered. The time and space which separate the scene of the action of the two stories have not modified the primitive quality of the love which supplies the _motif_. It is a love in which the material predominates. It must be confessed that there were grounds for the doubt felt by Charles Van Studdiford’s two companions as to the possibility of his being in love “with a young girl, of gentle birth and highest breeding, as unassailable by the coarser methods as the women Charles had hitherto known would have been by the finer.” Nevertheless, he cannot justly be blamed for all of the trouble that followed his marriage with Virginia Merrill. As she took him obviously for his money, her distress at the subsequent discovery of his grossness is not likely to provoke much sympathy for her, and in becoming entangled with Philip Atkinson, “the erotic man,” she sacrificed her last claim to respect. The theme and plot are more or less familiar, but the author has, with an unusual subtlety and power, imparted to them a vitality that not merely engages the attention, but actually involves the reader as an active participant. She has given evidences of a rather unique gift of magnetism, the development of which will bear watching. * * * * * “Lady Noggs, Peeress,” by Edgar Jepson, McClure, Phillips & Co., though a story of children, or, rather, of a child, for her contemporaries play an inconspicuous part through most of the tale, is essentially a book for the grown-ups, and unhappy must the man or woman be who cannot enjoy it. Lady Noggs, who would, if she were actually what she is represented to be, have her place in “Burke’s Peerage” as Lady Felicia Grandison, is a delightful mixture of dignity and impudence. Full to brimming over with a harmless mischief that is instinctive in a healthy, normal child, yet when the occasion requires she never fails to exact the homage which she considers due to her position as a peeress and her birth as a British subject, as the Prince and Princess of Meiningen-Schwerin found to their cost. If her uncle, the prime minister, was invariably baffled and perplexed by her vagaries and distressed by the consequences of her escapades, Mr. Borrodaile and Miss Caldecott had reason to be grateful for her aid in straightening out their affairs.