The first thing I have to say about _Initiation_ (HUTCHINSON) is that it might have been written by Dr. CLIFFORD. The nice people in it are all Roman Catholics, but a group of Huguenots or of Calvinistic Methodists would have served the author's purpose equally well. For ROBERT HUGH BENSON, the novelist, has (so to speak) told Monsignor BENSON, the priest, to mind his own business, and leave him to his, which is the telling of a story, and not the advocacy of any particular form of religion. The second point to notice in the book is that it divides its characters, and incidentally all characters, into those who are initiated and those who are not. The initiated are those who have learnt, chiefly by suffering, the lesson of life, which is that it treats us as it likes. Because they have learnt it, they trust, even when they do not understand, the purpose of the life-giver; because they trust they do not kick against the pricks. The young Catholic English gentleman, of whose initiation the story tells, suffers prodigiously under two of the greatest misfortunes, physical and mental, that a man may endure and live. And yet, when he comes to die, you feel, and he knows, that they are not misfortunes, but the opening up of the way of life. The chief cause of his mental suffering, a young girl of eighteen or nineteen, is described (well on in the book) as a practically insane egoist. She is, to my mind, the weak spot in the story. Frankly I don't believe in her. A girl of her age could not have been so selfishly cruel, and yet have taken in her world as she did. I will own that she took me in at first; but that was the author's fault. He ought not to have let me, as his reader, think her charming and particularly sympathetic when he knew all the time that she cared for no one but herself. I don't think that is playing the game. All the I same, I like his book. * * * * *