_Ars est celara artem_, and not to define and emphasise it in a foreword to the reader. The motive of _The Last Shot_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL) appears in due course in the narrative; I would have preferred to discover it gradually for myself rather than have the essence of it extracted and poured into me in advance. The preface has not the excuse of a mere advertisement; to open this book at any point is to read the whole, and every page is the strongest possible incentive to the reading of the others. If (as is not admitted) any personal explanation was necessary, it should have been put at the end and in small type so that those who, like myself, detest explanations might have avoided this one. I am the more severe about this, because there can be no two opinions as to Mr. FREDERICK PALMER'S success in achieving his purpose, which, obviously, was to conceive modern warfare as between two First-class Powers, fighting in the midst of civilisation, and to reduce it to terms of exact realism, showing the latest devices of destruction at work, but carefully excluding those improbable and impossible agencies which the more exuberant but less informed novelist loves to imagine and put in play. Mr. PALMER'S conception, though based upon some experience, is for the most part speculative, of course, but I am confident that he gives us an excellent idea of how the military machine would work in practice, how its human constituent parts would feel inwardly, and what physical and moral effects a battle would have upon those civilians who inhabited and owned the battlefield. Whether or no the future will prove the truth of the author's somewhat Utopian conclusions, he certainly founds them upon a most exciting and convincing story, in which the "love interest" is as powerful as could be desired. * * * * *