To a nicety Mr. NEWBOLT knows how to reproduce the spirit of the sea and of adventure thereon, and whether he is writing of EDWARD PELLEW, JOHN FRANKLIN, DAVID FARRAGUT, or of Trafalgar, it is only possible to escape from his grip when he endeavours to be a little edifying. Boys may conceivably resent this tendency to point out what they can see extraordinarily well for themselves, but all the same they will admit their heavy debt to him. _The Book of the Blue Sea_ (I must write that again), excellently illustrated by Mr. NORMAN WILKINSON, had better be confiscated forthwith by parents who do not wish their sons to become sailors. And in the end I am left wondering whether the Admiralty, overburdened by clamorous applicants, would not be wise to intern Mr. NEWBOLT in one of those camps where no ink or paper is provided, because, if he repeats this performance, we shall want a dozen new naval colleges and hundreds and hundreds more ships. * * * _Shifting Sands_ (LANE) reads like a book with a purpose from which the purpose has been by some oversight omitted. When a young person fails to "find herself" (as the phrase used to go) there should surely be provided some foil to her instability, either implicit in the behaviour of other characters or expressed in the meditations of the author. Even if the author only means to tell us that human life is all like this, she ought at least to let us know that she means it. _Gabrielle Brenda_ is presented to us by ALICE BIRKHEAD as a girl brought up in the remoter parts of Cornwall by a father who was a semi-retired doctor and something of a dreamer. She develops dramatic talent, and having become engaged to her instructor gives him up to her younger sister for no better reason apparently than that she has always been accustomed to give that sister everything she wants. Afterwards _Gabrielle_ becomes the secretary of a domineering little manufacturer in the Black Country with expensive sons and daughters. She resists his proposals of marriage and also the temptation to purloin his eldest daughter's _fiance_, and then reverts to her original vocation, without finding on the stage either satisfaction or any remarkable success. For I see no indication that the offer of a fairly lucrative engagement in America, with which the book ends, is regarded by the author as the golden moment of her heroine's career. Altogether I am at a loss whether to learn from _Shifting Sands_ the disadvantages of a haphazard education, the unfair position of woman in the labour-market, or merely the irony of fate. And this is a pity because, though the manner of the story is very episodic, there are scenes and conversations of considerable vivacity and truth. * * *