adherence to the law of nations is the only sound policy." This is the sort of sermon--from an authoritative source--that we do well to lay to heart just now; while still retaining a fixed determination to exact for future assurance the uttermost penalty from an enemy that has broken every law of God and man. * * * * * In ordinary life it would be a distinct advantage for a man to become possessed of a spell which rendered him immune from death, pain or restraint, enabled him to pass through walls and floors and generally freed him from all those little restrictions which make life the tiresome and precarious thing it is. A man so constituted would conduct himself after the manner of his fellows from day to day and would resort to the use of his peculiar powers only when the necessity arose. But the hero of fiction has his duty always to perform, and he may well find that such transcendental gifts are apt to become a burden. He must for ever be turning them to account and finding new material to work upon. That the scope is limited anyone will at once discover who reads _The Great Miracle_ (STANLEY PAUL). He may never do the same thing twice; once he has disappeared through a floor at a critical moment, floors are off. Each feat must be more astounding than the last: when he has worked his way through a prison wall it would be an anticlimax to do a job with the wall of a mere dwelling-house, and, of course, he is absolutely precluded from the common use of doors. I am afraid Mr. T. P. VANEWORD'S primary conception has been too much for him: he lacks the nice imagination of a WELLS to carry it off. Also he fails to deal with the humour of the position, whether in the madhouse, the court of justice, the manager's office or the palace, an elementary mistake which the most amateur conjurer will always avoid. It is rather the author's misfortune than his fault that his incidental picture of war, introduced only as a new field of operation for his prodigy, is rendered almost fatuous by the actual conditions at present existing. * * * * * Illustration: _Porter._ "DO I KNOW IF THE ROOSHUNS HAS REALLY COME THROUGH ENGLAND? WELL, SIR, IF THIS DON'T PROVE IT, I DON'T KNOW WHAT DO. A TRAIN WENT THROUGH HERE FULL, AND WHEN IT COME BACK I KNOWED THERE'D BIN ROOSHUNS IN IT, 'CAUSE THE CUSHIONS AND FLOORS WAS COVERED WITH SNOW." * * * * *