_The Modern Chesterfield_ (Hurst and Blackett) is a book that I enjoyed only after overcoming a considerable and partially-justified prejudice. In the first place, I generally dislike stories told in epistolary form; in the second, I almost always detest books that their publishers advertise by selected "smart sayings." But I must honestly admit that _The Modern Chesterfield_ conquered me--chiefly, I think, by its good-nature. The writer of these very up-to-date paternal admonitions is supposed to be one _Sir Benjamin Budgen, Bart_, "of Budgen House, Fleet Street, E.C. and Cedar Court, Twickenham, Middlesex." The addresses tell you what to expect--a satire on the methods of popular journalism. This in fact is what you get, but the satire is so neat (and withal so genial) and Mr. Max Rittenberg has so happy a knack of conveying character in a few lines that you are simply bound to enjoy reading him. One other facility he has that deserves the highest praise: he tells his story, in letters that emanate from one side only, without wearisome repetition. There is, I mean, hardly any of that "You say in your last that--and ask me whether--etc.," which in similar volumes always bores me to ill-temper by its unlikeness to the letter-writing customs of real life. An explanatory line or two at the head of each epistle puts you in possession of the facts--that _Norman_, the son to whom they are written, has left Cambridge, is proving unsatisfactory, has married an Earl's daughter, and so on. That known, the letters tell their own tale. They reveal the writer too (I refer to _Sir Benjamin_): shrewd, clear-headed, vulgar and of bull-dog courage. The disasters that overwhelm him in the end do not leave his readers unmoved; bankrupt and beaten he goes down fighting with the final characteristic wire, in response to a suggestion of compromise by his chief enemy, "Surrender be damned." A little book to enjoy.