Miss MILLS YOUNG does not, I think, improve as an artist. _The Purple Mists_ (LANE) is her latest book, and it is not so real and satisfactory a piece of work as _Grit Lawless_ or _Atonement_. The theme of her new novel is the coming of love to two people who married without any other emotion than restrained but unmistakable antipathy. Why people should do these things so often in novels I do not know, but on the present occasion _Euretta_ (_Euretta_ is not an attractive name) and _John Shaw_ (you can tell by _his_ name that he is a strong silent man who is deep in his work and has no time to bother about women) are driven into matrimony by Miss MILLS YOUNG. After a while it appears that _Mr. Shaw_ is beginning to care for _Euretta_ very much, but he shows his affection for her by avoiding her as much as possible and snarling when she speaks to him. It is obvious that a more kindly figure must be somewhere close at hand eager to console _Euretta_. Miss YOUNG discovers him, finds that he is precisely the deep-drinking, warm-hearted rascal necessary for this kind of occasion, and provides him with the inevitable situations proper to the _tertium quid_. The defects of _The Purple Mists_ all arise from the fact that Miss MILLS YOUNG has been told by her friends that she tells a good story. If, next time, she thinks first of her characters and then chronicles their logical development, instead of forcing them into a threadbare plot, she will give us the fine book of which I am sure she is capable. * * * * * "According to the Jewish Chronicle, the number of Jews in the world now exceeds 13,000: to be exact, 13,052,840." _Family Herald (B.C.)_ Our contemporary should cultivate the large tracts of truth which lie between the extreme vagueness of the first estimate and the pedantic accuracy of the second. * * * * * "Rokeby Venus in Ribbons."--_Globe._ Are we becoming prudish? * * * * * "Breezes between North and South."--_Cork Examiner._ This is the weather forecast for Ireland, and at first sight seems obvious; but "in view," as our penny contemporary says, "of the grave importance of the present political situation," we suspect a deeper meaning.