_In the City of Under_ (ARNOLD) shows Miss EVELYNE RYND to have quite a pretty talent in the not unattractive _genre_ of fantastic incoherence something after the pattern of _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_, though in a less robustious mood. But I doubt if talent (however pretty) is altogether sufficient to carry the reader through three hundred pages with no possible clue as to what it is really all about. All the same I do, in justice and most gladly, say that the author keeps one piqued to the extent of wishing to find out; one also loses all suspicion of its being an improving book, and distinctly likes that uncharacteristic Cheltenham boy, _Augustus Clickson_, who helps little _John Hazard_ to find a job. _John_ was very small and ineffectual and engaging, and his V.C. father had left the family wofully ill off, and _John_ felt it was up to him to do something about it. He meets the _Hawker_, who has a comforting habit of turning up at odd moments and assuring people that there's a way out of every difficulty, whereas the old lady, _Mrs. Letitlie_, asserted roundly and frequently that there was none. Then we have a nice wild unpractical Professor and a perplexed archæologist who get tangled in the skein; as also a spy, and, in fact, any old person and thing that occurred to the writer. There's enough good stuff and good humour in this queer patchwork to make me sure that any defect is one merely of form, and I would wager that it was the Notting Hill hero, before alluded to, that was responsible for setting our author on a dangerous path. * * * * *