Not since Fielding's Squire Western has there been a more vivid English country squire than Mr. Marshall's Squire Clinton. The difference between them is the difference between the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries. He is the man of the house, the head of the family, and it is not until we have read all four of the stories that we can obtain a complete view of his character. He is a living, breathing man, and we see the expression on his face, and hear the tones of his voice, which his daughters imitate so irresistibly. With all his pride and prejudice, with all his childish irritableness, he is the idol of the household. His skull is as thick as English oak, but he has a heart of gold. He is stupid, but never contemptible. And when the war with Germany breaks out in 1914, he rises to a magnificent climax in the altercation with Armitage Brown. We hear in his torrent of angry eloquence not merely the voice of one man, but the combined voices of all the generations that have developed him. Yet while Mr. Marshall has made an outstanding and unforgettable figure of the fox-hunting Squire, it is in the portrayal of the women of the family that he shows his most delicate art. This is possibly because his skill as an artist is reinforced by profound sympathy. The Squire is so obtuse that it has never dawned upon his mind that his wife is a thousand times cleverer than he, or that her daily repression has in it anything savouring of tragedy. In the third book, _The Honour of the Clintons_, intense and prolonged suffering begins to sharpen his dull sight; and the scenes between the old pair are unspeakably tender and beautiful. Mr. Marshall never preaches, never tries to adorn the tale by pointing a moral. But the wild escapade of the daughter in the first of these stories, and the insistence of the mother on a superior education for the twins exhibit more clearly than any letter to the _Times_ could do, what the author thinks about the difference between the position women have held in English country homes and the position they ought to have. Of all his characters, perhaps those that the reader will remember with the highest flood of happy recollection are the twins, Joan and Nancy. In the first novel, this wonderful pair are aged thirteen; in the second, they are fifteen; in the third, they are twenty-one. Mr. Marshall is particularly skilful in the drawing of young girls; and after one has read _Ann Veronica_, I can think of no better antidote than these Clinton books. Whatever may be woman's place in the future, whatever she may drink or smoke or wear or say or do, there is one kind of girl that can never become unattractive; and the Clinton twins illustrate that kind. They are healthy, modest, quick-witted, affectionate, high-spirited; when they come in laughing and glowing from a game of tennis, and take their places at the family tea-table, they bring the breath of life into the room.