My impression of _Behind the Picture_ (WARD, LOCK) is that it would be better worth reading if it contained less of the tale--which, to speak quite candidly, is parlous nonsense--and more of the trimmings. The trimmings are mostly concerned with art bargain-hunting, and are excellent fun. Most of us have the treasure-trove instinct sufficiently developed to like reading about a young man who picks up Gainsboroughs for a tenner, or unearths lost masterpieces of TURNER on a clue supplied by an old letter. The young man in question was _Hugh Limner_, and in his off moments he fulfilled perfunctorily the duties of hero of the story. But I can't help thinking that Mr. M. MCD. BODKIN, his creator, liked him best as an expert. Certainly I myself did. _Hugh_, as I say, found his buried Turner on the authority of an autograph letter from the artist, which in its turn he had found in a volume entitled "Turner's Poems," that proved to have belonged to RUSKIN, the whole purchased off a stall for ten shillings. That was the kind of expert _Hugh_ was. When he had dug up the picture he exhibited it in a private gallery, where "each day an eager crowd freely paid an entrance-fee of half-a-guinea." How, when he could achieve that kind of luck, could he be expected to take more than a languid interest in a tale where the most impossible people behave most impossibly; where, for example, a missing peer posts a letter to his wife at the back of a picture-frame for no earthly reason; where the villain, younger brother of the long-lost, comes into the heroine's drawing-room and says, "You must allow me to introduce myself. I am Frederick Ackland, Earl of Sternholt"? We were only beginning the second chapter, but my wonder is that a fellow like _Hugh_, who was within hearing, didn't throw up his part at once. He would have had my sympathy. * * * * *