I am not at all sure how Mr. FRANK NORRIS, were he still living, would have regarded the resurrection of this early attempt at realism, as taught us by M. ZOLA--_Vandover and the Brute_ (HEINEMANN). He would, I fancy, have softened some of the crudities and allowed a touch of humour to lighten the more solemn passages. There are pages here that remind one that _Vandover's_ creator was also the author of those magnificent novels _The Octopus_ and _The Pit_; but I cannot, in spite of them, place much confidence in the truth of _Vandover's_ life history. We are told that he enjoyed his bath, and usually spent two or three hours over it. When the water was very warm he got into it with his novel on a rack in front of him and a box of chocolates conveniently near. Here he stayed for over an hour, eating and reading and occasionally smoking a cigarette. Can you wonder after this that poor _Vandover_ went utterly to the bad, and is to be found on the last page doing some horrible work with a muck-rake whilst an innocent child points an obvious moral? So certain was _Vandover's_ doom, once that box of chocolates had been mentioned, that I grew impatient and a little weary. If this is an age of realism in fiction I think that _Vandover and the Brute_ should make plain to any reader why, very shortly, we are going to have an age of something else. * * * * * Do not allow yourself to be put off by the title of _Captivating Mary Carstairs_ (CONSTABLE)--now published for the first time in England. It is not, as you might assume, a costume novel of eighteenth-century tushery. This is what I expected; but as a matter of fact Mr. HENRY SYDNOR HARRISON has written a tale about as unlike this as anything well could be. It is a capital tale, too; American to the last epithet, and crammed so full of the unexpected and adventurous that never (except once) can you anticipate for a moment what is going to happen. The chief adventure is abduction, the subject of it being _Mary Carstairs_, whose father was separated from her mother, and, being a lonely old man with a longing for a daughter's affection, took this melodramatic course to secure it. In furtherance of his end he secured the services of _Maginnis_, genial swashbuckler, and _Varney_, young, susceptible and heroic, and despatched them on his yacht to apprehend one whom they vaguely supposed to be "a little girl about twelve." This was the only time in which I scored over Mr. HARRISON. I was as certain, when I read thus far, that _Mary Carstairs_ was no child, but a grown-up beauty, as I am now that I know the facts. Everywhere else the author had me beat. His capacity for complications seems inexhaustible. I knew that _Varney_ was going to fall in love with _Mary_, but I did not know that he himself had a double who would cause endless and thrilling confusions; that _Maginnis_ would become involved in local politics to the extent of