_Mr. Anthony Venning_ was a young man of remarkable tact. Taking advantage of his position as a consultant engineer, at the beginning of _The Sentence Absolute_ (NISBET), he pocketed an advance commission for recommending the tender of a certain firm of contractors to the Welsh mill-owner who was employing his professional services. Whether this practice is common amongst engineers, as the authoress would seem to suggest, I cannot say, but at any rate it was hardly to be expected in the circumstances that _Mr. Venning_ should not fall in love with _Mr. Powell's_ extremely beautiful daughter, or that the boilers in _Mr. Powell's_ mill should hesitate in the fulness of time to explode. But the lover had the native good sense to be present at the moment of the inevitable catastrophe and to be the only person seriously damaged; and since it was his first real lapse from the paths of rectitude, and he was otherwise amiable, athletic, presentable and brave, who shall complain if, after confessing in a manly way and being put into a state of thorough repair, he found happiness in the end? Miss MARGARET MACAULAY tells her story in a pleasant enough way, and describes with some skill its idyllic setting (for _Mr. Powell_ was first a country squire, and only secondly a manufacturer); but since she neither indulges in satire, social and economic speculation, nor any pretence of subtlety in psychological probings, there is a curiously old-fashioned air about her novel. And when I mention that _Mr. Venning_ and _Miss Powell_ were actually cut off by the tide on a treacherous reef of the Cambrian coast it will be realised that _The Sentence Absolute_ is a book for one of those softer moods in which we do not desire to be startled or stung to profound meditation on the meaning of life. * * * * * [Illustration: OUR CURIO CRANKS. THE MAN WHO TAKES EVERY OPPORTUNITY OF ADDING TO HIS GALLERY OF HATS OF FAMOUS MEN.] * * * * *